Page 21 of The Cowboy's Best Friend

Another thing she loved about Cowboy Point was how thick on the ground these family businesses were.

“I talk a lot with the folks down in Marietta who run their farmers market scene,” Flannery was saying. “We work really hard not to have too much overlap, or to pull too much from them, and vice versa. And with all Yellowstone tours this time of year, I think our numbers are just going to keep improving.”

“Here’s hoping,” Kendall said, and they all toasted the idea.

“If I can maybe sound a little indelicate, though I don’t mean to,” Cat said after Flannery went off to work the crowd, her gaze swinging to Sierra, “it’s really nice to see you looking so happy all the time. It feels like that’s not actually normal for you.”

Sierra supposed she could take offense to that. But she didn’t. Because it was true.

“I’ll probably be looking happier all the time now,” she told them. “Barring any unforeseen events, my divorce should be final next week.”

All three went silent. Sierra watched as they looked at each other, then back at her, but she couldn’t quite read what she saw there. It wasn’t the same as last time. This time felt more like she’d lobbed a grenade into the middle of the table.

“You’re getting divorced?” Kendall asked, and she sounded as if her voice was higher than usual. “I don’t know whether to say that I’m sorry, or…?”

“I don’t know your ex,” Cat said, sounding careful, which was almost scarier than anything she could possibly have said. “But I think—”

“I’ve met him,” Rosie butted in, her voice… firm. Her gaze was the same on Sierra’s. “When all is said and done, he’s a tiny little man, isn’t he?”

And Sierra laughed.

She didn’t know where it came from. Normally, when people said things about Matty—and the truth was, people always said things about Matty, because he was who he was—she defended him. She couldn’t even saywhyshe did, only that she always had. It was a long ingrained habit. She might have even picked it up in high school. Whatever people said, whatever was implied, she would always wave it off. She would always try to interpret what it was that he actually meant and then share that with them, or show them why what they thought they’d seen or heard was wrong.

It was a reflex.

But here, on a bright patio in beautiful Cowboy Point with all that high mountain air and a Montana summer night lazily blue above her, with a group of women who she was beginning to consider actual friends, she didn’t do any of that.

It hit her, for the first time, that she didn’t have to do that ever again.

So she laughed. “He is a little man, actually,” she said to Rosie. To all of them. “I don’t really like to admit that, because I don’t think it says good things about me.”

She was fiddling with her beer, maybe, and she didn’t like that. So she sat up straighter instead and looked around the table, because why should she be ashamed about anything?Shewasn’t small.

No one said anything, so she kept going. “He likes ultimatums. He always has. We never fight, you see. If there’s any fighting or any hint of fighting, he always says,leave me then. And he means immediately. In that moment, everything has to end and there can never be any taking it back. I was always too afraid to do it.” She lifted her shoulder then dropped it. “Until last month. He did it the way he always does, and I…” She laughed again. “I told him to go right ahead. He filed for divorce next day. There’s a twenty one day waiting period, and so I’ll divorced next week. It’s that simple after all these years.”

There was a shocked sort of silence on the table, but Rosie was the first to break it. She lifted up her Coke in tribute.

“Hear, hear,” she said, and the others did the same.

“I feel like I ought to feel… more,” Sierra told them. “I think maybe there’s something wrong with me.” But she smiled as she said it. “Yet even if there is, I don’t think I’m going to regret this decision either way.”

“Maybe,” Kendall suggested, “you’ve already given situation all the emotion it deserves. Now that it’s over, you just get to be done.”

Sierra smiled. “I like that take.”

“But if you divorce, that means you’re single,” Cat said, her eyes sparkling as she leaned in. “And everybody knows that the best way to truly be done with one man is to find yourself another one.”

“Doeseveryone know that?” Rosie asked her, shaking her head. “Is that something you know from personal experience over there, Cat?”

Sierra had already guessed that Wilder was Cat’s one and only, but the way the other woman blushed then confirmed it. “I’ve read extensively.”

“That’s not the saying anyway,” Kendall interjected. “Everyone knows it’s you get over one man by getting under another.”

“I think I’m fine,” Sierra assured them. “I don’t need to be getting under anyone. And I think I’ll wait until it’s official, anyway.”

But that was all that she could think about. The following week, she went to the courthouse with her lawyer. She didn’t have to look at Matty. Everything was cut and dry and she didn’t want anything from him, though the judge divided up some assets all the same because of the length of their marriage.

Sierra didn’t care. She just wanted to be done.

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