I nodded thoughtfully. I was trying not to judge. Trying really hard. Because watching two men fight over who would be having sex with me didn’t sound all that appealing. And I didn’t know how to ask the questions I suddenly wanted to ask, but knew would be imprudent, not to mention impolite. What Tina did, and who she did it with, and why in tarnation she did it was none of my business.

I felt her eyes on me; apparently, she misinterpreted my struggle, because she said, “Duane and I aren’t back together.”

I stiffened with surprise and dropped the roasting pan I’d been holding, splashing water on my apron. “What? What did you say?”

“I said, Duane and I aren’t back together. Despite what you may have heard, we aren’t. He came to see me on Friday, at the Pink Pony, and I know how some people like to gossip. I’m sure you heard about it.”

I felt many things at that moment and all of them were of the ugly, jealous variety. I recognized something about myself just then: I wasn’t enlightened or open-minded. Not even a little.

I didn’t want Duane going to the Pink Pony, watching and admiring naked women, and I didn’t want him seeking out Tina. Just the thought of it made me angry. And feeling more and more like a woman scorned—in the Shakespearean sense. And lots of crazy-woman scorned thoughts bounced around my brain making me dizzy. The room tilted and I gripped the edge of the sink.

Maybe Duane didn’t want to leave Green Valley because he didn’t want to leave Tina and all the dancers at the Pink Pony. Maybe I wasn’t enough for him. Maybe he’d been expecting me to conform to some role, where he raced cars and got lap dances on the weekends while I stayed home, knitted him socks, and folded his laundry.

But that wasn’t right. That wasn’t the Duane Winston I knew and fell in love with. That wasn’t even the Duane I grew up with. Reason raised its hand and suggested I doubt my cousin, or doubt her version of events at least.

Reason had a calming effect, and that’s when I realized she was still speaking.

“…so just because he’d been texting and calling me like crazy for the last three weeks didn’t mean I was open to restarting anything between us. Like I said, I’ve moved on and so should he. I told him—”

She stopped talking abruptly, frowning as she pulled her phone from her pocket. Helplessly, I watched as she smirked at the screen of her cell.

“He just can’t stop calling me,” she tsked then showed me the incoming number.

It was Duane’s number. And he was calling her.

I watched her send it to voicemail. I felt her eyes on me, though mine were affixed to the phone. Duane was calling her, he’d left her messages. Now maybe I was being willfully blind, but I could not swallow the notion that Duane cheated with Tina, or with anyone for that matter.

He loved me. He did. I knew it. And no one could convince me otherwise. And he wasn’t a cheater. I knew him. Therefore, with cold conviction, I turned my tired gaze back to Tina.

“You’re lying.”

Her full lips parted, like she was offended, and she stuttered for a bit before managing, “What? You just saw his number flash on my phone. You just saw him call me.”

I shook my head. “I’m not doubting the calls or the messages, Tina. But you’re still lying. This smells like a skunk in a perfume shop. First of all, you come in here on Thanksgiving, the day after I come back from my…Louisa’s funeral, and tell me how Duane has been visiting you at the Pink Pony, waving that phone in my face, wanting to stir shit up. I don’t buy it. You’re trying too hard.”

Tina was giving me her angry bitch face, which was actually pretty scary, but I was too numb to feel fear or intimidation.

After an intense and drawn-out staring contest, Tina rolled her eyes, flipped her hair, and snorted. “Whatever. You believe what you want. But that don’t change the fact—”

“That’s right, nothing you can do or show me will change the fact that I know Duane Winston, and he is a good man. He’s not his father. He’s not a cheater. He wouldn’t do that to me or to anyone. And I know he loves me, I know it. I trust him, and I love him and…” And, now I was crying.

I didn’t know why she was doing this, why she wanted to make me believe that Duane had been running around behind my back, but I didn’t care to know her reasons.

Using still wet hands, I turned from Tina and grabbed a paper towel, using it to wipe my eyes and nose.

I could feel her stare, feel her intense dislike, as she pressed, “I thought you weren’t together. Isn’t that what you told me at dinner a few weeks ago? Or were you lying?”

I shook my head, sniffled, and squared my shoulders as I faced her. “Not that it’s any of your business, but we weren’t together when you and I had dinner. Then we worked things out a few weeks ago.”

“So why are you crying now?” she spat, pursing her lips, her eyes narrowed slits.

Suddenly, I was too tired for this conversation, for her brand of crazy, so I said, “That’s also none of your business.”

I turned away from my cousin and the remainder of the dishes, needing the solace of my dark room and softer tissues.

“Hey! Wait, we’re not done here.”

I turned and walked backward, shaking my head at her nasty audacity. “You are my cousin, Tina. I will always love you, notwithstanding your spitefulness. I will. If you ever need my help, I’ll be there for you. But we’re not friends. I don’t like being lied to, and I don’t like you trying to cast aspersions on Duane’s good character. So, we are done here. I’m finished, and now I’m leaving.”

***

Duane,

I think you’ve broken my heart. I’ve never had my heart broken before, but I’m pretty sure this sick sadness is it. I didn’t sleep after you left. I cried for a long time though. I feel like I kept trying to give myself to you and you kept withholding yourself from me, and now I guess I know why.

I’m not so good at letting go. Once I get an idea in my head I hold on to it with both hands, so you’ll have to pardon my inability to just walk away now without saying my peace. You said a few things on Wednesday night/Thursday morning that weren’t true, so now I want to set the record straight.

I meant it when I said I have no immediate plans to leave Green Valley. I still have the rest of the school year to finish and there’s no one to who can fill in or take my place. I may have the wanderlust, my soul may long to see and live in the world, to explore and have adventures, but that doesn’t make me a flake. That doesn’t mean I don’t take my obligations and promises seriously.

Tina came to Thanksgiving at the house yesterday and told me you’ve been chasing after her for the last three weeks. She showed me text messages that you’d sent and then you called her phone, left her a message while I was standing there with her. Just so you know, I don’t believe her. I know you, Duane. You’re not anything like your father. You’re not a cheater.

I love you and want to be with you all the time, so, yes, I asked you to come with me when the time comes. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Maybe that’s asking too much. But I want you to belong to me and I want to belong to you.

I wish you would ask me to stay, or help me try to find a compromise. Compromise isn’t dishonorable. Asking me to stay isn’t either. Please ask me to stay.

Love always, -Jess

I read then re-read the seventeenth iteration of my letter.

Presently, it was the day after Thanksgiving. I’d been working on the letter all day, and had discarded the other sixteen because, after getting past the part where I told him how much I loved him, my mind invariably returned to the moment when he’d left the cabin.

He’d left me standing in that sheet, with a dead fire and a cold bed. He’d just walked away from me. So I would become spitting mad. I was still mad now, but I recognized calling him insulting names in the letter—like shit-for-brains—might be counterproductive to the letter’s purpose. I needed him to read it. It was a way for me to monologue and share my thoughts without the unhelpful shit-for-brains comments slipping out.

Plus name calling wasn’t likely to inspire affection and an open heart.

I set the letter back on my desk and rubbed my eyes, reflecting on how complicated life had become over the last month. Likely it was the ghost of J.R.R. Tolkien making me crazy as retribution for the blasphemy of my sexy Gandalf costume.

“Knock-knock.”

I turned from my desk and found Claire poking her head in my bedroom door, her mouth was flattened in sympathy.

“Hey. How are you holding up?”

I sighed, twisting to my desk and quickly flipping the letter over. “Come in and shut the door.”

She did, moving to sit on the edge of my bed nearest my location. I turned fully in my seat to face her.

“I’m so sorry about your aunt. Your momma says you two were really close.”

I stared at Claire for a beat, then shook my head. “That’s not true. We weren’t close.”

“Didn’t you work for her? Live with her over the summer during college?”

“Yes, but we weren’t close. When I lived with her she had me stay in one of the maid’s rooms, and we never took meals together unless Momma was visiting.”