Boone might as well have slept in a war zone. Deep lines around his eyes. Shoulders coiled tight. Teacher meeting mood. Single dad under pressure mood.Don’t talk to me, Silasmood.
And Caleb?
Caleb glared at me. Grumpy, broody, muttering into his coffee.
I run a hand through my hair and exhale loudly into the silence.
“Great. Cool. Awesome. Love this for us.”
The problem is… I don’t do quiet.
Quiet feels punishing.
Growing up, silence meant things were about to go bad. Dad storming through the house after a business deal fell through. Mom packing her bags in complete silence before leaving for a “retreat” that lasted three months. The quiet after a fight. The quiet before another one.
She moved away when I was ten.
That day, she was wearing a silk blouse and sunglasses inside, phone wedged between shoulder and cheek, telling someone in the city she’d be “back and forth” for a while. She kissed my forehead, and then the car took her away to a new life full of champagne flutes and charity galas and people who didn’t smell of hay.
Silence after that hurt worse than yelling ever had.
So I learned fast: if you keep people laughing, they don’t leave. Or at least, when they do, you get to pretend it doesn’t bother you.
I’ve spent my whole damn adult life filling silence. With jokes. With noise. With flirting. With parties and events and big ideas.
But this?
This heavy, miserable, tension-ridden quiet?
I can’t fix that with a joke.
I’ve tried.
Boone didn’t laugh at my “Welcome to the Ranch Scandal Tour” bit.
Caleb didn’t crack a smile when I offered to sage the house.
Delaney didn’t react at all when I told her Pickle had unfriended Dottie on Facebook.
Nothing.
Nada.
Crickets.
Which means I need to stop joking and actually do something.
Someone has to pull us out of this spiral. And if there’s one thing I’m good at, besides aimless havoc, handsome mischief, and a questionable ability to parallel park, it’s throwing a Hail Mary.
I set down my coffee, grab my phone, and scroll past the new notification badges on Facebook… nope, not touching those with a ten-foot cattle prod.
My thumb hesitates over the contact I’m looking for.
Mom.
Julia Grant. Socialite, charity darling, woman whose outfits got more coverage than most political scandals. She was born a Westbrook, married into money, then married into more money. Reinvented herself so many times I lost track.
To me, she’s just… Mom. The woman who left, and also the woman I call when everything is going sideways.
