“You eat chicken?” my father calls over his shoulder.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Set the table. Plates are in the cabinet by the window. And Genevieve?”
“Yeah, Papa?”
He turns, wooden spoon in hand, and his eyes are red, but his voice is steady.
“Always and in all ways.”
My throat burns. “Always and in all ways.”
I squeeze Lance’s hand beneath the table, and he squeezes back, and the three of us sit in my father’s kitchen while the coq au vin simmers, and for one night, just one, we pretend the world outside can’t touch us.
Where Is Everybody? Rosebrook’s Golden Couples Go Dark
Let’s start with the obvious: Arthur Penngrove and his newly minted fiancée Genevieve DeGrance have not been seen together in public since the proposal. Not at Dante’s. Not at the tavern. Nowhere.
Art, meanwhile, was spotted leaving a meeting at the mayor’s office looking, and we quote our source here, “like someone walked over his grave.”
The Penngrove campaign has gone radio silent. The Calloway PR team hasn’t returned our calls. WayMont’s public calendar shows nothing for the week.
And here’s the thing really eating at us: Paxton Calloway was seen at the county courthouse yesterday. Not the new WayMont corporate offices. Thecourthouse. If that doesn’t set off alarm bells, you haven’t been paying attention.
We don’t know what’s happening behind the iron gates and old-money doors of this town. But something is. And it’s big enough that nobody’s talking.
TheRagdoesn’t scare easy. We’ll be here when the silence breaks.
Have a tip? Send it in.
#RosebrookSilence #WhereIsArt #CallowayThrowaway #EngagementOrEntanglement #PaxtonAtTheCourthouse #WatchThisSpace #RosebrookRagExclusive
Chapter 41
Lance
Leo DeGrance cooks the way Genevieve does.
It’s the same instinct, the same hands moving without thought, pulling ingredients by feel instead of measurement. He hums while he works, something low and French I don’t recognize, and Genevieve curls into the chair beside me with her knees pulled to her chest and watches him like she’s memorizing the scene.
I don’t blame her. I’m memorizing it, too.
The brownstone kitchen is small compared to the estate I grew up in, but it’s warmer than anywhere I’ve ever lived. Copper pots hang from a rack above the stove. There’s a framed photograph on the wall of a woman with Genevieve’s hair, and I look away from it before the ache becomes something I can’t swallow.
Leo sets a plate in front of me. Chicken in dark wine sauce, potatoes, fresh bread. It smells like something that belongs in a different life.
“Eat,” he says.
I eat because he told me to, and because the last thing I consumed was gas station coffee somewhere outside Hartford, and because turning down a meal that a father made for his daughter feels like a sin I’m not willing to commit.
It’s good. But Genevieve’s is better.
Genevieve catches me chewing and her mouth twitches. “Told you.”
“You didn’t tell me anything.”
“I told you he was the best cook I know.”
