She opened her mouth. Closed it. Her fingers tightened on the door frame — knuckles whitening for a beat — and then released. She shook her head once, a small motion, almost to herself.
"Nothing. Goodnight."
She drove away. Taillights down the Blackwood drive, turning onto the county road, disappearing into the dusk.
I stood in the yard with the ghost of her fingers on the back of my neck and the knowledge that everything between us was different now. She was going to pretend it wasn't. I understood that. Understood why.
Momma was still on the porch when I came up the steps. She had a glass of tea and the expression of a woman exercising heroic restraint.
"Don't," I said.
"I'm just sitting here."
"You're sitting here with intent."
"I'm always sitting with intent. It's called having a functioning brain." She took a sip. "Good ride?"
"Yeah, Momma. Good ride."
She patted the chair beside her. I sat down, stretched my legs out, and touched the back of my neck where her fingers had been. I could still feel the pressure of them. Or I was imagining it. I couldn't tell anymore.
We watched the sky go purple, the first stars appearing over the ridge.
Momma reached over and squeezed my hand once. Quick. The kind of touch that said everything without words.
Then she stood, collected her glass, and went inside.
I stayed on the porch until it was dark. The horses shifted in the pasture. The wind carried something sweet from the kitchen — leftover cookies, Maisie's baking station, the evidence of an afternoon my mother had engineered with the precision of a military campaign.
Something had started. I wasn't ready to name it.
But I sat with it. And that was enough.
Chapter 8
Callie
I had a plan.
The plan was simple, airtight, and color-coded in the notebook I kept in my nightstand drawer — the one with the tabs and the index and the escape spreadsheets from two years ago that I'd never thrown away because you didn't throw away spreadsheets. Spreadsheets were evidence of survival. Spreadsheets were proof that you'd once been organized enough to leave a man with a senator for a father and a legal team the size of a small army, and if you'd been organized enough for that, you could certainly be organized enough for this.
The plan was: pretend the kiss didn't happen.
Not deny it. Denying implied something existed to deny. I was going for erasure. Full administrative deletion. The emotional equivalent of Preston's desktop cleanup, except I was doing it to myself and I was doing it on purpose, which made it strategic rather than cruel. At least that's what I told myself at six a.m. Monday morning, while I stood at the kitchen counterholding a cup of tea I'd forgotten to drink and staring at the wall above the stove where Maisie had taped her latest drawing.
The drawing was of two horses. One was Rosie. The other was Starlight. Between them, holding their reins, was a very tall stick figure in a cowboy hat.
There was a heart above his head. Pink crayon. Emphatic.
"Maisie."
She appeared in the kitchen doorway with toothpaste on her chin and one sock. "Yes?"
"When did you draw this?"
"Yesterday. At Miss Lou's house. While the cookies were in the oven." She climbed onto her chair with the confidence of a woman ascending a throne. "Miss Lou helped me with the star on Starlight's head. She said Clay would love it."
"Did she."
