Maggie

She goes by Maggie. Not Margaret. Never Margaret — though a certain woman in South Carolina knows the full name and is choosing her moment.

Maggie Calloway lives in the Texas version of honesty: direct, late, and completely unapologetic about both. She keeps dance hall flyers the way other people keep photographs, one shade of lipstick always, and a corner of a tack blanket from her first pony in the truck. Bring that up and she'll fight you. The sentiment isn't nostalgia — it's evidence of where she came from and what made her.

She has two modes with people: total ease with the ones who know her, and complete bewilderment when a stranger sees her accurately. She doesn't know what to do when that happens. Neither does the stranger.

The last honest thing in a room full of maybe.