Not tonight.
“You don’t know what you’re saying.” His voice dropped low, controlled—the courtroom voice, the one designed to make witnesses second-guess themselves. The one that used to make me fold like a bad poker hand.
But something had shifted in me. Maybe it was watching Doc shrink into his chair. Maybe it was the memory of Diego’s hands on my skin, asking me what I really wanted. Maybe it was exhaustion from carrying everyone else’s expectations for so long that my own had gotten lost somewhere along the interstate between here and Chicago.
I pushed myself up from the arm of Doc’s recliner, my hands hanging loose at my sides. No fists. No defensive crossing of arms. Just me, standing in my grandfather’s living room in rumpled jeans and a tank top, probably looking every bit as ravished as I had been, and not one bit ashamed of it.
“I know exactly what I’m saying.” Each word dropped clear and deliberate into the space between us. “I hate law.”
My mother’s intake of breath was sharp enough to cut.
“I hated law school. I’ve hated every single thing I’ve done to try to make you happy, and I’m done living my life for you.”
The confession tasted like copper and freedom. Like the first breath after being underwater too long. My father’s jaw worked, but for once, Edgar Holliday, Esquire, seemed to have no immediate rebuttal.
“That’s ridiculous,” my mother finally managed. “After everything we’ve invested?—”
“Invested.” I let the word sit there, ugly and transactional. “That’s all it’s ever been to you, isn’t it? An investment. Notmy happiness. Not what I want. Just the return on your investment.”
Doc shifted in his chair, and I caught the ghost of something in his expression—recognition, perhaps. Understanding. The look of someone who’d stood at this same crossroads and chosen the path my parents couldn’t comprehend.
“I love Huckleberry Creek.” The truth of it spread warm through my chest. “And I don’t want to leave.”
The silence that followed felt like the pause between lightning and thunder. My mother’s mouth opened and closed twice before she found words.
“You’re throwing away everything. Your education, your career, your future?—”
“My future?” I almost laughed. “You mean your future. The one you mapped out before I could even spell ‘jurisprudence.’ The one where I bill eighty hours a week and die at my desk before I’m fifty, all so you can tell your country club friends about your daughter the partner at Hadley-Ross?”
My father stood, straightening his tie with mechanical precision. “We’ll discuss this when you’ve had time to think more clearly. You’re obviously overwhelmed by your grandfather’s situation?—”
“Don’t.” The sharpness in my voice surprised even me. “Don’t you dare use Doc’s health as an excuse for why I’m finally telling you the truth.”
They gathered their things in brittle silence, my mother clutching her purse like armor, my father sliding the folder back into his briefcase with the careful movements of someone handling live explosives.
At the door, my father turned back, his hand on the brass knob Doc had installed thirty years ago. The porch light carved shadows under his eyes, making him appear older than his fifty-two years.
“I hope you understand what you’re doing, Gillian.” His voice carried the particular weight of disappointment he’d perfected over decades of practice. “Throwing away everything we’ve worked for, everything you’ve accomplished, for what? To waste your life in this—” He paused, searching for the word that would cut deepest. “—dive?”
The word hung in the air like a physical thing. Not merely an insult to four walls and a liquor license, but to every night Doc had stayed late to listen to someone’s troubles, every celebration he’d hosted, every life that had intersected within those walls. To the place where half this town had their first legal drink, where marriage proposals happened on random Tuesdays, where people came not only for beer but for belonging.
My mother’s heels clicked against the hardwood as she moved to stand beside him, their united front as practiced as a synchronized swim routine.
“Your grandfather’s choices were his own mistakes to make.” Each of her words was precise as a scalpel. “But you still have time to?—”
“Stop.” The word came out raw, scraping past the tightness in my throat. I moved between them and Doc, my feet quiet on the worn boards. “Just stop.”
Something shifted in my chest, hot and bright as a struck match. All those years of swallowing their judgments, their casual dismissals of this place, of Doc’s life—it all crystallized into perfect clarity.
“That bar isn’t a dive. It’s not a mistake or a step down or whatever other poison you want to dress it up as.” My voice gained strength with each word, pulling from some well I didn’t know I had. “It’s a cornerstone of this community. It’s where people celebrate and grieve and connect. Where they matter to someone.”
I thought of Diego behind that bar last night, laughing with customers we’d known since high school. Of Lucy bringing Liam in for lunch after T-ball practice. Of the widower who came every Thursday for one beer and stayed for three hours of conversation.
“This isn’t a failure.” The words came clear and certain now, rising from somewhere deeper than thought. “This is a life. A real one. With real people who actually give a damn about each other. And I won’t let you belittle it—or him—anymore.”
The silence that followed felt like the moment after glass breaks, when everyone’s waiting to see if anyone got cut. Even the crickets outside seemed to hold their breath. The air in the living room went thick and brittle, like it might shatter if anyone moved too fast.
My mother’s face had gone pale beneath her perfect makeup, two spots of color high on her cheekbones the only sign she’d heard me at all. My father’s jaw worked, the muscle jumping beneath skin that had gone tight with controlled fury.
