"I made tea."
She picked up the mug. Came outside. I was on the porch sofa, and she didn't hesitate — she curled into me, tucked her legs underneath her, pressed her back against my chest like she'd been doing it for years. I put my arm around her, and she settled into it, both hands wrapped around the mug, her head fitting right below my jaw. We drank in silence while the yard filled with early light — birds starting up in the pecan tree, the distant hum of someone's sprinkler kicking on. I felt her body soften against mine, one degree at a time. The tension in her shoulders loosening. Her breathing slowing until it matched mine. She wasn't fragile. Her jaw was set. But she let herself lean into me like she'd decided, just for this morning, she didn't have to hold herself up. And I held her like I had nowhere else to be. Because I didn't.
This wasn't the woman who'd driven into Copper Creek with garbage bags in the trunk. This was the woman who'd unpacked them.
"He doesn't get to have this," she said finally. Quiet. Not to me — to the street, to the morning, to whatever version of herselfneeded to hear it. "The office, the cottage, this town, you. He doesn't get to walk in here and dismantle what I built."
I put my arm around her. Pulled her against my side. She fit the way she always did — like my body had been waiting my whole life to learn her shape.
"Then we fight," I said.
"We fight."
She pressed her face against my chest. The morning was cold and the coffee was hot and the porch light was still on from last night because neither of us had turned it off.
We stood there until the sun was fully up and the tea was gone and Maisie's voice came floating from the bedroom — "Mommy, can Clay make the eggs?" — and Callie laughed. Once. Quiet.
Then we went inside, made the eggs, and started the war.
Chapter 17
Callie
Maisie kicked her shoes off at the front door.
Not took them off. Kicked them. One bounced off the wall and left a scuff mark on the paint. The other landed upside down on the mat, laces splayed. Her stuffed horse was under one arm, overnight bag dragging behind her on the floor, and she walked past me without a word and went straight to her room.
The door didn't slam. It closed. Carefully, deliberately — the way I'd taught her to close doors, the way she'd watched me do it a thousand times in Dallas when what I wanted was to slam but what I could afford was quiet. My five-year-old was managing her own rage with the precision of a woman three decades older.
"Maisie." I followed her down the hall. "Baby, talk to me."
Silence from behind the door.
"Maisie, can I come in?"
"I don't want to talk!”
I stood in the hallway with my hand on the doorframe. Breathed. Counted to five the way the therapist I'd seen once in Dallas told me to — the therapist Preston said was unnecessary,the one I'd stopped going to because the cost of the appointment was less than the cost of the argument about the appointment.
I opened the door slowly. Maisie was on her bed, face down, horse crushed against her chest. Not crying. Beyond crying. She was vibrating with something too big for her body to hold.
I sat on the edge of the bed. Put my hand on her back. Waited.
It came out in fragments. Not a story — an eruption.
"Daddy says we'd all be happier in Dallas." Her voice was muffled by the pillow. "He says you're being selfish. He says Clay isn't my family."
She rolled over. Her face was red and furious and heartbreakingly confused.
"He says I should tell the judge I want to live with him."
I absorbed them the way I'd learned to absorb blows — face still, voice even, hands steady on her back.
"What judge, baby?"
"I don’t know!” She sat up. Horse clutched in both fists. "He said a judge is going to ask me questions and I should tell the truth, and the truth is that Dallas is my home." Her chin was trembling. "Mommy, is Copper Creek not my home?"
"Copper Creek is your home, baby. This is your home."
