The smell of hot rubber, dust, and lavender oil rose around her.
“Sign the deed or I’ll sn:a:p your arm right here!” he screamed.
Everything stopped.
The wedding planners froze beside their SUV.
The delivery driver stood with both hands on a stack of boxes.
Natalie lowered her clipboard.
Vivien watched without moving.
Douglas stared at the hood of Garrett’s truck like the paint had suddenly become fascinating.
Nobody moved.
For one ugly heartbeat, Sienna wanted to shove him with every winter behind her.
She wanted to throw the folder into the ditch.
She wanted to make her parents feel, for one second, what it had been like to be reduced to dirt and then blamed for growing something from it.
Instead, she kept her left hand flat against the truck.
Her right hand stayed loose at her side.
Garrett did not notice the phone until it was too late.
The red recording timer had been running for eleven minutes and thirty-two seconds.
When Sienna opened her palm, he saw it.
His face changed.
Rage did not disappear.
It reorganized itself into calculation.
“Delete that,” he said.
Natalie moved first.
She stepped off the packing shed platform and came closer, clipboard against her chest, eyes fixed on Garrett’s hand gripping Sienna’s sleeve.
