Chapter 15
Monday morning, Tessa scowled from the safety of the porch at Bonnie and Clyde. The geese had chased her halfway to the chicken coop earlier and were now strolling back and forth across the lawn with the smug bearing of conquering heroes.
“Evil flying death birds,” she muttered into her coffee.
She hadn’t slept well since she told Dillon he was a man who showed up, and he kissed her.
You’re still not in the market for a man.
Yes, well.
She’d been losing that argument with herself for weeks. In fact, it was barely an argument at all anymore. Now, it was mostly a polite formality before her inevitable capitulation.
Friday after work, she’d dropped off a full grocery bag of Fern’s writing samples at Dillon’s house. Sunday, Reno’s handwriting expert declared himself ninety-nine percent sure that Fern’s signature on the letter was a forgery. Not that it had ever been in any doubt.
And not that it would stop the lawsuit. After all, the oil company didn’t actually need to win. They just needed her to go broke and give up the fight.
Her phone buzzed on the railing beside her.
She picked it up half hoping it was Dillon but knowing it wouldn’t be.
He was on calls all morning. Besides, he wasn’t the chatty sort who texted at seven a.m. to comment on the weather.
He was more the type to show up unannounced with the lab results in one hand and his hat pushed back. She loved that about him.
She also half hoped it was Charlotte, who’d been calling at odd hours stressing over what the New York boutique would think of the finalized portfolio of gowns.
It was neither.
The screen read MOTHER.
For a split second the porch spun around her. She took a deep breath and answered coolly, “Good morning, Mother.”
“Tessa. I’ve been trying to reach you.”
A pause. Tessa imagined her mother in the sitting room on Park Avenue, pen poised over the calendar she still kept in Moroccan leather even though her assistant maintained an electronic copy.
“Your grandfather has had another setback.”
“What kind of setback?”
“He’s stopped feeding himself. The staff have to do it for him now.” A beat. “He’s asking for Tassie again. We’ve explained who you are several times, but it doesn’t seem to take.”
She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“We’re at a juncture, Tessa.”
There it was. The pivot word. Juncture. “What kind of juncture?”
“The Whitmore Academy in Connecticut has accepted Makayla for their fall class.”
Tessa’s hand tightened on the phone. “How? She didn’t apply nor did she audition.”
“I applied on her behalf in February.”
“Without asking me?” Tessa demanded a shade sharply.
“You didn’t answer your phone when I called to ask.”
That, infuriatingly, was probably true. In February she’d been organizing Fern’s funeral and buried in all the details.
“Why would they let Makayla in without hearing her play, first?” Tessa tried.
“My assistant found a video of her performing in some sort of school concert last fall. The Whitmore School accepted it as her audition.”
Tessa rolled her eyes and made a mental note to scrub off the Internet every future video of Makayla that got posted.
Judith continued, “Whitmore is the most respected pre-collegiate music program in the country. They produce renowned soloists. Concertmasters. Virtuosos.”
“Mother—”
“I’m not finished. Tuition, room, board, instrument insurance, master class fees—everything—will be covered by the family education trust. Makayla will graduate without debt and with a CV that opens any door in classical music.”
Tessa looked out at the pasture. June and Biscuit had come to the fence and were watching her hopefully for peppermints.
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
“The deposit is due Friday.”
“This Friday?”
Tessa drew in a slow breath. She needed time to talk it over with Makayla. Find out what her daughter wanted. Think about whether she was ready to send her child two-thousand miles away for most of the year. “Request an extension.”
“They don’t grant extensions. They have an extensive waiting list and will fill Makayla’s slot with another student if you won’t commit to sending her there. The deposit is the test of seriousness.”
The deposit, Tessa knew without having to ask, would be roughly the price of a new car. A nice one.
“Which brings me to the second matter,” Judith said stiffly.
Here it comes.
“I had our lawyers change both of your trust funds last week. There will be no more disbursements to you or your daughter for any reason until the conditions of your father’s will are met.”
What had Judith bullied Father into writing into his will now? “What conditions, Mother?”
“Makayla must be enrolled in an educational institution befitting the family’s standing, and her primary residence must be within reasonable visiting distance of her grandparents while we can still know her.
If these aren’t met, your trust funds will be dissolved and you’ll forfeit any right to the contents of them. Permanently.”
Her parents hadn’t shown a single second of interest in Makayla until she’d become useful as a tool to manipulate and coerce Tessa.
“You’re using my child—your only grandchild—as leverage to get what you want? With no regard for what I want, let alone what Makayla wants?”
“Children don’t know what they want. It’s up to parents to tell their children what’s best for them.”
And that was why—blessedly—she was nothing like her mother as a parent.
“As it so happens, I am an adult, and it’s no longer your prerogative to tell me what’s best for me. Or for my daughter, for that matter.”
Icy silence echoed in her ear.
Tessa let the silence build. Judith, who’d taught Tessa never to fill a silence in a negotiation, didn’t break it either.
Eventually, surprisingly, her mother huffed and broke the stalemate.
“Tessa. I am not your enemy in this. Your father and I want to know our grandchild. The academy is outstanding. The funds to pay for it are real. Your daughter has an extraordinary talent, and you’re letting her run barefoot through manure on a run-down farm in the middle of nowhere.
You’re wasting her future and yours, and I don’t pretend to understand why. ”
“Maybe because no one in my family ever asked me what I wanted or asked Makayla what she wants.”
Her mother gave a small, polite laugh that had nothing to do with humor.
“Don’t be dramatic, dear. We’re not asking you what you want, now.
I’m simply telling you what’s on the table.
I need your decision by Friday so the deposit can be made.
The trust resumes the day Makayla starts at Whitmore.
Otherwise, you’re both on your own. For good. ”
“Mother—”
“I have to go. The car is waiting downstairs. We’ll speak before Friday.” She hung up.
Tessa set the phone down beside her coffee, which had gone cold, but not nearly as cold as Judith Northcott.
Tessa thought, with the strange clarity that came after a punishing body blow, That was professionally done.
Her mother had moved every piece on the board before placing the call.
A short deadline. The slot already secured.
The money transfers already stopped. The trust language already changed and tightened.
Tessa had been brought into the chess game after every decision had been made for her.
She’d grown up both hating and admiring the precision of her mother’s surgically controlling thumb, and she felt that again, now.
But something else was beginning to rise in her chest, too, and she didn’t have time to name it or deal with it.
She needed to feed the animals, call Reno, and sit down with her checkbook and figure out exactly how long the Fashion Bow-tique and the wedding gown business and her current bank account could keep this farm afloat without the checks from her grandfather.
The math was not going to be friendly. She knew that without doing it.
She considered asking Dillon for advice. That was, in itself, evidence that something major had shifted in their relationship.
Behind her, the screen door opened and Makayla stepped onto the porch.
“Why are you crying, Mom?”
Tessa hadn’t realized she was. She put her hand to her cheek and wiped away the moisture she hadn’t realized was there.
“How much of that did you hear, Mak?”
“All of it,” Makayla said matter-of-factly. “Was that Grandmother?”
“Yes.”
“I figured. You only sit like that with her.”
“Like what?”
“Like the chair is electric.”
Tessa looked down. She was gripping the arms of the wicker chair hard enough that her knuckles had gone white. She made herself unclench her hands finger by finger.
“She wants me to go to the fancy music school, doesn’t she? The one in Connecticut.”
“Yes.”
A pause while Makayla rubbed Brown Dog’s ears.
“Whitmore, right?”
Tessa looked at her sharply. “How do you know that name?”
“Mr. Cohen showed me a brochure from there last year. He said I should show it to you. I didn’t because you would’ve made me apply.”
Tessa winced, because that was true. She would’ve called it being supportive back then. But now, she could see she’d been treating Makayla the same way Judith had treated her as a child. The way she’d hated so much back then.
“I’m sorry,” Tessa blurted.
“For what?”
“For being someone you couldn’t tell.”
Makayla studied her for a long moment. “I love violin, Mom. I really do. But I love it here, too. I love Murphy, and Arlo and Brownie, and all the animals here. I don’t want to go to a school where I have to live in a dorm and play other people’s music all day.”
“Other people’s music?”
A pause. Makayla’s gaze slid away from her. “You know—classical music. Bach, Brahms, the test pieces. They’re beautiful. But . . .” Makayla shrugged. “There’s other music, too. Stuff that feels different.”
“Different how?”
“Like the music is happy I’m playing it.”