Here it comes.
“I had our lawyers change both of your trust funds last week. There will be no more disbursements to you or your daughter for any reason until the conditions of your father’s will are met.”
What had Judith bullied Father into writing into his will now? “What conditions, Mother?”
“Makayla must be enrolled in an educational institution befitting the family’s standing, and her primary residence must be within reasonable visiting distance of her grandparents while we can still know her. If these aren’t met, your trust funds will be dissolved and you’ll forfeit any right to the contents of them. Permanently.”
Her parents hadn’t shown a single second of interest in Makayla until she’d become useful as a tool to manipulate and coerce Tessa.
“You’re using my child—your only grandchild—as leverage to get what you want? With no regard for what I want, let alone what Makayla wants?”
“Children don’t know what they want. It’s up to parents to tell their children what’s best for them.”
And that was why—blessedly—she was nothing like her mother as a parent.
“As it so happens, I am an adult, and it’s no longer your prerogative to tell me what’s best for me. Or for my daughter, for that matter.”
Icy silence echoed in her ear.
Tessa let the silence build. Judith, who’d taught Tessa never to fill a silence in a negotiation, didn’t break it either.
Eventually, surprisingly, her mother huffed and broke the stalemate. “Tessa. I am not your enemy in this. Your father and I want to know our grandchild. The academy is outstanding. The funds to pay for it are real. Your daughter has an extraordinary talent, and you’re letting her run barefoot through manure on a run-down farm in the middle of nowhere. You’re wasting her future and yours, and I don’t pretend to understand why.”
“Maybe because no one in my family ever asked me what I wanted or asked Makayla what she wants.”
Her mother gave a small, polite laugh that had nothing to do with humor. “Don’t be dramatic, dear. We’re not asking you what you want, now. I’m simply telling you what’s on the table. I need your decision by Friday so the deposit can be made. The trust resumes the day Makayla starts at Whitmore. Otherwise, you’re both on your own. For good.”
“Mother—”
“I have to go. The car is waiting downstairs. We’ll speak before Friday.” She hung up.
Tessa set the phone down beside her coffee, which had gone cold, but not nearly as cold as Judith Northcott.
Tessa thought, with the strange clarity that came after a punishing body blow, That was professionally done. Her mother had moved every piece on the board before placing the call. A short deadline. The slot already secured. The money transfers already stopped. The trust language already changed and tightened. Tessa had been brought into the chess game after every decision had been made for her.
She’d grown up both hating and admiring the precision of her mother’s surgically controlling thumb, and she felt that again, now.
But something else was beginning to rise in her chest, too, and she didn’t have time to name it or deal with it. She needed to feed the animals, call Reno, and sit down with her checkbook and figure out exactly how long the Fashion Bow-tique and the wedding gown business and her current bank account could keep this farm afloat without the checks from her grandfather.
The math was not going to be friendly. She knew that without doing it.
She considered asking Dillon for advice. That was, in itself, evidence that something major had shifted in their relationship.
Behind her, the screen door opened and Makayla stepped onto the porch.
“Why are you crying, Mom?”
Tessa hadn’t realized she was. She put her hand to her cheek and wiped away the moisture she hadn’t realized was there.
“How much of that did you hear, Mak?”
“All of it,” Makayla said matter-of-factly. “Was that Grandmother?”
“Yes.”
“I figured. You only sit like that with her.”
“Like what?”