I sit in a parking lot and stare at my phone for twenty minutes trying to figure out what to say to my daughter.
I text Presley at noon:
I'm in Sharp. I know you're at the ranch. Can we talk?
Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.
I'm working.
It takes me half a second to shoot a response off to her:
After work?
A long pause.
Long enough that I set the phone on the motel bed and go back to the list I'm making—things I need if I'm going to set up a salon, things I need if I'm going to live in Sharp, things I need if I'm going to survive being in the same zip code as Harlan Lyle without losing myself in him again.
The phone buzzes.
Fine. Diner at 6.
Not the ranch.
She's not inviting me onto Lyle property.
She wants neutral ground. I would too, if I were her.
The afternoon stretches.
I call the number on the FOR LEASE sign and leave a message.
I drive to the grocery store and buy the basics. Toothbrush, deodorant, a change of clothes that doesn't look like I packed in seven minutes during a panic attack, which I did.
I find a rental listing for a small house on the south side of town—two bedrooms, month-to-month lease, available immediately.
I call and take it, sight unseen, because I need a mailing address and a kitchen and a door that locks and a space where I can fall apart in private when I need to.
I do not drive past my mother's house, The Dusty Spur, or anywhere near the ranch.
At five-thirty I park at the diner and sit in my car for ten minutes, trying to figure out what to say to a daughter who is angry enough to apply for a summer internship on her biological father's ranch without telling her mother, but not angry enough to refuse dinner.
Presley walks in at six on the dot.
She's dusty. Work boots, jeans, a Sharp Shooter Ranch t-shirt that she's wearing like armor.
Or, almost like she wants me to see it, wants me to know where she's been and who she belongs to now.
Her red hair is pulled back in a ponytail and her face is sunburned across the nose.
She looks more like her father than I've ever noticed, and I wonder how I missed it for twenty years, or if I just didn't let myself see it.
She slides into the booth across from me. Doesn't hug me. Doesn't smile.
"You drove here," she says. Not a question.
"I checked your location. Saw where you were."
"And panicked."
