Chapter 6 #2
"I absolutely will not," I said, still smiling. "But it was lovely meeting you."
I turned to leave and nearly tripped over Maisie, who had materialized behind me holding a wooden armadillo the size of a football, examining it with the intensity of a surgeon.
"Mommy, this armadillo has a face like that lady." She pointed the armadillo directly at Brooke, who was still standing by the dairy case three feet away.
Brooke's mouth opened. No sound came out.
"Maisie —"
"But look at it." She held the armadillo up in Brooke's general direction. Squinty eyes, pinched snout, an expression of permanent disapproval carved into the wood. "See? It's the same face."
"Maisie."
"Like she smelled something bad, but she's too fancy to say so."
Brooke was staring at Maisie with the fixed expression of a woman trying to decide if she'd just been insulted by a kindergartner or by the universe.
"Kids," I said to Brooke, with a shrug that conveyed nothing and everything. "Have a great afternoon."
I picked up my milk, put the armadillo back on the shelf — "But Mommy" — and walked away with my daughter's hand in mine and my composure held together by a thread.
I made it to the car before the laugh escaped. Silent, shaking, tears-in-my-eyes laughter — the kind you can't explain to anyone because the context is too layered and the joy is too specific.
"Mommy, why are you laughing?"
"I'm not laughing."
"Your face is laughing."
"My face is doing its own thing, baby. Buckle up."
Monday morning. Bev walked in, set a mug on my desk, and leaned against the filing cabinet with the air of a woman about to conduct an interrogation.
I looked at the mug. Chamomile. Bev only brought chamomile when she thought I needed handling.
"How was the weekend?"
"Fine. Good. Uneventful."
"Mmhmm."
Theo materialized from the back office the way he always did when gossip was in the air — silently, rapidly, like a shark sensing blood in the water.
"I heard from Rosa, who heard from June, who heard from Clara Mae, that your car was at the Blackwood Ranch on Saturday. Again."
"Clara Mae needs a streaming subscription."
"Clara Mae has a streaming subscription. She canceled it because, and I quote, 'real life in this town is better than anything on Netflix.'"
"It was a horse naming," I said. "For Maisie. Clay and Jack bought a new mare, and Maisie is naming her. That is the entire, complete, exhaustive story."
Silence. The performative kind.
"A horse naming," Theo said slowly. "With a man who looks like a Yellowstone cast crossed with Thor. On a Saturday. While his mother served you —"
"Don't say lemonade."
"— lemonade."
"How does everyone know about the lemonade?"
"Louisa told Dottie," Bev said. "Dottie told Rosa. Rosa told her mother-in-law. Her mother-in-law told Theo. Theo told me before I'd taken my coat off this morning."
"I told her at seven forty-five," Theo confirmed. "I was very excited."
"This town is a surveillance state with better pie."
"It's a loving town," Bev said. "With excellent communication."
I put my reading glasses on and opened my laptop. The universal signal for this conversation is finished.
Theo retreated. Bev stayed. She straightened a stack of papers on my desk that didn't need straightening.
Then, quiet enough that only I could hear: "The Brooke thing was nothing, by the way.
Ancient history. She's been trying to claim Clay Blackwood since high school. He's never been interested. Not once."
I looked up. "How do you know about Brooke?"
"Honey." She gave me a look. "Copper Creek."
She held my gaze for a beat. Then, softer: "It's okay to let good things in, Callie. Not everything costs what you think it costs."
She walked back to her desk. I stared at my screen and didn't see a single word on it for a long time.
Getting Maisie to bed had always been the hardest part of the day.
She was in her pajamas, teeth brushed, horse deployed.
I sat on the edge of her bed and opened the book — the one about the girl who rides a horse through a magical forest, because every book in this house now involved horses and I'd stopped fighting it. "Mommy?"
"Yeah, baby?"
"Is Clay going to keep Starlight forever?"
"I think so. She's part of the ranch now."
"Can we go back next weekend? He said I could help brush her. Brushing is how horses know you love them."
"We'll see."
She accepted this with less fight than usual. Tired. Which meant the real thing was coming.
"Mommy?"
"Hmm?"
"Did I have fun at Daddy's?"
The question landed sideways. Not I had fun or I didn't have fun. Did I? Like she was asking me to tell her what she felt, because she wasn't sure anymore.
"What do you think, baby? Did you have fun?"
She picked at the edge of her blanket. Small fingers working the stitching.
"Daddy had a lady there. She had red hair. She talked a lot, and she smelled like flowers, and she called me sweetie, but she didn't know my name."
I kept my face neutral. The mask. Years of practice.
"I'm sure she was nice."
"She was okay." Pause. Then, almost to herself: "Daddy doesn't listen like Clay does."
I didn't move.
"Clay asks me questions," she said. "Real ones. And then he listens to the answer. Even when I talk a lot." She looked at her blanket. "Daddy looks at his phone."
I read the story. All of it. Every page, every word, my voice steady and warm and not cracking. I kissed her forehead. Told her I loved her more than all the stars. Closed the door.
Then I stood in the hallway and pressed my hand over my mouth.
Daddy doesn't listen like Clay does.
My five-year-old. Who believed horses had favorite colors and pinky promises were legally binding.
Who could negotiate bedtime for thirty minutes but couldn't articulate why she went quiet every time she came home from Dallas.
She'd just done it in five words. Named the thing I'd spent six years refusing to name — that I had married a man who looked at his phone while his daughter talked, and I'd told myself that was normal because the alternative was admitting I'd built my entire adult life around someone who didn't see me.
But Maisie could tell. At five.
I slid down the wall. Sat on the floor. Maisie's nightlight leaked purple butterflies under her door — the one she'd picked at the hardware store, the first thing she'd ever chosen for a room that was hers.
I sat there until the ache settled into something I could carry. Then I got up, washed my face, and went to the couch.
That's what mothers did. They sat on hallway floors, and then they got up.
Late. Couch. Case files open and blurring. The cottage was dark except for the lamp and the glow of my phone when it buzzed.
Clay.
A photo — Starlight in the paddock, late-afternoon light on her coat, the white star catching the sun. Below it:
Jack says papers are signed. She's officially ours. Tell the naming committee in the morning?
Simple. Not flirtatious. Not pushing. Just including us, the way he kept doing — quietly, specifically, like we were part of something he was building and it hadn't occurred to him that we might not be.
My thumbs hovered.
That's incredibly kind, Clay. She's going to be so — Delete. Too warm.
I don't know how to thank you for — Delete. Too much.
You don't have to include us. We're not yours to — Delete. Too honest by a factor of ten.
Finally: She'll lose her mind. Thank you.
His reply came in under ten seconds. A single cowboy hat emoji.
I smiled.
Not the polite smile. A real one. Small and stupid and aimed at a phone screen in a dark living room.
I put the phone face-down on the couch cushion.
Don't do this, Callie.
But the smile wouldn't leave. It sat on my face like a squatter with a lease, and no amount of internal litigation could evict it.
A cowboy hat emoji. That's what undid me.
I was in so much trouble.