"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.
Not directly. Copper Creek was too polite for direct stares. But I felt it — the sidelong glances, the conversations that paused as I pulled up, the particular energy of a small town assessing a new arrival. I'd been here three weeks and I was still a headline. The blonde from Dallas. The single mom who worked for Savannah Tate. The woman who showed up at the Blackwood party with a little girl in pink boots.
Maisie exploded out of the school doors like she'd been spring-loaded.
"Mommy! Mommy, guess what!"
She was in the car before I could answer, buckle forgotten, backpack launched onto the floor, already talking at a velocity that would've made an auctioneer dizzy.
"I told my whole class about Clay and the horses and the ranch, and Emma said her daddy has horses too, but I said Clay's horses are better because they're champion horses and Clay is a champion —"
"Buckle, baby."
She buckled without pausing for breath.
"— and then Mrs. Rodriguez said we're doing a project about community helpers and I said Clay is a community helper because he helps horses and she said that's not really what she meant, but I think it is because horses are part of the community —"
"Maisie."
"— and when are we going back to the ranch? Clay promised me riding lessons. He pinky promised, and a pinky promise is a real promise, Mommy. You can't break a pinky promise. It's the law."
