The Cross Family

Choosing the Table

The dining room gleamed like a museum at closing time—perfect, a little too quiet, every surface waiting to be admired. Damon had always liked this room: the long walnut table, the low chandelier with its glass teardrops, the cool silver on linen. Tonight the polish made his teeth ache. The crystal caught the light and threw little stars across the walls. He wished the lights would stop trying so hard.

Lorraine sat at her end of the table, posture erect, napkin creased just so. Caroline lounged halfway down, chin propped in her palm, her phone face down beside her plate like a restrained animal. Sloane had taken the seat to Damon’s right—close enough to share the same air, far enough to pose for any camera that might materialize in his imagination.

The first course arrived, all pale halibut and dill foam that looked like a cloud had lost its way. Damon cut into it and chewed because chewing kept him from saying anything he might later have to explain.

Lorraine cleared her throat with the practiced delicacy of someone starting a meeting. “Well,” she said, “I’ve spoken with Whitmore. He’ll handle the press on our terms. No more of this… sidewalk theater.” She flicked a glance toward the muted TV in the corner—left on with captions, the modern version of a fireplace. SMITH INDUSTRIES CEO DAMON SMITH CONTINUES TO STAY SILENT AMID DIVORCE RUMORS, the banner read. The image behind it was the same loop: gates, flashes, a crimson dress shrinking down the drive.

Caroline speared a spear of asparagus and smirked. “They say silence is classy. Personally I think it’s boring. But I suppose classy sells better.”

“Classy is stability,” Lorraine said. “Investors prefer stability.” Then, almost kindly: “You understand, Damon.”

He nodded. He did understand. He’d understood it his entire life. Hold the line. Control the narrative. Do not give the world the pleasure of your panic.

Sloane laid her napkin across her lap, slow and graceful. “We can curate appearances,” she said. “Choose one charity gala, one board luncheon. Smile together. It doesn’t have to be overdone.” Her voice was low, designed for microphones. “It signals continuity.”

“You’re good at that,” Caroline said, meaning both appearances and signals. Her compliment sounded like a tease but landed like agreement. “Honestly, Mya never understood the basics. She acted like showing up was asking a favor.”

Lorraine’s mouth curved. “That girl was perpetually out of step. She couldn’t even carry a room properly.”

“Or a conversation,” Caroline added. “Remember when someone asked her about the renewable investment and she said, ‘I like the way the new building looks at sunset?’” Caroline mimicked a dreamy stare. “I nearly died.”

Sloane’s laugh was soft. “She was… sweet.”

“Sweet is what you call a trinket,” Caroline said. “It’s a word for people you don’t expect anything from.”

They went on. They always had, before and after dinner, with coffee and over lace table runners, their critique a background hum he’d long ago learned to treat like rain. Tonight the sound had a sharper edge. Damon kept finding gaps in their sentences where something else wanted to speak.

Because he remembered a different moment. Mya on that same terrace, hair pinned back in a style Lorraine had approved, leaning close to him and pointing at the skyline. Look at the way the glass holds the color, she’d said. It looks expensive because it’s beautiful, not the other way around. He hadn’t known what to do with that sentence. He’d said he had a call. He’d left her there with her color and her sunset and her silence.

He tightened his grip on the knife until the bone in his hand showed pale. He eased it.

“Anyway,” Caroline said, pushing her empty plate toward the edge so a server could whisk it away, “she’s gone. The shows are bored already. They’ll find a new scandal by Friday.” She flicked her eyes to Sloane. “We, on the other hand, are not boring.”

Lorraine allowed herself the softest smile at Sloane. “You’ve been remarkable through all this, dear. Truly.”

Sloane looked demure under the praise, a trick she wore like a diamond. “I only want to support the family,” she said, and let her hand rest lightly against Damon’s wrist, a small anchor that told the room: this is steady, this is fine.

He should have felt reassured. Instead a dull ache pulsed behind his eyes, the kind that signals either a storm or a confession. He glanced at the TV and caught the final half-second of a replay—the crimson flash of a dress and a suitcase wheel bumping over the threshold. The camera had zoomed slightly this time. You could see Mya’s face if you looked very closely. Not tears, not triumph. Something scarier to the narrative machine: clarity.

Lorraine followed his gaze. “Do get rid of that,” she said, and a server hurried to click the set off. The room deepened into a quiet without captions.

“We’ll finalize a statement next week,” she continued, as if no screen had ever glowed. “Something clean. ‘Amicable,’ ‘mutual respect,’ ‘wish each other well.’ It will be tasteful and firm.”

“Good,” Damon said. It came out as habit, a reflexive assent.

Caroline raised her water glass like a tiny champagne. “To tasteful and firm.”

They clinked. Damon didn’t lift his glass. He watched Sloane watching him not lift it and saw in her eyes not offense but calculation, a minor adjustment of a line: he is not ready to perform the cheer. He is ready to perform the steadiness.

She shifted in her chair so her knee grazed his under the table. “You don’t have to do more than breathe,” she said softly for him alone. “We can do the rest.”

We can do the rest. We, not you. Comforting, and faintly chilling. He took a breath and let it out through his nose.

The main course arrived—roasted duck with cherries, a nod to the chef’s belief in his own restraint. Damon cut and chewed and found himself, absurdly, thinking of noodles eaten from a pot. He shook the image like a moth.

“Have you spoken to Whitmore about the foundation gala?” Lorraine asked Sloane. “It would be good timing. A quiet appearance. Let them photograph your commitment to the children’s hospital.”

“Already handled,” Sloane said. “I’ve reserved a table and reached out to three journalists we trust. They’ll ask the questions we want.”

Caroline set her fork down with a little sigh of delight. “Do you hear that? Competence. It’s so sexy.”

Lorraine shot Caroline a look and then softened it. “I mean this sincerely, Damon: Sloane has been your rock. Loyal, unwavering. She has never faltered.”

He looked at Sloane because both women required it. She met his eyes without flinching, an open book with the words laid out in a font designed for readability: I am here, I am useful, I am yours if you are mine.

He thought of Mya again and felt immediately disloyal to the room. He did not summon a romantic montage. He summoned a single clear memory like a pin—small, specific, inexplicably piercing.

It was their wedding reception. The band had stopped playing a waltz and switched to something looser because the guests were drunk and wanted to feel young. A cousin had made a speech that went on too long. Mya had leaned toward Damon at the head table, hair slightly escaping its pins, no cameras watching for once, and whispered, Do you ever get the sense we’re cosplaying someone else’s life? He had laughed because he thought it was a line from a show. She had smiled because she’d meant it and he hadn’t noticed.

When did he stop noticing? When did the corrections—not that dress, not that answer, not that laugh—become muscle memory for both of them? At what point did he decide that the simplest route through a day was to leave her out of it?

“Damon?” Lorraine prompted.

He blinked. “Yes.”

She regarded him a beat longer than usual. “I said we should make decisions promptly. The market interprets hesitation as weakness.”

“Of course,” he said. He heard the word from some polite distance and did not love the way he sounded there.

Sloane’s hand slid from his wrist to his forearm. “We’ll tighten the schedule,” she said. “Keep you visible on your terms. I’ve drafted talking points if you need them.”

Talking points. As if human grief was a product roll-out. But then, wasn’t this what he was good at? Finding the line and walking it to the decimal? He felt something like relief and something like surrender, and he was too tired to distinguish them.

“Thank you,” he said to Sloane. It landed flat. He tried again, shaping the sentence the way they wanted it. “You’ve been… steady.”

Her smile brightened, not from flattery, but from confirmation that her approach worked. “We’re a team,” she said.

Caroline raised her brows at Damon, as if to say finally. Lorraine nodded, approval relaxing her shoulders.

The conversation drifted to schedules and seating charts, the choreography of reputation. Damon contributed where required: a date here, a no to this editor, a yes to that hospital. He felt himself returning to a familiar competence, the old gears slotting in. He could do this. He had always been able to do this. He could run a company and a narrative in the same week.

The room softened around the edges the way rooms do when their inhabitants are satisfied. Caroline told a story about someone’s publicist—names, missteps, delicious consequences. Lorraine made a dry joke about a rival’s facelift and for a minute they all laughed and the house sounded like its old self: a place where sharpness could pass for intimacy.

Dessert arrived, a small architecture of chocolate and gold leaf that looked engineered to be admired before it was tasted. Damon lifted his spoon and caught his reflection in the curve—a distorted man, upside down.

He let the spoon hover. “I should make a statement to the board by morning,” he said, not a question.

Lorraine nodded. “Whitmore will help you draft. Keep it to business. Do not indulge the personal.”

“Of course,” he said again.

Sloane tilted her head. “And after the gala, we could take a weekend. The countryside. Cameras love a reset, and it might… help.” The last two words were softer than the first: might help. She meant him. He recognized the care in it, the calculation too. With Sloane they came as a set.

He should choose. That phrase rose in him and sat down hard. He should choose the table he’d set: his mother’s approval, his sister’s applause, Sloane’s steady hand, the company’s steadiness, the narrative’s clean line. He should choose the thing he knows how to control.

He also saw, for half a second with a clarity that made his jaw clench, the other table—the one in a tiny apartment with a mug that didn’t match anything, a plant that hadn’t been bought yet, a woman writing in a notebook with the window open to night air. He closed his eyes against it. He opened them again on Sloane’s face.

She had always been in his corner. Through school, through deals, through whatever passed for quiet nights. She had been there when he needed adoration, when he needed an equal, when he needed a mirror that didn’t ask him who he was trying to be. She had never made him feel like he was cosplaying someone else’s life, because her version of the life matched the brochure.

Mya had looked at the brochure, then looked at him, and asked too many questions.

He set the spoon down and turned fully to Sloane, letting his mouth find the shape the room expected. “You’ve been extraordinary,” he said, and this time it sounded less like a press release and more like a man reminding himself of a decision. “I mean that.” He let his hand cover hers on the table—a public gesture even in a private room. “I don’t say it enough.”

Sloane’s eyes softened, and for once the calculation stepped back to make room for something like relief. “Say it when it matters,” she said.

“It matters,” he said. He looked at Lorraine and Caroline, and they radiated approval like lamps.

The relief that flooded him wasn’t noble. It was simple: a path chosen is easier to walk than an open field. He lifted his glass this time. “To continuity,” he said, stealing his mother’s word.

“To continuity,” Lorraine echoed, pleased.

“To competence,” Caroline chimed.

Sloane touched her glass to his. “To us.”

They drank. The chocolate collapsed under their spoons and tasted like nothing until the sugar finally asserted itself. Servers cleared plates, folded linen, reset crystal.

Damon pushed his chair back and stood. The room tilted and then righted. He offered Sloane his hand because it fit the play, because it fit the moment, because it fit. She stood into it, her smile aligning with his.

He walked her to the terrace, where the night threw their reflections back at them in the glass. Beyond, the city pulsed its indifferent heartbeat. Sloane leaned her shoulder against his. He let it anchor him.

“This will pass,” she said.

He nodded. In the glass he could see a distortion of himself again, taller, thinner, a man drawn by a hand with a ruler. He did not look for the crimson flash. He did not look for the woman with the notebook and the window open. He held the picture steady: Lorraine satisfied, Caroline entertained, Sloane constant, the company stable. He could live inside that frame. He had for years. He would again.

He breathed in. “Thank you,” he said to Sloane, and meant it in the way a man means it when he decides a life is a system and he will be the engineer, not the poet.

She threaded her arm through his. “We start early,” she said, the promise of schedules in her voice.

“We always do,” he said.

They went back to the table and finished what was left.