Chapter 6

Diana glanced at her phone: three missed calls from her mom, no voicemail. Probably just checking in to see how she liked Middletown so far.

The phone vibrated again.

“Morning, Mom,” Diana said, trying to sound upbeat. “You caught me getting ready for my first day of work.” She eyed the two outfits laid out on her bed, still undecided.

“I wish you would reconsider leaving Denver for good.”

Diana closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Here we go again.”

“Not this again, Mom. Please. I don’t want to have this conversation right now.”

“You were so happy here. The plan was always for you to stay close. I can’t imagine you living somewhere else. Alone.”

“Plans change, Mom.” Diana tugged the hair tie from her wrist and rolled it between her fingers.

“They don’t have to.”

She sank into the wicker chair by the bed. “They did. And for the record, I like it here.”

Her mom sighed. “I always saw you as a fighter, Diana. Someone who would stay and face things head-on.”

“You know, sometimes leaving is fighting. Standing up for myself meant walking away. Don’t you see that? It would’ve been easier to stay—living with you and Dad, letting you both take care of me, pretending everything was fine. But I couldn’t. Leaving was harder.”

She pulled her hair into a loose bun.

“If you ask me, I think you’re blowing things way out of proportion.”

“Out of proportion?” Diana hated the tremble in her voice.

“Calling off a wedding your father and I paid so much for, without even trying to fix things with Scott? That’s overreacting.”

Diana clenched her jaw. She’d managed to get most of the money refunded—except for the security deposit.

“I don’t think cheating on your fiancée with some bimbo a month before the wedding is something you just ‘fix’, Mother!” Just saying it made the back of her eyes throb.

“Don’t cry,” she whispered. The words were gentle, but tired. No more tears over Scott. He didn’t deserve them.

Her mom sighed again. “I don’t know what to tell you, honey. Sometimes men make mistakes—”

“—like my father?”

The silence that followed stung more than the words. Diana’s eyes burned. She hadn’t meant to say that. She’d promised not to bring it up again.

“Are you still there, Mom?” Diana asked quietly.

“Yes, I’m here, Diana.”

Her mother’s voice was flat. Hurt.

“Some mistakes take too high a toll on others,” Diana said, more gently now. “And sometimes, the consequence of that mistake is losing what you didn’t value enough. That’s how people learn.”

“I’m not trying to interfere in your life,” her mother said, her tone cooling further. “But you need to think things through rationally. All those fairy tales and rom-coms you grew up with? They lied. There’s no blue prince. Just flawed people trying to make relationships work because they promised to.”