The system had helped keep her on track of multiple projects better than anything else she’d tried. She was a little proud of herself, and maybe she wasn’t just getting a big head. Something had shifted in the way Tavish treated her since the exhibition. It was almost like . . . he respected her? And not even grudgingly.

A vibration on the table beside her slowly broke through her focus, and she grabbed the phone while still skimming the HTML code pane.

“Hello?”

“Hi, honey.”

Portia’s stomach executed an elevator free fall at the subtle Southern twang on the other end of the line, an unfortunate automatic reaction that piled shame on top of her anxiety. She should have been happy to hear this voice, and yet . . .

“Hey, Mom. How are you?”

“You know how it is—well, I guess you wouldn’t—busy with work. So busy! Just had a meeting with some investors and now I’m heading over to Brownsville to check out a site that’s for sale. I managed to scoop everyone on this, so I’m hoping to have it wrapped up before anyone tries to edge us out.”

Her mom could be vicious when it came to work, which was a boon in their profession. Reggie’s innate competitiveness had helped her thrive in the family business before pursuing her own dreams, but Portia hated this kind of work, where one mistake or second-guessing yourself could lose the company serious money.

“I’m pretty busy, too, actually.” Portia was embarrassed by the wheedling defensiveness that surged into her tone. It reminded her of when her parents had come home from parent-teacher night comparing Reggie’s honor roll to Portia’s uneven performance, and she’d point out that she’d gotten an A+ in art. “I’m totally redoing the website for the armory. Trying to get it done as quickly as possible because my marketing plan has really been paying off and—”

“That’s nice. Your father talked to you about the position we want to fill, correct?”

A wave of sadness washed through her, leaving anger when it receded. She wished her mother could even pretend to be interested in what she was working on. Feigned interest was a form of politeness Catharine Hobbs excelled at, but she seemed to reserve that talent for other people. Portia would love to know what it felt like to be on the receiving end of that empty cordiality.

“Dad told me you’re looking to fill the position with someone who will stick around for a while.” Portia picked up a pen and started doodling beside the sketches of the various layouts for the website on the pad next to her laptop, then dropped it in frustration. She was a grown woman, even if talking to her mom made her feel like a moody teen.

Her mother sighed. “Well?”

The pressure in that one word was enough to give Portia the bends. One moment she’d been happily immersed in a project she cared about and now she’d been hooked by her mother’s supposed concern and dragged kicking back to the surface of reality.

“I told Dad I would think about it,” she replied.

“If I recall, you didn’t have to think too long about accepting this silly apprenticeship.” Her mother’s voice was coated in disappointment, like poison on the end of a barb that would stay in Portia’s system long after the chastisement was forgotten. “Good to know you care more about some random Scottish people than your own family.”

That tone had always been enough to make Portia burst into tears, and she swallowed against them now. “It’s not like that, Mom.”

She imagined telling her mother about the ADHD tests she’d taken online, all with the same results, but she wouldn’t have been able to stand it if her mother casually dismissed her discovery.

“Oh, I know,” her mother said. “It’s never like that. You do what you want, skip from one thing to another, but being a Jill of all trades, and master of none, can only get you so far. You need a marketable skill and you can’t even take the one we’re handing you?”

Portia closed the laptop, hoping the last changes had saved but not really caring. The site was just another thing she’d mess up eventually, wasn’t it?

“I have to go,” she said. “I have a meeting.”

“Oh, there’s the woe-is-me voice. I’m not trying to be the bad guy, Portia. I just want you to get your life—”

“Talk to you later, Mom.”

Portia sat for a moment after laying her phone down before shaking her head side to side, as if she could knock loose the unhelpful thought patterns her mother had kick-started in her brain.

Jill of all trades and master of none. Jill of all trades and master of none.

It would be one thing if she could dismiss the words outright, but her mother wasn’t totally wrong . . . still, that didn’t mean that taking a job with her parents was right either.

She tried to remember what Dr. Lewis had told her.

“Just because your parents don’t appreciate what you do doesn’t mean it holds less value. You’re trying to be true to yourself, and not to hurt anyone in the process. What more can you ask of yourself?”

Portia wasn’t sure, but she wished she knew. There had to be something that would please both her and her parents, didn’t there?

She didn’t feel like working on the site anymore, so she gently cracked open the book about guild halls of the seventeenth century Mary had given her. Beating herself up wasn’t useful; research was. She’d seen Dudgeon House listed as one of the earlier names for the building the armory was in, and searched it out in the index.