Chapter 10 #2
Caroline Bennett is already seated, but she rises as I approach, one hand braced on the table’s edge. She’s dressed in a charcoal wrap dress that falls an inch below the knee, her dark hair is pulled back in a low knot, and a single strand of pearls rests at her collarbones.
She’s the height of elegance.
My mother squeezes my arm before she leaves me to join my father and Caroline’s parents as Caroline comes forward. She maintains direct eye contact, her smile small to avoid wrinkles, and she doesn’t even bat an eye at my cane as she holds out her hand.
“Grady.” Her handshake is firm, dry, and her grip lasts the correct amount of time to be friendly without crossing into too personal. “It’s good to see you again.”
“You, too.” I release her hand and take my seat, adjusting the cane to rest out of sight. “How was the drive from New Haven?”
“Easy. Traffic thins out after five.” She settles back into her chair, smoothing the napkin across her lap. “But before we talk about all that, how have you been? I want to hear all about life as a literary agent for Aurora Storm.”
The question catches me off guard. Caroline did her research.
“It was challenging,” I say, reaching for my water glass. “My author didn’t like to deal with anything but the writing, so it was up to me to do all of the rest.”
“What all goes into bringing a book from manuscript to shelf?”
“Mostly contracts and rights management. The unglamorous stuff that readers never think about.”
She absorbs this. “And the editorial side? Were you also involved in shaping the manuscript?”
“I gave notes, yes.” My knee throbs under the table. “Pacing issues or relationship development. Aurora didn’t always agree.”
“But she listened.”
“Sometimes.”
Caroline takes a sip of wine. “How are you enjoying your new work as a freelance journalist? That investigative piece you wrote about the harbor dredging and the shellfish beds was picked up by the Coastal Journal. That’s quite the feather in your hat.”
“It was…” I set my glass down. “You read that? It was rather obscure.”
“I did,” she confirms. “It was a smart angle, connecting the environmental impact to the tourism economy.”
She pauses as the others settle into their seats, the shuffle of chairs and murmured exchanges filling the room, before turning back to me.
“You have a knack for finding the intersection points. The publishing work you did before the accident, handling Aurora Storm’s transition to indie, managing her rights, is applicable to what Bennett Media’s trying to do with their lifestyle vertical.”
“Maybe,” I concede, leaning forward despite myself.
No one else in my life enjoys this kind of work except Dominic, and we rarely have time to sit down and talk.
“The indie space moves faster than traditional publishing,” I say. “It takes a completely different skill set.”
“Which we need at Bennett Media.” She sits back as a servant brings in the first course, a cold plate of simmered beets. “Adaptability. Niche audience building. Direct reader engagement. All of it.”
My father clears his throat from the head of the table. “The acquisition timeline’s moved up. Bennett’s board wants everything signed by June, which means integration planning needs to start next week.”
He turns to me. “Grady’s been tracking the subscription metrics. His read on the retention numbers has been spot-on.”
Pride, warm and complicated, spreads through me. My father doesn’t hand out compliments often.
My mother turns to Caroline. “Your sister’s wedding was in Newport, wasn’t it? How did the renovations turn out?”
Caroline’s focus shifts without a hitch. “Beautiful. They expanded the east terrace. You can see the harbor from every table now.”
The conversation flows, my father outlining the acquisition structure, and when I offer a thought on the digital asset integration, he listens without interrupting.
My mother draws Caroline into a discussion about coastal property values, and Caroline answers with the same insight she brought to the literary agent questions.
When the conversation circles back to Bennett Media’s expansion plans, I mention a gap in their regional coverage, where the stretch between Portland and Bar Harbor gets treated as a tourism corridor when it’s three distinct markets with different reader habits.
Caroline sets her fork down, her face brightening as she latches onto the topic. “That’s the blind spot their editorial team has. They’re working from a Boston-centric model.”
She turns to my father. “The subscriber data backs that up. Retention drops twenty percent north of Portland.”
My father jots down a note on his phone without looking up. “We’ll address it in the integration doc.”
The ease of everything should be comforting. The debriefs I studied during the long flight helped me carry through the various conversations. Instead, it sits heavy in my stomach, like a meal eaten that turns sour once it’s swallowed.
“Grady’s journalism work has been a productive outlet during his recovery,” my father says when the conversation turns to my long absence. “It’s given him a creative channel while he’s been getting back on his feet.”
My mother reaches for her wine glass. “It’s been wonderful to see him using his mind for more than flights of fancy.”
“Negotiating multi-million-dollar book deals is hardly a flight of fancy,” Caroline murmurs, the reproach couched in a demure smile, before she turns to me. “What article are you working on right now?”
“The rise of monster romance and what it says about the current view of the male population,” I say, taking a dig at my mother for her comment.
“Grady,” she gasps.
Caroline throws back her head and laughs, putting the slender line of her throat on full display. “Oh, I can’t wait to read that one.” Her hand lights on my arm. “Though, I don’t think the entire male population should be written off just yet.”
I stare down at that point of contact, not disliking it, but not liking it either. Caroline is a beautiful, intelligent woman, but she doesn’t stir me at all. Not the way Emily does.
As the server appears with the next course, a rack of lamb with a rosemary crust, my father launches into a discussion of Q2 projections.
Caroline’s hand slips away as she turns to him and engages, asking a clarifying question about the Southeast regional numbers. When my father references a market analysis from three weeks ago, she turns back to me.
“That’s the one you flagged for over-indexing on urban centers, right? The demographic weighting issue?”
I stare at her. “Yes. That’s the one.”
She holds my gaze for a beat longer than necessary, then returns to her lamb.
The dynamic works. She listens. She retains. She engages with the level of detail that matters. Across the table, my parents exchange a look I’ve seen a thousand times, the subtle, satisfied acknowledgment of people watching a plan unfold exactly as designed.
And that’s the problem. The path under my feet is already paved, and every step carries me farther down it. The terrible part is how natural it is. How easy.
My phone feels heavy in my pocket. Three thousand miles west, Emily is probably sliding the lasagna into the oven to bake, and Mixie is demanding kibbles.
Jared is likely doing dishes in that chaotic, cheerful way of his, water everywhere, humming off-key.
Leif is going over Quinn’s homework at the Homestead, and Chloe is consuming her weight in baked goods under the excuse of pregnancy.
None of them fit on this path. None of them has a place in this dining room, at this table, or in this conversation.
As dessert arrives, Caroline murmurs in appreciation over the chocolate torte with a crown of vanilla bean ice cream without touching her fork.
Instead, she turns to engage with me again. “When are you planning to move back home?”
Home. This mansion stopped being that for me a long time ago.
My father’s hand stills on his wine glass, the crystal catching the candlelight, holding it for one suspended second before his fingers tighten around the stem.
My mother’s attention sharpens mid-sip, and everyone waits in expectation of hearing a date.
The answer forms in my mouth without effort.
The easy one. The expected one. I could say a week, ten days, through the weekend, time frames that would settle the table back into its rhythm, that would let my father return to his acquisition timelines and my mother to her property questions and Caroline to whatever comes next in the script they’ve all been following.
I don’t say any of it.
I pick up my wine glass, take a sip, and let the wine sit on my tongue before I swallow. “I still have obligations in Pinecrest, so I can’t commit to a timeline as of right now.”
My father’s jaw tightens by a fraction, the muscle along his cheekbone flexing, and he sets his glass down without drinking.
My mother covers the pause with practiced ease. “Caroline, that property on Whitney Avenue… Did you decide to purchase it, or was that just under consideration?”
Caroline’s attention stays on me for another beat, her expression shifting. Not disappointment. Not quite. A reassessment, maybe, recalculating a variable she hadn’t accounted for.
Then she turns to my mother. “We made an offer, but someone came in above asking price the same day. However, the seller’s agent reached out last week to let me know that it’s back on the market.”
The conversation finds its footing again, my father asking about interest rates, my mother mentioning a charity gala in April. Caroline engages with both, her composure intact.
But the question hasn’t gone anywhere. It sits at the table with all of us, unanswered, taking up space all the way to the end of the meal.