Teagan tried to slip out of the kitchen, passing her mother with her back to the room, busy washing beets and apples in the sink. “Teagan Adriana Moore. Where do you think you’re going?”
Her mother had eyes in the back of her head. Teagan should have known she couldn’t pass her without getting a remark.
“I was going to clean up. I’ve been dancing for seven hours straight.”
Shauni glanced over her shoulder and her straight gray hair fell before her eye as she nodded. “How was it?”
“Great,” she said too quickly and a little too cheerily, making it easy for her mom to see right through the lie. Teagan tried really hard for a smile, but by the worried look of her mother, she knew she’d failed miserably.
“Oh, dear. I’ve laid awake in bed all night, thinking about you giving everything up and going out on a whim for this fantasy.”
“Mom…”
She eyed the kitchen, hoping one of her four sisters would step in any minute now to help her out, but the traitors let her fend for herself. Her sister Kiera duck her head, probably glad for Shauni butting into Teagan’s life instead of hers for a moment.
She would remember this the next time Shauni would drill her sister Tara about her apprenticing in a tattoo parlor in a rough neighborhood in the city. Or nag her sister Emmy about being almost thirty and still single.
Teagan sighed. Everything her mom said came from a good heart. She knew this. But damn, the need to run out of this kitchen into the green, wide fields was almost too strong to ignore.
“I’m going to shower.” She turned toward the stairs.
“Sweetheart. Maybe it’s not too late to call the university and go back to your original plan,” Shauni said to her back as she walked the first steps up.
Teagan counted till ten in her head. It had been her parents’ plan for her to even start the most dry and boring study there could possibly be. They figured since Teagan never knew what to do with her life, she could study accounting and help her brother Ryan out on the farm when he would take over from their parents.
Her head throbbed. She needed to wash this day away. And get some much-needed space from her loving but smothering family.