Dinner With the Carter Family

Luca

Mara stepped into my office with a tablet tucked beneath her arm. She placed the Varga contract on my desk as I signed the last document awaiting my approval.

“They’re asking for one last revision.” She said.

I didn’t look up. “They asked yesterday.”

“They’re still asking.”

“Then they’re wasting everyone’s time.”

She took the file back without argument. “The board meeting starts in ten minutes.”

“It starts when I walk in,” I said

She made a note on her tablet and headed for the door.

“Mara.”

She stopped.

“Cancel tomorrow.”

She turned slightly. “What’s the reason, sir?”

“Personal.”

Silence settled between us. She waited, expecting an explanation. I gave her none.

After a moment, she nodded. “I’ll move everything.”

Just as she reached for the handle, I spoke again.

“Tell the board they can either wait for me or start without me.”

She inclined her head once and left, closing the door quietly behind her.

The office fell silent again.

People often mistook silence for patience. But they usually learned the difference after working for me.

…

I arrived there earlier. The dining room was still empty. Lights low. I took the chair that faced the entrance and sat.

Minutes stretched. Footsteps echoed in the hall. Richard and Eleanor’s low murmur at the table.

Then a third set—lighter, uncertain.

She stopped in the doorway like the entrance might require a password.

Dark hair down her back and over one shoulder. She wore a cream dress that clung when she breathed. She had a soft mouth. Her eyes already scanning for where she was supposed to stand, sit, exist.

This was Richard's daughter.

Melody Carter.

Something in my chest went sharp and mean. I didn’t name it.

She walked in.

I watched every step. The small catch in her ankle on the rug, the way her fingers worried the hem of her dress, the breath she took before the maid pulled her chair.

She sat across and slightly left. Close enough that when she settled, something sweet and warm cut through the candle smoke. Vanilla. Skin.

I looked at my plate.

Eleanor did little introductions “Luca—Melody. Melody, my son.”

I cut into the meat and chewed. I didn’t lift my eyes. The silence did the work.

I stole looks anyway. I couldn’t stop. The clumsy way she reached for her glass. The flush that climbed her throat when no one filled the quiet. Soft everywhere it counted and trying so hard to be furniture that breathed.

She was Impossible to ignore and hated the fact of it.

Her hand slipped. Wine hit the front of her dress—spreading.

She went scarlet.

I immediately reached for the napkin. Then I stopped myself.

She stood up too fast, mumbled something that wasn’t words, and fled for the stairs. Richard made the soft useless excuses parents always made when their children became inconvenient. I finished what was on my plate and didn’t watch the landing.

Later outside, after dinner, the garden was dark enough. Cigarette between my fingers. Heat finally leaving my neck.

I heard light steps behind me, hesitation in the gravel, then footsteps again.

She stopped a few feet away. Close enough. I could smell the wine on her, and layered under it that same vanilla scent that had been at the table.

“I—hi.” Her voice was thin and brave. “I know earlier was—I just wanted to say it’s good. That they’re happy. And if you ever—”

I dragged on the cigarette, my eyes fixed on hers without blinking or helping.

Words kept falling out of her mouth, some half-built offer of peace neither of us had asked for. I let the smoke from my cigarette fill every space an answer should have lived and watched hope drain from her eyes in real time.

When she finally ran out of words, I flicked the filter, crushed it once under my heel, and walked past her back toward the house.

I didn’t give her a single word.

She smelled like spilled wine and vanilla. I couldn’t forgive myself for noticing. I hated more that my pulse had kicked as if I had just run a marathon.

The following day, I was about to enter my car when she came again.

I heard the footsteps, the breath she took to start whatever speech she’d practiced. I let her get close enough so that she wouldn’t miss a single word.

“Keep your fucking distance.”

I wasn't certain I meant it the way I sounded but that was the only way I could think of.

I didn’t wait for the shock on her face to vanish. I got in and drove off, watching her from the rearview. She stood on the drive like someone had cut her strings. I pulled out and didn’t look back again.

I stayed on at the Carters longer than I meant to. Business in the city could run remotely for a stretch.

Eleanor took my stay as a gift. I took it as a mistake I should've corrected.

Her room was three doors down.

I mastered the sound of her despite myself. The floorboard outside her bathroom, the low slide of a drawer, water running at 6:40, the creak when she turned over in bed when the house was dead quiet. Every noise landed under my skin like a finger pressed to a bruise.

I would work from the guest office with the door shut and still be lost the whole minutes staring at nothing with jaw tight, cock half-hard for no reason I was willing to give daylight.

I hated it. I despised how easily she got under my skin and was oblivious inside it. I hated myself more.