Kathleen O'Brien - Reclaiming the Cowboy

“If it happened that way.” Dallas sounded patient. “But clearly the cops didn’t buy her story. Apparently, she had a history of erratic behavior, though this is the only episode that occurred after she turned eighteen. Earlier records are sealed, because she was a juvenile. And, no, I’m not going to try to get someone to pry them open.”

“I wasn’t going to ask you to.” Mitch glared at his brother, his mind going a mile a minute. “So...what? What’s the bottom line here? You think she was running from her cousin?”

Dallas lifted his shoulders. “Don’t know. I didn’t dig any deeper. You asked for a name, and I got one. At the time, no charges were brought, so even if she thought she was running from her cousin, there’s no evidence that...”

“That what?” Mitch’s lips felt stiff.

“That Jacob Burns is dangerous. He was never arrested. He was about twenty-five at the time, just out of law school. He practices in Sacramento now, and apparently he’s a big deal. Annabelle, on the other hand...” He hesitated. “The authorities sent her for psychiatric evaluation, and she spent some time in a mental-health clinic. Just a few weeks, but—”

“But you think she’s nuts. What the hell, Dallas? You knew Bonnie. We all did. You think she’s insane?”

“No.” Dallas spoke slowly, and pity dripped from the word. He pitied Mitch, because Mitch had fallen in love with a kook. “Not insane. But maybe...troubled. You know? Maybe she’s trouble.”

Mitch thought his blood pressure must be about a thousand—he could feel his heart beating behind his eyes. He wanted to punch someone or something. He’d punch Dallas, except that he’d learned better about twenty years ago. Dallas might be a saint, but he had a right hook like a demon.

“Yeah, well, I remember what Dad said about Rowena, back in the day,” he countered acidly. “That she was trouble was the least of it.”

The minute the words came out, Mitch felt himself flushing. That was a low blow. It wasn’t fair. Mitch liked his brother’s wife, always had. And Rowena had had her reasons for acting wild. But why couldn’t Dallas see that Bonnie must have had her reasons, too?

“I’m on your side here, Mitch,” Dallas said mildly. “I thought you were through with her, anyhow.”

“I am.” Mitch stood. “I am. But just because she broke my heart...that doesn’t mean I have to pretend she’s a monster. She’s not. And she’s not a liar.”

Dallas raised his eyebrows.

“She’s not,” Mitch repeated. “A hundred times, when I was trying to make her tell me what was going on, it would have been easier for her to invent any old story, just to shut me up. But she didn’t. She didn’t want to tell me the truth, but she was too good to tell me a lie.”

“Okay.” Dallas nodded slowly, though he clearly wasn’t convinced. “But there’s one other thing you ought to know. If you look her up, you’ll see. She’s rich.”

“I don’t give a damn about that.”

“I know. I just want you to be prepared. When I say rich, I don’t mean comfortable. I mean really rich. Dripping, Rockefeller rich.”

Mitch hesitated, looking down at his brother’s somber face. “I see. What you’re trying to say is that she’s out-of-my-league rich.”

“More or less, yeah.” Dallas didn’t mince words. “I’m saying she’s trouble, and she’s out-of-our-league rich. Look, she left you. You had a grand adventure, but it’s over. She’s gone back to her real life. You need to let it go, Mitch. You need to let her go.”

* * *

MAYBE JACOB AND the rest of them were right, Annabelle thought as she knelt, here at this fork in the bricked path of Greenwood’s butterfly garden, oddly paralyzed and unsure where to plant the final daffodils. Maybe she was crazy. Divorced from reality, dysfunctional, paranoid—just as her mother had been.

Because the way she felt, now that she was back home at Greenwood...

She felt like her own ghost.

So maybe they were right. Maybe it was loony to feel that her invented alter ego, Bonnie O’Mara, was more real than Annabelle Irving could ever be.

Maybe it was bonkers to insist on living in the Greenwood gardener’s cottage and refuse to spend a single night in the elegant, twenty-two-room Italianate mansion where she was born and raised.

Maybe it was daft to dream of taking the Irving fortune, every hellish dollar of it, and burning it in a bonfire down by the creek.

But the truth was...being back here, being the heiress to all this had paradoxically stolen any hope of being happy. It had reduced her once again to an object, a thing, a possession, instead of a woman.

All her life, Annabelle had understood she wasn’t a person. She was an idea. An arrangement of colors on canvas. A mythical, imaginary creature who came to life only in the minds of the people who romanticized her pictures. When the lights were off, when the museums were closed, she was supposed to sink back into the ornate frame, frozen in place, until another art lover came to imagine her into existence all over again.

“The irises will be coming out any day now.”

Annabelle looked up as Fitz, the elderly gardener who had tended Greenwood since Annabelle was a little girl, came limping toward her, his wheelbarrow rumbling before him. She forced herself to smile. Fitz had been the one person she could honestly call a friend. Drawn together by their mutual love of growing things, he’d come to be like a father to her through the years.

And yet, in the end, even he had betrayed her.

“Yes, the irises will be gorgeous. And I’m so glad you put in day lilies.” Shading her eyes with the knife blade she held in one palm, she peered up at him. Only about five-three, with a face turned to tree bark by the California sun, he looked even browner with the light behind him, casting him in shadow. “They’re a wonderful addition.”

He reached into his wheelbarrow and lifted out a straw hat. “Here,” he said. “You don’t want to end up a grizzled old piece of shoe leather like me.”

“Don’t I?” She took the hat, but she didn’t put it on. She raised her face toward the sun. No one cared anymore—no one would punish her for getting dirty fingernails or letting the sun freckle her pale skin. And yet it still felt like the most luxurious act of defiance, to be out here at noon, with her hands in the earth and the heat on her face.

“No. You don’t.” Fitz plucked the hat from her hands and stuffed it on her head. “I bet you didn’t even use sunscreen. You know, BonnyBelle, you don’t always have to do the opposite of what your grandmother would have wanted you to do. Sometimes she was right.”

She looked down at her grimy fingernails, realizing the truth of his words. She could have put on sunscreen first, and she could have enjoyed her gardening without courting skin cancer. As it was, she’d be red as a watermelon by nightfall.

“You’re right, Fitz—I’m acting silly, and—” But she couldn’t complete her sentence. One of the maids was scurrying down the brick path toward them, her hand held up, waving urgently.

“Ms. Annabelle,” she said as she reached them. “I’m sorry. There’s a man, and he won’t go away. I told him you weren’t at home, and so did Mr. Agron, but the man says he isn’t leaving till he talks to you. He’s been here half an hour, and Mr. Agron said we should call the police, but—”

Annabelle’s heart hitched. Could it be Jacob?

The maid stopped to catch her breath and maybe to find the right words. “I don’t know if we should. He’s not doing anything, and he’s obviously not a reporter. He’s kind of like...a cowboy or something.”