Chapter 2
Callie
I was early. I was always early.
Not because I was eager — although I was, quietly, in a way I didn't let myself examine too closely.
I was early because Preston used to punish lateness with silence.
Three minutes late to dinner, and he wouldn't speak to me for two hours.
Five minutes late to a gala and the drive home would be a masterclass in controlled disappointment — the sigh, the head shake, the "I just don't understand why it's so hard for you to be where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be there, Callie.
" He never yelled. Yelling would have been easier.
Yelling was obvious. What Preston did was quieter.
He made you feel like the problem was yours — your weakness, your failure. And after six years, I believed him.
So I was early. Fifteen minutes early. Always. The habit was scar tissue, and scar tissue didn’t know the wound was healed.
The Tate & Hollis satellite office was a converted storefront on Main Street with big windows, old wood floors, and exactly enough room for three desks, a filing cabinet, and a ficus that was already dying because nobody in this building had any idea how often to water a ficus.
I'd watered it twice since Monday. I suspected Theo had been giving it coffee.
But it was mine.
I'd arranged the desks myself — mine by the window, Bev's by the door, Theo's in the back where he could monitor foot traffic and gossip in equal measure.
I'd chosen the plants. I'd picked the mugs for the tiny kitchen — mismatched, colorful, the kind of mugs that made a space feel lived in instead of staged.
I'd negotiated my hours with Savannah before I took the job: school drop-off to school pickup, with occasional exceptions when I could arrange a sitter.
Savannah hadn't blinked.
"You're a single mom, Cal. We'll make it work."
Nine words. Nine words that rearranged something in me because here was a woman who treated my life like something to build around. Like it mattered.
I made my tea. Not coffee — never coffee.
The smell still made me seize up like some sadistic Pavlovian response.
Dark roast and I was back in the Dallas kitchen, reading Preston's mood from the angle of his jaw before I'd even said good morning.
Some mornings I'd stand at the counter with the coffee maker going and my whole body would lock up — hands frozen, lungs tight, a full-body flinch at a smell.
The first week here, Bev had made a pot before I arrived, and I'd walked in and stopped in the doorway like I'd hit glass.
Just stood there. Couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't explain why the smell of Folgers in a Copper Creek storefront had turned me into a statue.
Bev had taken one look at my face, poured the pot down the sink, and said, "I'm more of a tea person anyway.
" She wasn't. But she never made coffee in the office again.
Bev arrived at eight-fifteen with a breakfast taco and the kind of warmth that made you feel like you'd known her your whole life.
She was fifty-something, divorced, and ran the office with warmth disguised as efficiency.
Reading glasses on a chain around her neck, sensible shoes, and a memory like a steel trap.
She'd been office manager since Levi Hollis opened the satellite branch, and she ran the place the way I suspected she ran her household — with zero tolerance for nonsense and a heart as big as Texas.
She took one look around — the plants, the mugs, the rearranged desks — and declared it "almost human."
"It needs art," she said, setting the taco on my desk. "Something with color. This place looks like a dental office."
"I was going to get a print —"
"Not a print. Art. I'll bring something tomorrow."
I knew it’d be hand-painted and slightly too large for the wall. She would hang it without asking, and it would be perfect, and I would let her because Bev operated on a frequency I was still learning to tune into — the frequency of women who help by doing, not asking.
Theo arrived at eight-twenty-two, which for Theo was practically dawn.
He was twenty-three, gay, recently graduated, the junior paralegal whose enthusiasm outpaced his experience by a factor of ten.
He came through the door already talking — laptop bag swinging, travel mug sloshing, cheeks flushed from either the walk or the conversation he was having with himself.
"Good morning, good morning, I have news."
"It's Monday, Theo," Bev said. "Nothing newsworthy has happened since Friday."
"Wrong. Have either of you seen the Pbr championship coverage? Because Clay Blackwood won the whole thing and the internet is losing its mind. I’ve been stalking his Instagram since six a.m. and I need to talk about it.
" He dropped his bag on his desk and turned to me with an expression of profound devastation. "Callie. Have you seen Clay Blackwood?"
My mouth twitched. "I was at his victory party this weekend, actually."
Theo's mouth fell open. Bev looked up from her taco.
"You were there? There at the Blackwood Ranch? At the party? And you didn't lead with this information? Is this your way of saying you hate me?”
I chuckled. “No, I don’t hate you, Theo.” I took a sip of my tea. “You literally just walked through the door and didn't give me much time to lead with anything.”
“Whatever.” He leaned against my desk, fanning himself.
“That man should be illegal. The shoulders alone should require a permit.
And Savannah says he's nice. He's nice and he's tall and he's got that voice — you know the voice, the low Texas drawl that makes you feel like you're the only person in the —"
"Down, boy," Bev said, not looking up from her taco.
"I'm just stating facts, Beverly."
She snorted. ”You're stating fantasies. There's a difference."
"He's charming," I said. "I'll give him that. Beat him at cornhole, though."
Theo's eyes went wide. Bev's went wider.
"You played cornhole with Clay Blackwood," Theo said, in a tone that suggested I'd casually mentioned having tea with the Pope. "And you won ?"
"Savannah and I destroyed them. Her husband, Weston, demanded a rematch.” The memory of Clay’s stunned expression had me smiling to myself.
"And you're sitting here talking about the Mercer files like this isn't the most important event that's happened in this office since we opened?" He turned to Bev. “Bev, are you hearing this?"
"I'm hearing it, Theo. I'm choosing not to engage."
I laughed and opened the Mercer folder. "Can we work now?"
Theo raised both hands in surrender and retreated to his desk, but I knew he was filing it away. Theo filed everything. He was terrible at being subtle about it, but he filed it.
Bev watched my face for one more beat, then went back to her breakfast. She didn't say a word. She didn't need to.
I lost myself in work for the next three hours, and it felt like breathing.
This was who I was when the noise stopped. When the performance ended and the measuring eyes weren't watching and nobody was keeping score. Organized, sharp, thorough — the version of myself I'd packed away in Dallas like a winter coat I wasn't allowed to wear.
I prepped case files with color-coded tabs and margin notes.
I coordinated with Savannah on the Wild Creek caseload — a property dispute, a small business contract, the Mercer custody case that needed depositions scheduled by Friday.
When a walk-in came through — a rancher in his sixties, hat in hand, confused about a fence-line easement — I sat him down, made him tea, and walked him through his options with the kind of patience that made complicated things feel simple.
His name was Dale Hutchins. He'd been arguing with his neighbor about a property line for eleven years and had never once consulted a lawyer because "that's not how we do things out here.
" But the neighbor had consulted a lawyer, and now Dale was holding a certified letter he couldn't make sense of and looking at me like I might be the last reasonable person left in the world.
I translated the letter into English. Showed him the county plat map. Explained his options. He left thirty minutes later, looking less worried than when he walked in, shaking my hand at the door and saying, "You tell Savannah she hired a good one."
The satisfaction of that — of being competent, of solving a problem that had nothing to do with how I looked or who I used to be married to — settled through me like warmth.
"You're good at this," Bev said from her desk. Not surprised. Just noting it.
I'd always been good at it. Even at the Dallas firm, before Preston, I'd been the paralegal that attorneys requested by name. The one who caught the detail that saved the case. The one who could read a deposition transcript and find the lie in twelve minutes.
I was supposed to be even better.
The thought slipped in sideways — uninvited, persistent.
I was supposed to be the one with the degree on the wall.
The one making the arguments, not organizing them.
I'd had the scores, the grades, the recommendation letters.
A folder on my laptop deleted three years into my marriage because keeping it felt like keeping a love letter from someone who'd died.
I shut it down. Opened the next file.
I had a job. I had a town. I had a daughter who was safe and bosses who respected my hours and an office that was becoming mine one mismatched mug at a time.
That was enough. It had to be enough.
The school pickup line was seven cars deep, and every single driver was looking at me.