I sip my coffee, letting the heat burn a path down my throat, buying myself half a second. Might as well get it over with. She’s going to know sooner or later.
“Had a situation last night,” I say finally. “On the drive.”
Her hands still in the dough. “What kind of situation?”
The question is sharp. Too many years of being the first one called when a calf goes through a fence or a truck goes off the road.
“Nobody’s dead,” I say quickly. “Start there.”
She exhales. “That’s a start I like. Go on.”
I lean back against the counter, mug cradled in both hands, the picture of casual if you don’t look too close. “About eleven, maybe a little after, I’m on the porch. See headlights come off the highway too fast. Hear them hit the bend wrong.”
Mom’s eyes close, lips moving in a silent prayer. When she looks at me again, they’re sharper. “You went down?”
“Yeah. Navy pickup in the ditch, steam from under the hood.” I hesitate, watching her face. “Driver’s fine. Shaken, but fine.”
“Who?” she demands. “Some idiot from town? One of Hank Lawson’s workers?” Her mouth tightens. “If it’s them, I swear I’m calling the sheriff myself this time.”
“It wasn’t a Lawson,” I say. “It was… Faith.”
The dough forgets it’s supposed to be dough and turns into a weapon under her hands. She slams it once against the counter, flour leaping.
“Faith Ross?” she repeats. “As in Caroline’s girl. As in?—”
“As in the one who used to live at this stove during high school, yeah,” I say. “That Faith.”
Mom stares at me, hands planted on the counter now, fingers buried in sticky dough.
“What is that girl doing driving out here in the middle of the night?” Her gaze flicks down the hall, toward the bedrooms. “And where is she now?”
“In the guest room,” I say. “Sleeping. She was half frozen, Ma. I couldn’t exactly send her back out on the highway.”
Mom’s jaw works. I can see the warring impulses behind her eyes as clear as if she spoke them. The one that wants to say,You did what?and the one that’s had a few years to learn the hard way that pushing too hard with your grown kids only drives them further.
She learned that lesson with Boone and Rose. That whole mess sanded her sharp edges down a notch.
“I see,” she says slowly. “So she… what? Comes by to wish us a Merry Christmas, gets lost in the ditch, and you scooped her up? That seems unlikely.”
“She didn’t exactly plan it,” I say. “Long story short? She ran away from her wedding.”
Mom’s eyebrows damn near take off for the ceiling. “Come again?”
I take another sip of coffee, letting the heat give my hands something to do. “She was supposed to get married in the city yesterday. Had some kind of meltdown in the bridal suite. Left. Drove for here. Hit the ditch out front. That’s the short version. She’s still half in shock when I got her in the house.”
“Well,” Mom says finally. “That’s dramatic.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s one word for it.”
She turns back to the dough, kneading with more focus than necessary. “Did she say why?”
“Some.” I shrug. “Doesn’t love the guy, doesn’t love the life. Says she feels like a… I don’t know. An accessory in her dad’s world. Job she hates, man he chose, wedding she didn’t want. Panic attack, bolt, ditch.”
Mom makes a low noise in her throat, half sympathetic, half disapproving. “William Ross always did have a way of swallowing up everyone around him.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “He did.”
The kitchen fills with the ghosts of conversations long past. William at this very table, talking big talk about investments and expansion and “modernizing Buckhorn.” Dad listening politely, letting it all roll off him. Faith on the porch afterward, her hands tight around a mug of cocoa, telling me she’s proud of him, even when her voice shakes.
