Page 23 of Warrior Security
“I need to take this,” I said to Logan. My voice came out level. My face, I was less sure about.
I didn’t wait for his response. I walked out of the feed room, through the barn, and out into the daylight before I said another word.
“Mother.” The word came out the way it always had. Formal. Practiced. Set in stone since before I could remember. But why was she calling? “Is everyone all right? Is Dad?—”
“Everyone’s fine, Eleanor. Your father’s fine. I’m just calling to check in.”
To check in.As though we’d spoken last month. As though six years of silence was a gap in a conversation and not a wall I’d built with both hands.
“Right. It’s been…a while,” I said. I shouldn’t be surprised Mother had gotten this number. The family certainly had the means to find out where I was and how to contact me. They’d just never made the effort.
“It has. I’ve been meaning to call.”
For six years. She’d been meaning to call for six years. I kept walking. The east paddock was on my left. Duchess stood at the far rail, watching me with her ears forward.
“So. Tell me what you’ve been up to. Your father and I don’t hear much.”
Because I stopped being your daughter the night I showed up bleeding and you told me to go back to my husband.
I didn’t say that. Why bother? “I run an animal therapy and rescue program called Pawsitive Connections in Montana. We raise and train service animal placements, therapy work with veterans and kids, rehabilitation and rehoming.”
I heard myself laying it out in clean, careful sentences. Choosing the words that sounded most like a real career, because even now, even after everything, some part of me was still translating my life into language she might accept.
A pause on the other end. One beat too long.
“Well. That sounds lovely, Eleanor. And you can make a living doing that?”
“I do fine.”
“In Montana? That’s a long way from New York.”
One of the many reasons I’d chosen Garnet Bend. “In Montana.”
Another pause. “Have you thought about what you might want to do longer term? Your father mentioned there might be opportunities in the city if you ever wanted to come back east. Something more…stable.”
I stopped walking. Stood in the middle of my property—forty acres, the barn I’d rebuilt, the paddocks I’d fenced, the animals I kept alive every single day—and listened to my mother suggest I might want to think about doing something morereal.
“This is what I do, Mother. It’s not a phase.”
“Of course not. I didn’t mean that.” She had already moved on. “Carla made partner, did you hear? Hamilton, Reeves, and Pratt. Your father is just thrilled. And David got promoted to senior VP at the firm. He’s been traveling constantly, but he seems happy.”
“That’s great. Tell them both congratulations.”
“I will. They’d love to hear from you, you know.”
No, they wouldn’t. They hadn’t called either.
The line went quiet for a moment. I could hear something in the background on her end. A clock, maybe. Or a television on low. The sounds of a house I hadn’t stood in for six years, carrying through the phone like a door left open.
“I do have some news that I thought you should hear from me rather than someone else.” Her tone shifted. Still polished, still measured, but with something underneath it. “Carter and his second wife have separated. The divorce was finalized last month.”
I could not care less if Carter Hollis had divorced a dozen women since our marriage. The best thing about my life here was that he was nowhere even remotely attached to it.
“That’s a shame.” I forced the words out since I knew the niceties were expected.
“It is a shame. He’s been having a very difficult time, Eleanor. He’s lost friends over it. His mother is beside herself.”
“That’s too bad for his mother.”
