chapter 4

The sitting room took about ten minutes to fully decompress.

Cole poured everyone something stronger. Gerald retreated to his study, which was his version of processing. Eleanor sat next to me on the sofa and did the thing she did where she held my hand briefly without making it into a moment, and I thought, not for the first time, that she had wasted an enormous amount of warmth on this family.

Liam had gone quiet. The fighting-Liam always collapsed into quiet-Liam afterward — all the energy burned off, leaving something that looked almost like remorse. Almost.

"So," Eleanor said, in the voice of a woman steering a ship that had already hit several rocks and was determined to reach shore anyway. "How is everyone?"

Cole raised his glass. "Emotionally, or —"

"Nova, love." Eleanor turned to me with a smile that was genuine despite everything. "How's things? Last time we spoke you were at the bakery. Are you still there?"

I opened my mouth.

I was going to lie. I had a whole lie ready — yes, still there, going well, thanks for asking — smooth and simple and requiring zero follow up. I had been about to deploy it.

"She quit," Liam said. "She doesn't have a job right now."

I closed my mouth.

Turned to look at him.

He wasn't being cruel — I want to be fair about that. He said it the way you'd say she moved flats or she's between things — just information, filling the gap I'd left. He wasn't performing it. He wasn't making a point.

He just said it.

Because of you.

The thought was loud and clear and I sat with it behind my smile and said nothing, because this was not the moment, and also because Eleanor was already talking.

"Oh, these things happen," she said warmly. "The right thing always comes eventually. You're bright, Nova, something will come."

"I'm sure," I said.

"Actually —" She paused. Tilted her head slightly, the way she did when she was about to say something she'd already decided on but wanted to present as spontaneous. "Rhett mentioned to me that he needs a new PA. His current one is leaving at the end of the month. He's been putting off dealing with it."

The room shifted in the subtle way rooms do when something that matters has just been said.

Liam looked up.

"His PA?" he said.

"He needs someone competent, organised, someone who can actually manage him." Eleanor looked at me with the particular expression of a woman who had thought about this more than once. "Nova, you'd be wonderful."

I looked at Eleanor.

I looked at Liam.

Liam was doing the calculating thing. I could see him running the scenarios — Nova in Rhett's office, Nova around Rhett daily, what that meant, what it looked like, whether it served him or threatened him. The calculation took about four seconds.

"Rhett won't agree," he said. He laughed, a bit. "He's not going to hire Nova."

"He might," Eleanor said pleasantly. "If she applied."

"Mum, his standards for that role are —"

"I think she should apply," Eleanor said. Still pleasant. Completely immovable.

I said nothing. I was watching the door to the hallway, the one Rhett had walked out of twenty minutes ago. I was thinking about the way he'd looked at Liam when Liam shoved him. Not angry. Not threatened. Just: is that all?

"Fine," Liam said, in the voice that meant not fine. "She can apply. He still won't hire her."

He said it like a fact. Like something obvious that didn't need softening.

I smiled at Eleanor. "I'll think about it," I said.

The conversation moved on. Cole started a story about something that had nothing to do with any of this and I was grateful for him in a new and specific way.

But across the sitting room, I caught Eleanor's eye.

She looked at me for a moment.

Then she smiled, small and certain, and looked away.

I'm just glad someone around here has a job, I thought.

Then I looked at Liam laughing at Cole's story, completely relaxed now, completely recovered, and I thought about the bakery and the fifteen interviews and a woman named Daisy who was always so extra.

I'm just glad I might have a job soon.