I felt Cal shift beside me—tense, quiet. Like a man sitting between a live grenade and a moral dilemma.
“I’m not sensitive,” I said evenly. “I’m awake. There’s a difference.”
Hal rolled his eyes and turned back to Cal. “Anyway. We’ll need to start liaising with some of the family landholders in the next few months. Get them onside, smooth the way for permits. I’ve already got a PR firm lined up to frame the whole thing as a ‘heritage preservation initiative.’ Makes it easier to move the needle.”
I opened my mouth, but Cal got there first.
“We’re not ‘framing’ anything,” he said, his voice quiet but loaded. “If we’re doing this, we’re doing it transparently.”
Hal waved that off like a gnat. “Of course. Transparency. Got it.”
But there was a flicker in Cal’s expression—something tightening around the eyes, the jaw. I could tell he wasn’t buying it either. Still, he said nothing, just kept flipping through the pages like he was trying to read his way out of the room.
Hal took a smug sip of wine and leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head and legs spread wide.
“You know,” he said, with that grating tone men use when they think they’re being generous. “This whole cultural angle could be a win-win. You give people a plaque, a statue, a ribbon-cutting ceremony with a few sacred chants, and boom—everyone feels seen.”
I actually choked on my wine.
“A few sacred chants?” I said.
Hal shrugged. “Symbolism matters. Optics matter. As long as it photographs well, people don’t care what it used to be. They just want to feel like it’s still theirs.”
I turned to Cal, incredulous. “Are you hearing this?”
“I’m sitting right here,” Cal muttered.
“Unbelievable,” I said, shaking my head.
Hal looked between us, amused. “What? I’m on your side. I’m talking community engagement. Empathy. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
“You don’t get to say the word empathy when you’ve spent the last ten minutes talking about sacred land like it’s a branding opportunity,” I snapped.
Hal looked both offended and annoyed. “Alright, alright. Let’s not get emotional. It’s just business. Right, Cal?” he added with a smug little smirk.
Cal held up a hand—not rude, just firm. “Okay,” he said, voicecalm but sharp enough to cut through the tension. “Let’s all take a breath, shall we?”
I sat back in my chair, wine glass clenched, ready to toss my drink in Hal’s face.
Cal turned to Hal first. “Hal, I know you’re keen to get this deal across the line, but language matters. If we’re going to talk about cultural engagement, let’s do it with some actual respect. We’re not handing out photo ops—we’re working with people who live on that land, whose ancestors are buried on that land. So let’s not reduce that to optics or sacred chants, okay?”
Hal huffed. “Fine. Sure. I’ll revise the pitch.”
Cal didn’t flinch. “It’s not about the pitch. It’s about how we approach this.”
Then he turned to me. “Matt, I know this is hard to sit through. Believe me, I do. But I need to understand what’s in this proposal, and you being here helps me do that with clear eyes. So thank you for coming.”
I took a breath. Then another. I didn’t respond, not with words, but I eased my grip on the wine glass.
Cal gave a small nod, then flipped back to the page in front of him.
“So,” he said to Hal, all business again. “Let’s walk through the revised access clause. Line by line.”
Back at the house, the sky had turned a deep tropical indigo like a storm was deciding whether to brew.
I was barefoot, curled into a chair on the lanai with a glass of red wine and a head full of everything I wished I’d said more loudly at lunch.
Cal came out a minute later, his wine glass in one hand and the bottle in the other. He topped up my glass before sitting beside me with a sigh.
