She could live without Ethan. Not as fully perhaps, not as joyfully, certainly. But she could live and be productive and find contentment in the path she forged for herself and her daughter.

She was finished with tears and self-pity.

She started on the main floor with the same singleminded fervor. Furniture was polished until it gleamed. Glass was scrubbed until it sparkled. She hung out wash, swept porches, and battled dirt as if it were an enemy threatening to take over the earth.

By the time she got to the kitchen her back ached, but it was a small and satisfying pain. Her skin wore a light coat of sweat, her hands were pruny from wash water, and she felt as accomplished as a corporate president after a major business coup.

She checked the clock, measured time. She wanted to be finished and gone before Ethan came in from work. Despite the purging wrought by labor, there was a small, simmering ember of anger still burning in her heart. She knew herself well enough to understand that it would take very little to fan it to full flame.

If she fought with him, if she said even a portion of the things that had careened through her head over the last few days, they would never be able to be civil again, much less friends.

She wouldn’t force the Quinns to take sides. And she wouldn’t risk putting her precious and vital relationship with Seth at risk because two adults in his life couldn’t mind their tempers.

‘‘I won’t lose my job over it, either,’’ she muttered as she went to work on the countertops. ‘‘Just because he can’t see what he’s throwing out of his life.’’

She hissed out a breath, scooped her fingers through her hair, which the heat and her exertion had dampened at the temples. And calmed herself by giving the drip pans on the ancient range a good scouring.

When the phone rang, she snatched it up without thinking. ‘‘Hello?’’

‘‘Anna Quinn?’’

Grace glanced out the window, saw Anna puttering happily among the back garden. ‘‘No, I’ll—’’

‘‘I got something to say to you, bitch.’’

Grace stopped, two steps from the screen door. ‘‘What?’’

‘‘This is Gloria DeLauter. Who the hell do you think you are, threatening me?’’

‘‘I’m not—’’

‘‘I got rights. Do you hear me? I got fucking rights. The old man made a deal with me, and if you and your bastard husband and his bastard brothers don’t live up to it, you’re the ones who’ll be sorry.’’

The voice wasn’t just hard and harsh, Grace realized. It was manic, the words shooting out so fast that one ran into the back of the other. This was Seth’s mother, she thought as more abuse rang in her ear. The woman who’d hurt him, who frightened him. Who’d taken money for him.

Sold him.