Chapter 4: Richmond

The car Ethan sent was a black Mercedes with a driver who didn't make small talk, which Cara appreciated more than she expected.

She watched London blur past the window as they crossed the river toward Richmond. The neighbourhoods changed gradually — narrower streets giving way to wider ones, terraced houses becoming detached ones, everything getting incrementally quieter and greener until the car turned into a tree-lined road and stopped outside a house that was large without being ostentatious.

Warm light in every window.

A wreath on the door that hadn't been taken down from last Christmas, or possibly the one before.

Cara took a breath and stepped out.

Ethan was already at the door when she reached it. He must have arrived separately. He looked at her outfit — dark green dress, simple, nothing borrowed or performed — and gave a single nod.

"Ready?" he said quietly.

"Ask me that again and I'll leave," she replied.

Something moved at the corner of his mouth.

He rang the bell.

Eleanor Blackwood opened the door herself.

Cara had built a picture of her from Ethan's description — warm, perceptive, the kind of woman who noticed things. The reality was a small, elegant woman in her early sixties with silver hair and her son's dark eyes, except hers were doing the opposite of cold. They landed on Cara immediately and lit up in a way that felt completely genuine.

"You must be Cara." She took both of Cara's hands before she could extend one. "Come in, come in. It's freezing out there."

She was already pulling her inside before Cara could say a word.

Ethan followed.

The hallway smelled like warm bread and something herbed. Cara noted the Lebanese food comment and filed it away carefully.

"James and Sophie are already here," Eleanor called over her shoulder, leading them toward the living room. "And your grandfather is having a good evening, which means he'll ask difficult questions, so prepare yourselves."

"He always asks difficult questions," Ethan said.

"Tonight he'll enjoy it more."

The living room was lived-in in a way that surprised Cara. Books stacked on side tables. A dog she hadn't been warned about — elderly, golden, barely lifting its head from the rug. Photographs covering an entire wall in mismatched frames.

James Blackwood stood near the fireplace. He was slightly shorter than Ethan, lighter in build, with a smile that arrived quickly and didn't quite reach his eyes.

"So this is her," he said pleasantly.

"This is Cara," Ethan said. His voice was even but Cara caught the slight shift in it.

James extended his hand. "James. And this is Sophie."

Sophie was warm in the uncomplicated way some people simply were. She shook Cara's hand and immediately asked if she wanted something to drink, which Cara accepted gratefully.

In the corner armchair, an old man watched all of this without speaking.

Robert Blackwood was thinner than the photographs on the wall suggested he had once been. But his eyes were the sharpest in the room.

Cara crossed to him directly.

"Mr. Blackwood," she said. "I'm Cara. It's good to meet you."

He looked up at her for a long moment.

"Sit," he said, nodding at the chair beside him.

She sat.

"You're not what I expected," he said.

"What did you expect?"

"Someone polished," he said. "Someone chosen."

Cara held his gaze.

"I wasn't chosen," she said. "I was convincing."

Robert stared at her.

Then he laughed. A real laugh, raspy and genuine, that made Eleanor look over from across the room with an expression of pure surprise.

Ethan, standing near the doorway, went very still.

"I like her," Robert announced to no one in particular.

Dinner was warm and loud in the way family dinners were when people were performing togetherness while also genuinely feeling it. Eleanor asked questions about Cara's life with real curiosity, not interrogation. Sophie refilled everyone's water without being asked. James watched Cara with the careful attention of someone doing arithmetic.

At one point Eleanor reached over and touched Cara's hand mid-sentence.

"You must come back next week," she said simply. "Without the occasion."

Cara opened her mouth.

Closed it.

"I'd like that," she said.

She meant it before she realized she did.

In the car afterward, Ethan was quiet for a long time.

"My grandfather hasn't laughed like that in four months," he said finally.

Cara looked out the window.

"You didn't warn me he had a sense of humor."

"I didn't know he still did."

The city came back gradually around them. Lights and noise and the familiar press of London closing in again.

"Your mother invited me back," Cara said.

"I heard."

"That wasn't part of the agreement."

"No," Ethan said. "It wasn't."

A pause.

"Will you go?" he asked.

Cara thought about Eleanor's hand on hers. Robert's laugh. The dog that had eventually migrated from the rug to her feet during dinner without anyone noticing.

"Probably," she said quietly.

Ethan didn't respond.

But outside his window, away from her, she saw his jaw shift slightly.

Like something had settled in him that hadn't been settled before.