“She wants to be with you.”
“I live in a single bedroom on a ranch,” Emma said. Her mind went into overdrive, because she could get a place for her and her daughter. She could. She could work on payroll and send invoices from any computer with Internet access. She didn’t have to use the office at the ranch. She made enough at the ranch to pay for an apartment or a small house, and the whole world opened up, with so many new possibilities.
“I don’t know,” she said, swallowing. “You guys went to Florida two weeks ago.” She ducked her head, all of her familiar protections flying back into place and slamming the doors that had just opened. “Robert isn’t gone completely. He’ll find out if I suddenly have a ten-year-old living with me.”
“He’s not in Sweet Water Falls,” Matt said. “We had someone check.”
“Robert is highly mobile,” Emma argued back, studying her fingernails. “And well-connected.” She couldn’t forget that. None of them could forget that.
“I think you should think about it,” Fran said.
Emma nodded, because she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it.
Missy returned, her violin already out of its case. Emma pasted a smile on her face and slipped into her pretending persona. “What song have you been working on?” she asked.
“It’s called Govotte,” Missy said, adjusting the instrument under her chin. She took a breath and glanced at Fran, who nodded at her. Missy took another breath, her slight shoulders lifting up and falling back down. She put the bow on the strings, and they made a squeak. She swallowed and breathed again, and Emma wished she could take her nerves from her. At the same time, she found them utterly fantastic and endearing.
She grinned at her daughter too, tears already gathering in her eyes. Missy moved the bow then, and the movement became sure and strong, and the instrument began to sing.
Emma couldn’t believe her daughter could make such beautiful music, and she wondered how she’d ever keep Missy in violin lessons in Sweet Water Falls. Fran didn’t work outside the home, so she had time and energy to dedicate to Missy. The truth was, Emma wouldn’t be a good mother—certainly not as good as Fran—and her emotion rose and rose until it choked her.
Missy finished the song, and Emma started clapping. She could play off her emotion as love for her daughter, which it was. But it was also very, very hard to accept that Missy was better off here with Fran and Matt than she would be with her own mother.
“Wonderful,” she said, her voice high-pitched and thick. “Awesome, baby.” She reached for Missy, and the little girl handed her violin to her dad and came around to hug Emma. “I love you so much,” she whispered against her daughter’s ear. “So much.”
“I love you too, Momma.”
The moment stretched, and Emma wished she could bottle it up and hold it close to her heart for a good long while.
“Missy,” Matt said, and the girl pulled away. She turned to look at him, and Emma wiped the tears from her eyes. “We mentioned that you wanted to go live with your mother.”
Missy pulled in a breath, and her eyes widened. She spun back to Emma, her hope strong and bright. It could’ve lit the whole night sky above Texas, and Emma hated disappointing her.
“And?” Missy asked.
“There’s a lot to work out,” Emma said. “But I’m going to start working on it.”
Missy squealed, and Emma hugged her again. She couldn’t believe she’d just said that. But maybe…maybe there was a way she could have her daughter with her for the second part of her childhood. Perhaps Robert wasn’t as big of a threat as she’d originally thought. They’d had no problems up to this point.
Her phone rang, and Emma pulled away from her daughter to see who it was. Ted’s name sat on the screen, and Emma’s heart bounced to the back of her throat.
“Who’s Ted?” Missy asked, and Emma looked up into her daughter’s innocent eyes. She had absolutely no idea how to answer.
“I need to take this,” she said instead, standing and looking at Fran. She swiped on the call before it could go to voicemail, and she said, “Hey, Ted,” as she walked out of the kitchen.
“Emma, praise the Lord,” he said. He sounded breathless and on the verge of panic.
Emma’s nerves immediately started a low wail in the bottom of her stomach. “What’s wrong?”
“I just saw Robert Knight,” he said.
Emma stopped walking, her brain misfiring in such a way that all she could do was breathe for a moment. Walking was out of the question. “What?” The word came out as little more than air. Ted couldn’t leave the ranch. “He’s on the ranch?”
“He was on the northeast service road with that guy in the blue truck. Well, his truck was black, but he dropped that other guy off. William.”
He wasn’t making any sense. Emma couldn’t keep track of so many names and colors right now. “Did you talk to him?”
“No,” Ted said. “I just overheard him say he’d meet William back at the shop, and William asked if he should figure out where ‘she’ is. Robert said he’d take care of it.”
Emma felt like she’d swallowed liquid nitrogen. If she moved at all, she’d crack and break. “Am I the ‘she’?”
“I think so, sweetheart,” Ted said. An engine roared on his end of the line, and then it went silent. “I just got back to the ranch. I had no service out there.”
“Momma?”
Emma spun around, her heartbeat tripling. Had Ted heard that? She accepted Missy into a hug while Ted said, “Anyway, I thought you should know. And listen, I know I said you didn’t have to tell me anything, but Em, I really want to know. I can help you.”
“I know,” Emma said. She looked down at her daughter. Felt the tight grip of her arms around her middle, and she just didn’t know how to say it.
“I’m worried,” Ted said. “And I usually don’t worry unless there’s a good reason. He…I didn’t like seeing him. I got an eerie feeling.”
Emma couldn’t get her voice to work. Several long seconds passed while she tried. Finally, Ted sighed, a sound heavy with frustration. “Okay, well, I guess that’s it if you’re not going to say anything.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You tell me where you are,” he said. “And who you’re with. Right now, Emma. Where are you? Who are you with?”
She looked down at her daughter again, and Missy looked up at her with such an open expression of love. If she had any hope of taking her daughter home with her—ever—she’d have to tell people about her.
But this felt like she was doing everything out of order. “I need an hour,” she said to Ted.
“Sure,” he said, his tone filled with acid now. “You take what you need, Em. I’ll be here, because I literally can’t leave.”
She pressed her eyes closed, the tears in them stinging and burning. She’d heard what he really meant. If he could leave, he would. He’d leave her, because she was so frustrating to him. He’d walk away from their relationship, because she couldn’t confide in him.