“I’m calling to tell you no.”
A beat.
“No to what, dear?”
“No to Whitmore. No to moving back east. No to the trust, if that’s what Father’s will really says. No to living close to you again. No to all of it.”
“I see.” Judith’s voice did not change. “May I ask how you intend to support yourself and my granddaughter?”
“You may not.”
“Tessa—”
“My current business endeavors are profitable. My mother-in-law left her farm to Makayla with me overseeing it until she’s older. I have work I enjoy doing, I have a home to live in, and I have a child who has been trying for eleven years to tell me who she is. I’m going to listen to her now.”
“This is very brave of you.”
“No, Mother. It isn’t. Brave is what Arlo does when he sits on his porch alone every day of his life and doesn’t let the grief of losing his best friend stop him from noticing when a neighbor needs a visit. Brave is what Dillon does when he reaches his arm inside a laboring cow up to the shoulder to save a calf nobody else thinks will make it. Brave is what Makayla does when she puts on pink cowboy boots and a cowboy hat after I spent eleven years dressing her in ballet flats. What I’m doing isn’t brave. It’s just long overdue.”
A very long pause on her mother’s end.
“You sound like your father used to,” Judith said.
“Before what?”
“Before he learned better than to go against me.”
“Maybe he didn’t learn better. Maybe he just got tired and gave up on himself.”
Judith did not reply to that.
“Goodbye, Mother.”
“Tessa, wait?—”
She hung up.
She stood at the kitchen holding the phone, her hand shaking, but she was also—she realized, with some surprise—smiling.
Hamlet, who had followed her to the kitchen in hopes of scoring a snack, nosed her ankle gently.
“I did it,” she told him in a wondering voice.
He grunted skeptically.
“Yes, I still have to figure out the money. And yes, I still have to talk to Dillon. Thank you for managing my expectations.” She handed him a grape from the fruit bowl on the counter.
He grunted again as if everything was settled to his satisfaction and wandered off to resume his midday nap.
She set the phone down on the counter and called Reno next.
“I’m not selling the farm, and I’m not going back east. I said no to my mother and I’m saying no to whatever the oil company tries to offer me. I would like you to cause them as much trouble as you possibly can and cost them as much money in lawyer’s fees as you can force them to rack up. Be an almighty pain in the neck and make them bleed.”
There was a beat of silence on the line.
Then Reno said, very mildly, “Ma’am, yes, ma’am.”
She laughed again. Twice in one day. She was going to have to start keeping score.
