Maggie put her napkin over her mouth. Jack had given up entirely — his forehead was on the table.
"Can five-year-olds press charges?" Sophia asked, her face perfectly straight.
Maisie considered this. "Mommy's a pair-a-legal. She would know how."
"Paralegal," I said for the thousandth time.
"And I told Mrs. Davies that Oliver needs to apologize in writing." She picked up her fork again, the matter closed. "The written word is binding. Clay told me that."
Every head at the table turned to Clay.
"I may have said something about contracts," he said. "In the context of horse sales. She... adapted it."
"You created a monster," Maggie said.
"I’m gonna be a pair-a-legal like Mommy," Maisie corrected, and Louisa laughed — the kind of laugh that takes over your whole body, that makes you grip the table and tip your head back, the kind I'd never heard at a Dallas dinner table because laughter like that required people who weren't performing.
Owen carved the roast. Wyatt finally got his bread. Maggie and Jack went back to their reining-versus-cutting argument, comfortable and circular and weeks old. And Maisie moved on to informing Hunter — quiet Hunter, who'd been eating steadily at the far end — that Sully needed a bath because he smelled like "the inside of a boot" and she would be supervising.
Hunter looked at her. Looked at Clay. Went back to his potatoes.
After dinner, Louisa appeared beside me at the sink. She didn't speak. She took the plate from my hands, dried it herself, and squeezed my hand once — quick, firm, both of hers around mine. Then she moved on to the next plate.
Nothing said. Everything communicated.
We stayed late. Maisie fell asleep on the couch with her head in Sophia's lap and her boots still on. Clay carried her upstairs to the room that had somehow become ours — second door on the left, quilt that smelled like lavender.
I tucked Maisie in. Kissed her forehead. Stood in the doorway watching her breathe — the nightly inventory, confirming she was here, she was safe, she was mine.
Then I went to get ready for bed.
Clay's bathroom. I opened the cabinet for toothpaste, and my hand stopped mid-reach.
My toothbrush. In the holder. The ceramic holder next to the sink that held Clay's toothbrush and a razor and nothing else. My toothbrush — the blue one I'd left balanced on the edge of the sink last time — was standing upright. Next to his. Like it belonged there.
Preston had a master bathroom the size of my cottage. Double vanity. Marble counters. His side and — technically — my side. Except my side was a drawer. My things lived in a drawer because the counter was "his space" and my products "cluttered the aesthetic," and after a while, I stopped noticingthat I'd been assigned to a drawer in my own bathroom because that's what living with Preston did — it made the unacceptable so gradual you forgot what acceptable looked like.
Clay put my toothbrush in the holder.
He hadn't mentioned it. Hadn't made a speech. He'd just seen a toothbrush on the edge of a sink and put it where toothbrushes go — next to his, because that's where it belonged — and gone about his day.
I pressed my hand to my mouth. Breathed in through my nose.
It shouldn't have made my eyes sting.
I brushed my teeth. Put the toothbrush back. Turned out the light.
Tuesday night. Bedtime routine. The cottage.
Maisie was in her pajamas with her horse tucked under one arm and her other hand wrapped around mine while I read the last page ofFrog and Toad Are Friends.She'd been quiet through the whole book — not the bad quiet, just the thinking quiet. I could practically hear the gears.
I closed the book. Kissed her forehead. Pulled the blanket up.
"Mommy?"
"Yeah, baby."
She looked at me with those huge blue eyes. Steady. Serious. Five going on forty-five. "Is Clay going to be my daddy?"
