What I do owe is protection—to the farm, to my family, to the fragile chance we’ve clawed out of debt.
My phone buzzes with a new message from Tricia.
When will you be here?
Should I start coffee or wine?
I stare at the screen until the letters blur. Then I type:
I’m not coming tonight.
Dots appear. Vanish. Reappear.
Everything okay?
I don’t answer fast enough. The phone rings. Her name lights the screen.
I swipe to accept. “Hey.”
“Hey?” she echoes, voice bright with confusion. “What’s going on?”
I blow out a breath. “Karen happened.”
There’s a beat of silence. “What do you mean?”
“She posted a picture. Of us. Kissing. Said some garbage about the patch being a brothel.”
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.” She exhales hard. “That woman needs a life.”
“It’s not funny, Tricia.”
“I’m not laughing,” she says. “It sucks, yes, but it doesn’t have to be a big deal. We can?—”
“It’s already a big deal.” I pace the floor, hand pressed to the back of my neck. “This is exactly what I was trying to avoid. The gossip, the talk, the questions about my judgment.”
“Your judgment?” Her voice sharpens. “You meanme.”
“That’s not what I?—”
“Sure sounds like it.”
I close my eyes. “Tricia, please. You know what’s at stake. One wrong headline, one sponsor backing out, and we’re done. The bank will call the loan and?—”
“So your solution is to stop seeing me.”
Silence. The longest, loudest silence I’ve ever heard.
Finally I say, “For now. We can’t be together. Not right now.”
“I see,” she says, her voice brittle and quiet. “Are you firing me too?”
“What? No, of course not?—”
The line clicks dead before I can finish.
I stand there, phone still to my ear, listening to the empty static that follows a goodbye someone didn’t say.
Pumpkin pads over, nudging my knee with his nose, sensing what I can’t admit aloud. I drop into a crouch, hand in his fur, the weight of it grounding and useless all at once.
