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Me:What kind of tension?
Cece:The kind that happens when someone realizes they've been played by their own Mother. James mentioned Edward's been asking very pointed questions about the acquisition timeline. Apparently he's requested financial records going back months. And get this—he hasn't appeared at a single social function since you left. Victoria's been making excuses about him being under the weather.
My breath caught in my throat. Edward, who treated social obligations like religious observances, was avoiding galas? The man who'd told me that appearances were everything in his world?
Me:That doesn't sound like him,
I typed.
Cece:Exactly. Whatever she did to drive you away, I don't think it's going according to plan. A source at his firm says he's been working around the clock on something big. Something that has Malcolm Pemberton sweating through his Savile Row suits.
I closed my eyes, trying not to let hope creep into the carefully constructed walls I'd built around my heart. Because hope was a luxury I couldn't afford, not when it came to Edward Grosvenor and his world of impossible expectations.
Me:It doesn't matter, Cece. Even if he figured it out, even if he wanted to... I can't go back to that world. I can't pretend to be someone I'm not.
Cece :Who says you'd have to pretend?
The question hung there on my screen like a challenge I wasn't brave enough to accept. Because the truth was, I didn't know who I really was anymore. The girl who'd grown up in this small Texas town? The woman who'd charmed London society in borrowed jewels? The broken-hearted mess who'd fled across an ocean rather than fight for what she wanted?
Me:I have to go,Mama's calling.
I typed.
But Mama wasn't calling. I just needed to stop imagining that there might be a world where love conquered everything, where Edward Grosvenor could choose a small-town American girl over centuries of family tradition and aristocratic duty.
Some fairy tales were too beautiful to be true, and I was too old to believe in happily ever after.
I found myself in Mama's garden at dawn, attacking the weeds that had dared to invade her prized tomato patch like they were personally responsible for every bad decision I'd made in the past month. My hands were already caked with earth, fingernails black with dirt, and I could taste salt on my lips from tears I didn't remember crying.
"Plants don't lie to you," I said to the morning air, not caring if talking to vegetables made me sound crazier than a peach orchard boar.
"They don't have secret agendas or family empires to protect. They don't pretend to be your friend while using you as a pawn in some twisted chess game where all the pieces are people and all the rules change depending on how much money your great-great-grandFather had."
A shadow fell across my row, and I looked up to see Mama standing there with two steaming mugs and the kind of patient expression that meant she'd been watching me have my breakdown from the kitchen window.
"Mind if I join you?" she asked, like finding your daughter having a philosophical argument with tomatoes at six in the morning was just another Tuesday.
I wiped my face with the back of my dirt-covered hand, probably leaving muddy streaks across my cheeks. "I'm fine, Mama. Just needed to—"
"Baby girl, you haven't been fine since you got home." She knelt beside me in the dirt, her work clothes already as stained as mine, and handed me one of the mugs. The coffee was strong enough to wake the dead and sweet enough to rot your teeth—exactly how I'd learned to drink it at her knee. "But fine is overrated anyway. Some of the best folks I know have never been fine a day in their lives."
We worked side by side in comfortable silence, something that would've been impossible in London's constant performance.
There, even private moments felt staged, like someone was always watching, always judging whether you were being appropriate enough, sophisticated enough, enough enough.
Here, love was shown through shared work, through callused hands and patient presence and the willingness to kneel in the dirt at dawn because your daughter needed you to.
"You know," Mama said eventually, wrestling with a dandelion that had put down roots like it was planning to homestead, "your daddy used to say that you could tell everything about a person by how they treated a garden. Whether they tried to force it into something it wasn't meant to be, or whether they worked with what was already growing and just helped it along."
I paused, a handful of chickweed clutched in my fist. The morning sun was climbing higher, painting everything gold and green and peaceful in ways that made my chest ache. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Oh, nothing special. Just making conversation." But her smile suggested otherwise, the kind of knowing look she'd been giving me since I was old enough to lie about whether I'dbrushed my teeth. "Though I will say, it's mighty nice to see you getting your hands dirty again. You always did your best thinking in the soil."
I looked down at my hands—really looked at them. One week ago, they'd been soft and manicured, suitable for holding champagne flutes and signing charity auction paddles. Now they were rough and real and useful again, with dirt embedded so deep under my nails that it would take a sandblaster to get it all out.
The question was whether I missed the softness or was grateful for the honesty of calluses.
Rosie's Diner at high noon was exactly what it had always been—a place where the vinyl booth seats were held together with duct tape and good intentions, where the coffee could strip paint and the air conditioning sounded like it was fixing to give up the ghost any day now. Sue Ellen Martinez had been serving the same five-item menu since before I was born, and she could remember your usual order even if you hadn't been in for three years.