I was eight months pregnant the night I learned my husband was still in love with another woman.

The Austin heat was unforgiving by eleven the next morning, baking the limestone sidewalks until they radiated heat like an oven. But inside the glass-and-steel sanctuary of my botanical design studio on 2nd Street, the air was chilled to sixty-eight degrees to preserve the imported hydrangeas and delicate garden roses.

I was trimming the stems of pale eucalyptus when the brass bell above the entrance chime clattered.

I didn't need to look up to know who it was. The scent preceded her: expensive French tuberose, crisp dry-cleaned wool, and the bitter, metallic frost of old money that no amount of southern warmth could ever thaw.

Victoria Ward stood in the doorway of my shop.

She was dressed in an ivory St. John knit suit that was laughably out of place in downtown Austin, where tech executives wore flip-flops and artists wore denim. Her silver hair was styled into an architectural helmet, her diamond rings catching the fluorescent shop lights with predatory flashes. Behind her stood an assistant holding an umbrella against the sun, looking terrified.

"Charming," Victoria drawled, her cold, slate-grey eyes—the exact shade of Alexander's, but devoid of his recent humanity—sweeping over my terra-cotta pots, rustic workbenches, and hanging ferns. "A flower shop. How suitably quaint for someone who fled the responsibilities of a dynasty."

I laid my pruning shears down on the zinc counter with deliberate slowness. The metal made a sharp, definitive *clack*.

"You're trespassing, Victoria," I said evenly. My voice didn't shake. A year ago, under the cavernous crystal chandeliers of her Greenwich estate, I would have shrunk into myself, smoothing down my dress and wondering what I had done wrong. But that woman had died on a freezing asphalt highway outside of Philadelphia. The woman standing here had carried twenty pounds of soil across a nursery this morning and raised a thriving daughter alone.

Victoria stepped forward, the heels of her Ferragamo pumps clicking rhythmically on the concrete floor. She gestured to her assistant, who promptly slipped out the door and waited on the sidewalk.

"I see Alexander hasn't completely lost his mind," Victoria remarked, leaning against a display table without touching anything. "He bought a brownstone in Clarksville. Ridiculous real estate, of course—overpriced, infested with cedar trees—but at least it demonstrates he hasn't entirely surrendered to this bohemian delusion."

"If you came here to talk about Alexander’s housing choices, save your breath and call his broker."

"I am not here for Alexander," Victoria said, her voice dropping into the icy register she used when destroying rivals at charity boards. "I am here for my granddaughter."

A cold wire tightened around my heart, but I kept my chin high. "Lila has nothing to do with you."

"She has everything to do with me. She is a Ward," Victoria snapped, taking a manicured step closer. She unclasped her crocodile Birkin bag, pulled out a folded document, and slid it across the zinc table between us. "The Ward Family Trust includes seventy million dollars earmarked for the direct descendants of the primary heir. That child is entitled to trust disbursements, private tutors, Swiss boarding schools, and societal introductions in Manhattan. She is not entitled to grow up in a rented bungalow with dust on her shoes, raised by a mother who works with dirt and associates with local construction workers."

She was talking about Julian. She had had me followed.

"Lila is happy," I whispered, the rage beginning to boil hot and thick behind my eyes. "She is healthy. She is loved. Something you wouldn't understand if it were drawn in crayon on your dining room wall."

Victoria’s lips thinned into a razor blade. "Love does not secure board seats, Maya. Alexander has become soft. Pathetic. He spends his days designing community libraries and his nights staring at your fence. He has forgotten who he is. But I have not."

She tapped the document with a lacquered fingernail.

"This is a petition for an independent psychological evaluation and a formal audit of your living conditions, filed through the Travis County Family Court," Victoria said smoothly. "My attorneys in New York and Texas are prepared to prove that you alienate the child from her paternal heritage, maintain an unstable living environment, and exhibit signs of post-partum instability following your... dramatic abandonment of the marital home."

"I left because your son was emotionally abusing me while clinging to the ghost of a dead woman!" I spat, taking a step toward her. "And he admits it!"

"Alexander will do what he is told when the family firm exerts its pressure," Victoria said, her eyes flashing with cruel triumph. "He is an architect because our capital funds his projects. If I pull the institutional backing from his new Austin venture, he is ruined. He will fall in line. And Lila will spend six months of the year in Greenwich, under my care."

"Get out," I snarled, pointing toward the glass door. "Get out of my shop before I call the police."

"Call them," Victoria smiled, turning her back on me with agonizing indifference. "Tell them Mrs. Victoria Ward is visiting her grandchild. Let us see whose name Travis County respects more."

She walked toward the exit, her hand reaching for the brass handle.

The door flew open before she could touch it.

Alexander stood in the threshold. He wasn't wearing his suit. He was in dusty work boots, dark jeans, and a denim shirt rolled to the elbows, covered in plaster dust from a job site. But the look on his face wasn't that of a repentant husband or a tired father.