I sat on the porch until the stars came out, and I thought about a woman in a small house with a porch light on and a kid who stirred pancake batter like the fate of the world depended on it.
I thought about fence posts and yearlings and a breeding program that had my father's blessing and my sister's fire and my name on it.
I thought about onion powder and Charlotte's Web and the way she'd fallen asleep against me like she'd been looking for that exact spot her whole life.
I fell asleep in my own bed for the first time in my life, wishing I wasn't in it. But my phone was on the pillow next to me like I was seventeen, and that was probably all anyone needed to know.
Chapter 12
Callie
Something had shifted, and the whole town knew it.
I walked into Dottie's Diner on Tuesday morning, and the Book Club Coven tracked me from the door to the counter like I was the season finale of their favorite show.
"Morning, Callie," June Parker said. Butter wouldn't melt. "How's Clay doing?"
"Fine, I imagine."
"You imagine." Clara Mae's eyebrows did something architectural.
I ordered my tea and took Maisie to our usual booth and pretended I couldn't feel six pairs of eyes cataloguing my expression for signs of a woman who'd recently been kissed until she forgot her own postcode.
Maisie was oblivious to the surveillance operation. She was drawing Starlight on the back of her placemat and narrating to nobody in particular. "And this is Clay teaching her to be brave because sometimes horses get scared, but Clay says that's okay because even cowboys get scared —"
I listened to my daughter talk about this man the way she talked about the weather. Factual. Permanent. A feature of her world so established she'd stopped noticing it was new.
I'd caught myself humming at the kitchen sink that morning. I didn't hum. I was not a humming person. But there I'd been, and Maisie had looked up from her cereal and said, with the devastating clarity of a five-year-old:
"Mommy, you'rehappy."
She said it like it was new. Like she'd never seen it before.
Maybe she hadn't.
It reached me on Thursday.
"I'm going to tell you something," Bev said, setting tea on my desk at ten past nine, "because I'd rather you hear it from me."
My stomach dropped.
"Amber Dawson was all over Clay at Cooper's General this week. Touching his arm, talking about their history. You wouldn't know her — she's been in Austin. She's back, and she made sure half the store saw."
I kept my face still. My jaw locked. My hands went flat on the desk — a position I'd perfected over years of Dallas dinner parties.
"Okay," I said.
Bev watched me. "You want the rest, or are you going to sit there metabolizing that with your jaw wired shut?"
"I'm fine."
"You're performing. There's a difference."
Bev sat on the edge of my desk.
"He told her no. Publicly. Removed her hand from his arm, polite as Sunday church, clear as glass. Mrs. Cooper said he looked her dead in the eye and said, 'That man's not available anymore.' She said he wasn't mean about it. Just done." She paused. "Clara Mae was there. She had a bag of birdseed anda front-row seat. Her exact quote to me was: 'That boy shut it down like a screen door in a hurricane.'"
She squeezed my hand once. Held my gaze.
