Chapter 10
Owen quieted before Miranda reached the bottom step.
Garrett had shifted him upright against his bare chest and was walking slow circles around the living room, one hand cupped over the back of the baby’s head while the other supported his weight.
The crying had thinned into damp, exhausted breaths, but Owen turned toward Miranda as soon as she entered and began rooting against Garrett’s skin.
“He took another half ounce and then decided the bottle had personally offended him,” Garrett said.
The frustration in his voice was directed at the afternoon rather than at her, though Miranda could still feel the argument waiting beneath it.
“I changed him twice because I thought the diaper was the problem. It was not.”
Miranda took Owen and sat at the end of the sofa. He latched with enough urgency to make her wince, then relaxed almost immediately, one small hand opening against her breast as though he had been holding himself together until she returned.
Garrett picked up his shirt from the armchair and pulled it over his head. The cotton caught briefly against his damp back, and he turned away to work it down before gathering the abandoned bottle and burp cloth from the coffee table.
“How was the store?” he asked. His tone made the question sound procedural, a box he intended to check before returning to the amount she had spent.
“It was fine.” Miranda looked down at Owen rather than invite an inspection of her face. “The woman helping us used to work on the corporate side of cosmetics before she moved into sales.”
Garrett carried the bottle into the kitchen. “Did she talk you into buying half the counter?”
Miranda heard the anger beneath the joke and chose not to answer it. She rested her head against the sofa and listened to the faucet run while Owen swallowed steadily, the familiar rhythm slowing her pulse after the drive home.
Her phone vibrated inside her purse.
The message was not from Willa. Dennis’s name appeared above a brief request for Miranda to confirm tomorrow’s meeting, followed by a note that Willa would attend because the discussion involved current account assignments and staffing.
Miranda read the message twice. Willa’s inclusion altered the meeting before it began. What should have been a conversation about Miranda’s employment had already become a comparison between the woman on leave and the woman doing the work in her absence.
Garrett returned with a glass of water and set it on the table beside her. “What happened?”
“Dennis added Willa to the meeting.”
His expression tightened, though not with surprise. “That makes sense if they’re discussing the accounts.”
“It makes sense for them.”
Garrett sat in the armchair, leaving the space between them open. “You can ask to speak with HR alone first.”
Miranda looked at him. It was the first useful thing he had said about the meeting without attaching a warning about her emotions.
“I’m going to,” she said.
Her phone vibrated again before she could set it down. This time the notification came from her Halcyon email account, where a new message waited beneath the subject line Tomorrow’s Transition Discussion.
Willa had sent it to Miranda, Dennis, and the human resources director.
Miranda opened the email.
Hi everyone,
I wanted to share a few notes ahead of tomorrow so we can use the meeting time productively.
I know Miranda has questions about how her eventual return may affect the current account structure, and I completely understand why seeing updated titles and materials without context might have been surprising.
Since stepping into the role, I’ve taken primary responsibility for Porter House, Avery Financial, and Bellmont Hospitality.
All three clients have requested continuity through the end of their current campaigns, and Dennis and I have discussed the importance of minimizing disruption.
I have attached a summary of current deliverables, client feedback, and upcoming deadlines.
I care deeply about making Miranda’s transition back as smooth as possible whenever she is ready. I’m happy to support a gradual reentry, share account history, or help identify responsibilities that fit her availability. My only goal is to protect the work and the client relationships we’ve built.
Warmly,
Willa
Miranda reached the end and returned to the first paragraph.
Eventual return.
Whenever she is ready.
Responsibilities that fit her availability.
Willa had written as though Miranda’s approved leave were an uncertain illness and her return a favor the company might accommodate if everyone remained patient.
Garrett held out his hand. “Let me see.”
Miranda gave him the phone without explanation. Owen had slowed his feeding, his eyelids lowering while milk gathered near the corner of his mouth. She wiped it away with her thumb and waited for Garrett to finish reading.
His face changed by degrees. The first paragraph produced a faint frown. By the time he reached the final lines, his mouth had hardened.
“She shouldn’t have sent this,” he said.
Miranda looked at him. “Why?”
“Because she’s presenting assumptions as though they’ve already been agreed.” Garrett scrolled back up with his thumb. “You never asked for a gradual return.”
“No.”
“And she cannot offer to identify responsibilities for you.” His irritation sharpened as he read the sentence again. “That isn’t her decision.”
The anger in his voice came close enough to vindication that Miranda had to resist the urge to seize it. Garrett understood professional overreach more easily than personal intrusion. Willa had finally crossed a line drawn in a language he respected.
“What do you think she’s doing?” Miranda asked.
Garrett did not answer immediately. He lowered the phone and looked toward the kitchen, where the YSL bag remained near the stairs.
“I think she’s trying to make herself indispensable,” he said.
The words entered the room quietly. Miranda had expected another defense, some explanation that Willa meant well but wrote badly. Hearing suspicion from him felt less satisfying than it should have.
“She has been doing that for months,” Miranda said.
Garrett looked back at the email. “Maybe.”
The qualification remained, but it lacked his previous certainty. He read the attachment list at the bottom and tapped the first document.
A client status report opened beneath Willa’s name.
Each account appeared in clean sections: current objectives, risks, next steps, relationship notes.
Miranda recognized the format because she had created it years earlier for Dennis, after he lost track of a major approval and blamed the account team.
Willa had changed the colors and removed Miranda’s initials from the footer.
Garrett noticed the template before Miranda said anything. “Is this yours?”
“Yes.”
“She could have gotten it from the shared drive.”
“She did get it from the shared drive.”
“That doesn’t mean she should put her name on it.”
Miranda watched him scroll. The report was competent.
Willa had updated the deliverables, added several client comments, and marked two campaigns as stabilized under her leadership.
The phrasing was subtle enough to avoid an outright claim that the accounts had been failing before she took over, but the implication gathered through repetition.
Garrett stopped at the Porter House section. “This says she rebuilt trust after a period of inconsistent communication.”
Miranda felt Owen release her and turn his face against her chest. She covered herself, lifted him to her shoulder, and rubbed his back while reading over Garrett’s hand.
The inconsistency referred to the final weeks before Owen’s birth, when Miranda had been hospitalized overnight for high blood pressure and Dennis failed to tell the client why she missed a scheduled call.
Miranda had apologized afterward despite following the doctor’s instructions and had repaired the relationship before beginning leave.
“She knows why I missed those meetings,” Miranda said.
“Did you tell her?”
“I trained her from the hospital discharge paperwork forward.” Miranda kept her voice level because anger would blur the usefulness of what they were seeing. “She knew exactly what happened.”
Garrett read the sentence again. Something in his expression closed, not against Miranda but around a thought he had not yet decided to share.
His phone rang on the kitchen counter.
Neither moved at first. The ringtone stopped after four beats, then began again.
Garrett stood and crossed the room, returning with the phone in his hand. He looked at the screen and turned it so Miranda could see Willa’s name.
“She wants to get ahead of the email,” Miranda said.
“Probably.”
He answered without leaving the room.
“Hi,” he said. His voice was neutral, stripped of the warmth Miranda had heard in so many calls before. “I’m with Miranda. We’ve both read it.”
The response on the other end came quickly enough that Miranda could hear Willa’s voice without distinguishing the words. Garrett listened, his eyes moving once toward the report open on Miranda’s phone.
“No,” he said after a moment. “I don’t think sending it before the meeting was helpful.”
Willa spoke again. Her tone rose slightly, taking on the breathless urgency of someone explaining a kindness that had been misunderstood.
Garrett walked toward the window, then stopped before reaching it. “You don’t know what kind of return Miranda wants because no one has asked her. You also don’t have the authority to decide what responsibilities fit her availability.”
Miranda felt something tighten beneath her ribs.
The words were correct. They were also late, and Garrett spoke them with the clipped frustration of a man annoyed that Willa had made the situation harder for him to defend.
He listened again, his jaw tightening. “I know Dennis asked for account notes. That is not the same as writing a transition plan.”
Willa’s voice softened. Miranda could hear enough now to recognize apology, though not its target. She sounded hurt rather than defensive, which had always been one of her more effective shifts.
Garrett closed his eyes briefly. “We’ll discuss it tomorrow.”
He ended the call before she finished speaking.
For several seconds, he remained standing near the window with the phone at his side. The afternoon light showed the fatigue around his eyes and the faint red mark Owen had left against his chest.
“She said Dennis asked her to prepare the summary,” he said. “She added the rest because she thought it would reassure everyone that she wasn’t trying to take your job.”
Miranda looked at the email again. “She reassured everyone by describing my return as a future problem she is willing to help solve.”
Garrett did not defend the wording. He sat in the armchair and leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees.
“I didn’t know she was talking to Dennis about your availability,” he said.
Miranda adjusted Owen against her shoulder. “Did you tell her I might not want to come back full-time?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly enough to sound true. Garrett looked toward the floor, then added, “I told her you were worried about how twelve-hour days would work with Owen. That was months ago, before he was born.”
Miranda remembered the conversation. She had stood in the kitchen folding newborn clothes while telling Garrett she could not imagine returning to the same schedule. She had said she wanted flexibility, not that she intended to surrender the role she had built.
“What else did you tell her?” she asked.
Garrett rubbed both hands over his face. “I don’t know.”
This time, the uncertainty did not provoke another argument. It opened something colder.
Garrett had not guarded the details because he had never considered them valuable. He had carried Miranda’s private doubts into work as ordinary conversation, handing pieces of her to a woman who understood exactly how to arrange them.
Miranda looked at the report on her phone, then at the black-and-gold bag near the stairs. The basket was no longer the only thing Garrett had given Willa without considering who already owned it.
“I need copies of every message where you discussed my work with her,” Miranda said.
Garrett lowered his hands. “For the meeting?”
“For me.”
He looked at her for a long moment, then unlocked his phone.
The gesture was not an apology. It was the first indication that he understood they had moved beyond one.