Chapter 19
The week before the festival arrived with the kind of relentless momentum Cassidy used to thrive on. Vendor confirmations poured in. Permit approvals landed in her inbox. The volunteer schedule had finally stopped resembling a jigsaw puzzle of conflicts and impossible demands.
She should have felt triumphant. She did. And proud of herself that things were finally falling into place.
Her phone buzzed. Another email notification. She’d made the mistake of using her main business email account—force of habit—for some of the festival correspondence, which meant her carefully separated worlds now bled into each other with alarming frequency.
She opened it. A tourism board confirmation. Good news. She should forward it to Bryan.
The next email made her pause.
Steve Hodges. Subject line: Quick Question.
She deleted it without reading.
Two minutes later, another one arrived. Steve again. Subject line: Following Up.
“Unbelievable.” She deleted that one too.
The third email came ten minutes later. Subject line: URGENT.
That wasn’t like Steve. He specialized in casual undermining, not genuine emergencies. His whole strategy relied on making everything look effortless while he systematically dismantled her work behind the scenes.
She stared at the subject line. She could feel the old instinct rising inside her, the one that said ignoring urgent messages was irresponsible and she needed to at least know what crisis had erupted in her absence.
But she was on sabbatical. His emergencies weren’t her problem anymore.
But her finger hovered over the email anyway.
She clicked.
Cass, I know you’re off the grid, but I really need your help on the Phillips account. There’s a situation with the demographic targeting, and I can’t find your notes on the Q3 strategy pivot. Can you call me ASAP? I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t critical.
She read it twice, searching for the trap. Steve never asked for help. He took credit, deflected blame, and occasionally lobbed passive-aggressive comments about how they had different approaches, but he didn’t admit to needing assistance.
She closed the email and set her phone face down on the table.
Whatever was happening in Chicago, it wasn’t her responsibility.
The phone rang, and she glanced at it. Unknown number, but the area code was Chicago.
Her hand reached for it automatically, years of corporate conditioning overriding common sense. She caught herself, pulled back, and let it go to voicemail.
Thirty seconds later, it rang again. Same number.
“For heaven’s sake.” She snatched it up. “Hello?”
“Cassidy. Finally.” David Wilde’s voice filled her ear with the kind of brisk authority that used to make her stand up straighter. “I’ve been trying to reach you for two days.”
Her boss. Her actual boss, not Steve. The nausea hit immediately.
“David. Hi. I’m on sabbatical. I thought—”
“I know, I know. And normally I wouldn’t interrupt your recovery time.” He had the decency to sound slightly apologetic. “But we have a situation, and frankly, you’re the only one who can fix it.”
She walked to the window and watched Winnie move through the garden with unhurried grace. “What kind of situation?”
“The Phillips account is imploding. Steve completely misread the client’s priorities and pitched them a strategy that’s essentially the opposite of what they asked for. They’re threatening to pull the contract.”
A small, vindictive part of her wanted to laugh. Steve Hodges, the golden boy who’d been poaching her accounts and taking credit for her campaigns, had finally overextended himself.
“That’s unfortunate,” she said carefully.
“Unfortunate?” David’s voice sharpened. “Cassidy, this is a multi-million-dollar account. I need you back in Chicago immediately.”
The room tilted slightly. “You need me to come back early? From leave?”
“I need you to save this account. And when you do, I’m prepared to offer you Senior VP of Strategy.
Corner office. Twenty percent raise. Full creative authority over client selection.
” He paused, letting the offer sink in. “This is everything we’ve discussed for your career trajectory.
It’s happening now instead of in three or four years. ”
Everything she’d worked for.
The title she’d been chasing since she became junior executive.
The validation that all those eighty-hour weeks and missed dinners and sacrificed relationships had been worth it.
“How soon can you be here?” David pressed. “I can have a ticket waiting for you at Tampa International this afternoon.”
Her reflection stared back at her from the window, superimposed over the courtyard garden. She looked different than she had six weeks ago. Her hair had lost its sharp precision, her face had more color, and she wasn’t wearing the armor of a tailored blazer.
“I need time to think about it,” she heard herself say.
“Time to think about a promotion?”
“I’m on leave for a reason, David. My therapist was very clear about the risks of returning to high-stress situations too quickly.”
“I understand that. But this is a unique opportunity. If you wait until your sabbatical ends, the Phillips situation will be resolved one way or another. This window closes fast.”
Of course it did. Everything in that world closed fast and moved fast. It demanded immediate responses and split-second decisions.
“Give me forty-eight hours,” she said.
“Cassidy—”
“Forty-eight hours. That’s all I’m asking.”
Another pause. “Fine. No longer. But I don’t know why you’re hesitating. It makes no sense.”
She ended the call and set the phone down like it might explode.
Senior VP of Strategy and a corner office. Everything she’d wanted. Everything she’d burned herself out trying to achieve.
She couldn’t sit still. The weight of David’s offer pressed against her like she’d forgotten how to breathe properly.
She opened her laptop, thinking work might steady her. Not Chicago work. Festival work. The kind that had started to feel less like an obligation and more like a purpose.
The vendor spreadsheet loaded. She scanned the confirmed bookings, the volunteer schedules, and the carefully negotiated contracts that Bryan had helped her navigate.
Local fishermen selling their catch. Artists demonstrating traditional net-mending techniques.
The Harbor Ladies judging their pie competition with the kind of fierce pride that made corporate award ceremonies look hollow.
This wasn’t her world. She’d be gone soon anyway. One week or sooner if she took David’s offer.
Her fingers moved to the financial documents almost without conscious thought. Numbers had always been safe. Quantifiable. They didn’t ask uncomfortable questions about what she actually wanted from life.
She pulled out her notes again. Attendance figures from previous decades. Budget allocations. Sponsor lists that showed how the event had evolved from a genuine community celebration to something struggling to justify its own existence.
Then she saw it again. The note she’d made and promptly forgotten in the chaos of final preparations.
Lighthouse funding 1943-1945: Private trust, not government. Check source.
She’d been so focused on the festival that she’d never followed up. Now, with her entire career hanging in the balance and her brain desperately seeking any distraction from that decision, the note pulled at her with professional curiosity.
She opened a new browser tab. Her corporate research skills, honed through years of competitive analysis and market intelligence gathering, kicked in automatically. She started with the basic public records she’d noted before. The lighthouse had officially been privately funded in the 1940s.
The shell company name was buried in a footnote: Coastal Heritage Properties, LLC.
She ran it through the business registry databases she still had access to. The initial search came back with minimal information. Dissolved in 1947. Original incorporation in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts. Not Florida.
That was odd. Why would a Massachusetts company fund a Gulf Coast lighthouse during wartime?
She dug deeper, following the corporate trail through archived documents and historical business filings. The kind of research that used to make her feel competent and in control when client projects spiraled into chaos.
Coastal Heritage Properties had exactly three listed officers. Two names she didn’t recognize. The third made her stop scrolling.
James S. Copeland. Secretary-Treasurer.
Copeland. She’d heard that name recently. Where?
Cassidy pulled up her festival notes, searching through the historical documentation she’d gathered. There. In Marty Fuller’s account of the lighthouse’s history, mentioned in passing: The Copeland family of Cambridge maintained a summer residence in Starlight Shores.
A wealthy Massachusetts family with local connections, funding the lighthouse’s private operation. What was their connection?
And that photograph she’d found in the archives. The one that had made Winnie go still and careful. The caption had said academic consultants. Men in suits surrounding radio equipment that had nothing to do with standard lighthouse operations.
Her phone buzzed. A text from Bryan: One of the bands dropped out but the Harbor Ladies found a barbershop quartet to fill in. I think that will work great.
The festival. Right. That’s what she should be focused on. Not decades-old mysteries about lighthouse funding and mysterious radio equipment.
Her phone buzzed again. An email from David: Need to know your decision ASAP.
Right. Her decision. Her career. Her entire future waiting for a response.
She closed the laptop and walked to the window. Forty-eight hours to choose between everything she’d worked for and everything she was just beginning to discover.