Big Sky Reckoning

Brooke Callahan sends a single wine glass emoji from her La Jolla kitchen. Five women answer within the hour. Within a day, the whole group is at a remote Montana ranch, running from the same underlying wound in six different configurations.

Brooke is fleeing a performative marriage to a man who has been physically present and emotionally absent for fifteen years. At Stillwater Ranch, she meets Jack Dolan, a widower rancher still carrying his dead wife's name on a chain around his neck, and learns what the difference is between being managed and being held. Meanwhile her friend Maren is walking into something else entirely. Graham is charming, attentive, and running a grooming operation her friends clock before she does.

Two parallel arcs, one ranch, and a Protocol that only works if the person in danger is willing to send the signal. A midlife, found-family novel about grief, control, and the reckoning that happens when you finally stop performing the life you built.