Rust & Starlight
Chapter 21 : The Ex-Wife’s Instagram Post
The first sign that something was wrong came from Mabel.
She called the farmhouse landline at 6:17 on a Tuesday morning, waking Wren from the deepest sleep she’d had in months. Wren fumbled for the receiver, still half-tangled in Mason’s arm.
“Calloway farm,” she mumbled.
“Turn on your computer.” Mabel’s voice was tight, controlled — the voice she used when she was trying not to panic. “And don’t let Mason see it until you’ve had coffee.”
The line went dead.
Wren sat up, blinking. Mason stirred beside her, his hand reaching for her automatically, still asleep.
“What was that?” he murmured.
“Wrong number.” She slipped out of bed, pulled on her bathrobe, and padded downstairs to the kitchen. The computer — a ancient desktop that wheezed to life like an emphysemic patient — sat in the corner of the living room. She pressed the power button and waited.
The screen glowed. She opened the browser, clicked on Facebook — the only social media she used — and saw it immediately.
It wasn’t on Facebook. Not yet. But Mabel had sent her a link in a private message, with a single word: Look.
Wren clicked.
The link led to Instagram. To a post by Brandi Shaw — verified, with 4.2 million followers. The photo was grainy, clearly taken from a distance, but the subjects were unmistakable: Mason and Wren, at the county fair, standing in front of the Ferris wheel. Wren was laughing at something off-camera. Mason was looking at her with an expression that could only be described as adoration.
The caption read: “My ex-husband has really lowered his standards. Guess the farm life suits him. #NashvilleTrash #KansasCowgirl #DodgedThatBullet”
The comments were already in the thousands.
Wren didn’t read them. She didn’t need to. She could imagine the cruelty, the mockery, the casual dismissal of her entire existence. She was no longer a person — she was a punchline. The “Kansas cowgirl” who had taken in the washed-up country star.
She closed the laptop.
Mason appeared in the doorway, shirtless, his hair sticking up in ten directions. He was holding a cup of coffee — her coffee, she realized, he’d made it for her without being asked.
“You’re up early,” he said. Then he saw her face. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Wren. Your face is the color of skim milk. What happened?”
She opened the laptop again, turned it to face him, and watched as he read.
His expression didn’t change. That was the terrifying thing — he didn’t flinch, didn’t rage, didn’t apologize. He just read the post, read the caption, read a few comments, and then closed the laptop.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You didn’t post it.”
“But she posted it because of me. Because of who I used to be. Because of the life I dragged you into.” He set down the coffee and walked to the window, staring out at the dead orchard. “Brandi was always like that. Vicious. She couldn’t stand the idea that I might be happy without her.”
“Is she… is she right? About me? About your standards?”
Mason turned. His eyes were dark, but not with anger — with something else. Sorrow, maybe. Or regret.
“Brandi Shaw is a talented singer and a deeply unhappy woman. She married me because she thought I’d make her famous. She divorced me because I got in the way of her career. And now she’s trying to hurt me by hurting you.” He walked back to Wren and took her hands. “You are not a lowering of standards. You are the highest standard I’ve ever had.”
Wren wanted to believe him. But the comments were still there, lurking in the laptop, waiting to be read.
“The whole world is going to see this,” she said. “My neighbors. My friends. My mother in Florida. They’re going to read those comments and think…”
“Think what?”
“That I’m a gold digger. That I’m desperate. That I took in a broken celebrity because I couldn’t find anyone else.”
Mason pulled her into his arms. “Anyone who knows you won’t believe that. And anyone who believes that doesn’t know you.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It’s not supposed to be comforting. It’s supposed to be true.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’ll call my lawyer. We’ll get the post taken down. And I’ll issue a statement—”
“No.” She pulled back. “No statement. No lawyers. That’s what she wants — attention. If we fight back, we’re playing her game.”
“Then what do we do?”
Wren looked at the laptop, then at Mason, then out the window at the gray April sky.
“We do nothing,” she said. “We live our lives. We fix the tractor. We plant new trees. We ignore her.”
“And if the reporters come?”
“Then we tell them to leave. And if they don’t leave, we call the sheriff.” She straightened her shoulders. “I’ve survived worse than a mean ex-wife. So have you.”
Mason studied her face. The fear was still there, lurking behind her eyes, but so was something else. Something harder. Something that looked like the woman who had pulled him out of a ditch and handed him a post-hole digger.
“Okay,” he said. “We do nothing.”
But the reporters came anyway.
The first one arrived that afternoon — a stringer for a local news station, driving a van with a satellite dish on the roof. He parked at the end of the driveway and aimed a camera at the farmhouse.
Wren saw him from the kitchen window.
“Company,” she said.
Mason looked. “I’ll handle it.”
“No. We’ll handle it together.”
They walked out to the end of the driveway, side by side. The reporter — a young man with a too-bright smile and a cheap suit — lowered his camera when he saw them.
“Mason Cross? I’m with KSNT News. Can we get a comment on your ex-wife’s Instagram post?”
“No comment,” Mason said.
“Ms. Calloway? How does it feel to be called a ‘Kansas cowgirl’ by a famous singer?”
Wren looked at the camera, then at the reporter. Her face was calm, but her hands were shaking.
“It feels like someone who doesn’t know me trying to hurt me,” she said. “And I don’t have time for it. I have a farm to run.”
She turned and walked back to the house.
Mason followed.
The reporter called after them, but they didn’t look back.
That night, more reporters came.
By morning, there were five cars parked along the county road, and a helicopter had flown over twice. Mabel called again, this time to warn them that a national tabloid had offered a reward for “intimate photos” of the couple.
Wren sat at the kitchen table, her head in her hands.
“I can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t have my life turned into a circus.”
“Then we leave,” Mason said. “Just for a few days. Until it blows over.”
“Leave for where?”
“I have a friend in Colorado. A cabin in the mountains. No cell service, no internet, no reporters.” He knelt beside her chair. “We can wait it out. Come back when the world has moved on to the next scandal.”
Wren looked at him. “You want to run away?”
“I want to protect you. There’s a difference.”
She thought about it. The farm would survive without her for a few days — the sheep were low-maintenance, and Mabel had already offered to check on them. The dead orchard would still be dead when she returned. And the reporters would eventually get bored and leave.
“One condition,” she said.
“Name it.”
“We take the guitar.”
Mason smiled. “I wouldn’t dream of leaving it behind.”
They packed in twenty minutes.
Mason threw clothes into a duffel bag — mostly Luke’s flannels, which fit him now, and a pair of jeans that Wren had patched for him. Wren packed food from the pantry: bread, cheese, apples, a jar of the strawberry jam Mabel had given her for her birthday. The guitar went into the back seat of the truck, nestled between blankets.
They left at dawn, driving east while the sun rose behind them, turning the prairie gold.
Mason drove. Wren sat in the passenger seat, watching the farm disappear in the side mirror.
“We’ll come back,” Mason said.
“I know.”
“Everything will be okay.”
“I know.” She reached over and took his hand. “I know.”
But she didn’t believe it. Not yet.
The cabin was in the Colorado mountains, six hours from the farm. It belonged to a songwriter Mason had worked with years ago — a reclusive man named Bobby who had retired from the business and now lived off grid, writing songs that no one would ever hear.
Bobby met them at the gate, a grizzled figure in a flannel shirt and Carhartt overalls. He looked at Mason, then at Wren, then at the guitar in the back seat.
“You in trouble?” he asked.
“Something like that,” Mason said.
Bobby grunted. “Ain’t we all.” He opened the gate. “Cabin’s clean. There’s firewood on the porch. Don’t touch my whiskey.”
He walked away without another word.
The cabin was small — one room, really, with a bed, a wood stove, and a window that looked out over a frozen lake. The mountains rose on all sides, snow-capped and silent. There was no cell signal. No internet. No television.
Just them.
Wren stood in the middle of the cabin, turning in a slow circle.
“It’s perfect,” she said.
“It’s Bobby’s. He doesn’t like people, but he likes me for some reason.”
“Maybe because you’re both broken.”
Mason laughed. “Probably.”
They unpacked in silence, moving around each other with the ease of people who had learned to share space. When the last bag was put away, Wren sat on the edge of the bed and looked at Mason.
“We’re alone,” she said.
“Completely.”
“No one knows where we are.”
“No one.”
She patted the bed beside her. “Then stop standing there and come here.”
Mason sat. She leaned against him, and he put his arm around her.
“I’m scared,” she admitted.
“Of what?”
“Of this. Of us. Of what happens when we go back.” She looked up at him. “What if the reporters don’t leave? What if Brandi keeps posting? What if the whole world decides that I’m not good enough for you?”
Mason turned to face her, taking both her hands.
“The whole world doesn’t get a vote. Only we do.” He kissed her knuckles. “And I’ve already voted. I vote for you. For us. For this.”
Wren looked at their joined hands — his calloused, hers scarred — and felt something loosen in her chest.
“I vote for you too,” she whispered.
They stayed like that until the sun set, and then Mason built a fire, and Wren made sandwiches, and they ate dinner on the floor of the cabin, wrapped in blankets, listening to the wind in the pines.
It wasn’t a solution. It wasn’t an ending. It was just a pause — a breath — a moment of peace before whatever came next.
But it was enough.