A small, vindictive part of her wanted to laugh.Steve Hodges, the golden boy who’d been poaching her accounts and taking credit for her campaigns, had finally overextended himself.
“That’s unfortunate,” she said carefully.
“Unfortunate?”David’s voice sharpened.“Cassidy, this is a multi-million-dollar account.I need you back in Chicago immediately.”
The room tilted slightly.“You need me to come back early?From leave?”
“I need you to save this account.And when you do, I’m prepared to offer you Senior VP of Strategy.Corner office.Twenty percent raise.Full creative authority over client selection.”He paused, letting the offer sink in.“This is everything we’ve discussed for your career trajectory.It’s happening now instead of in three or four years.”
Everything she’d worked for.
The title she’d been chasing since she became junior executive.
The validation that all those eighty-hour weeks and missed dinners and sacrificed relationships had been worth it.
“How soon can you be here?”David pressed.“I can have a ticket waiting for you at Tampa International this afternoon.”
Her reflection stared back at her from the window, superimposed over the courtyard garden.She looked different than she had six weeks ago.Her hair had lost its sharp precision, her face had more color, and she wasn’t wearing the armor of a tailored blazer.
“I need time to think about it,” she heard herself say.
“Time to think about a promotion?”
“I’m on leave for a reason, David.My therapist was very clear about the risks of returning to high-stress situations too quickly.”
“I understand that.But this is a unique opportunity.If you wait until your sabbatical ends, the Phillips situation will be resolved one way or another.This window closes fast.”
Of course it did.Everything in that world closed fast and moved fast.It demanded immediate responses and split-second decisions.
“Give me forty-eight hours,” she said.
“Cassidy—”
“Forty-eight hours.That’s all I’m asking.”
Another pause.“Fine.No longer.But I don’t know why you’re hesitating.It makes no sense.”
She ended the call and set the phone down like it might explode.
Senior VP of Strategy and a corner office.Everything she’d wanted.Everything she’d burned herself out trying to achieve.
She couldn’t sit still.The weight of David’s offer pressed against her like she’d forgotten how to breathe properly.
She opened her laptop, thinking work might steady her.Not Chicago work.Festival work.The kind that had started to feel less like an obligation and more like a purpose.
The vendor spreadsheet loaded.She scanned the confirmed bookings, the volunteer schedules, and the carefully negotiated contracts that Bryan had helped her navigate.Local fishermen selling their catch.Artists demonstrating traditional net-mending techniques.The Harbor Ladies judging their pie competition with the kind of fierce pride that made corporate award ceremonies look hollow.
This wasn’t her world.She’d be gone soon anyway.One week or sooner if she took David’s offer.
Her fingers moved to the financial documents almost without conscious thought.Numbers had always been safe.Quantifiable.They didn’t ask uncomfortable questions about what she actually wanted from life.
She pulled out her notes again.Attendance figures from previous decades.Budget allocations.Sponsor lists that showed how the event had evolved from a genuine community celebration to something struggling to justify its own existence.
Then she saw it again.The note she’d made and promptly forgotten in the chaos of final preparations.
Lighthouse funding 1943-1945: Private trust, not government.Check source.
She’d been so focused on the festival that she’d never followed up.Now, with her entire career hanging in the balance and her brain desperately seeking any distraction from that decision, the note pulled at her with professional curiosity.
