Georgia's voice arrived from the hall, "Dinner is ready" .Georgia Mason had a voice designed to travel, so she just liked to use it rather often because it could carry across rooms, gardens, shopping centres, and possibly small oceans if required.

Nobody in Seaview House ever needed a dinner bell. They had Georgia, and this is why Ty closed his eyes for a second.

His mother's volume was one of the many things he believed stood between him and the sophisticated image he was trying to create online.

Digital creators were supposed to have mysterious, elegant backgrounds and not mothers who yelled:

"Ty! Stop making videos and carry the soup before it gets cold!"

Unfortunately, reality had never shown much interest in his branding strategy.

Georgia was Daniel's cousin and had arrived at Seaview House years earlier during a difficult chapter of her life.

After Ty's father died, Daniel and Claire offered them a place to stay at first, temporarily, but like many temporary things in Seaview House, it quietly became permanent.

Georgia helped maintain the enormous old mansion, cooking, organising, cleaning, keeping track of birthdays, appointments and everything everyone else forgot.

Nobody called her a housekeeper, but nobody called her a guest either.

The truth existed somewhere in the uncomfortable space between, and Ty hated that, and that was not because he was ashamed of his mother-never that.

He hated that nobody seemed able to define where they belonged.

Were they family, staff, or were they simply a charity case? Some days, there were others, and the answer changed depending on who was speaking, and, most of the time, Ty hated the uncertainty.

"Ty!"

Georgia appeared at the end of the hallway, wearing a colourful floral dress and holding a wooden spoon like a commander directing troops.

"Ty, can you please put the phone down. Need an extra pair of hands for tonight because the dinner can’t be served  by itself"

"I have followers."

"Wonderful then can ask them to carry potatoes."

Michael laughed, and even Daniel smiled.

Ty surrendered because, for all his online confidence, no one had defeated Georgia, not in the kitchen anyway.

The kitchen sat at the very back of Seaview House, inside the modern extension added twenty years earlier.

Like many Victorian houses, the building was deceptively long, and from the street it looked charming, set back in an overgrown garden. Through the ironwork gate, you could only get glimpses of the white house, but inside it stretched back through generations of renovations.

A long central hallway ran through the original house, with rooms opening on both sides like chapters from different decades.

The formal sitting room with large couches and centred by the original fireplace with its mirror presiding over the mantel, the library was Daniel's domain, covered in tall bookshelves in a dark mahogany colour, bedrooms were lined up along the way, the original music room was transformed and modernised, and now holds the open plan kitchen and breakfast room.

Then, finally, the newer glass extension overlooking the garden, where everyday life actually happened.

The old dining room was for celebrations,the kitchen was for truth and morning coffees, and sometimes for all those late-night talks over a mug of milk when time and troubles lay ahead.

Ty returned carrying a large soup bowl with both hands, moving carefully beneath the hallway arch.

Above him, the old chandelier scattered light across the walls in hundreds of tiny rainbow fragments, and for a moment, the entire hallway looked as if it were covered in sparkles or just refracted memories.

He passed the antique mirror near the entrance, the same one that appeared in half of Claire's little stories.

Normally, Ty would have stopped to check his hair, fix the angle, or maybe just record something.

Tonight, he barely glanced because the reflection staring back wasn't exactly influencer material :a twenty-seven-year-old man was carefully carrying soup because his mother told him to.

This didn’t shout an uplifting motivational quote or a luxury lifestyle, and most definitely not "building my empire."It was just soup.

He hurried past before the mirror or the internet could remember it, and this is

How the dinner at Seaview House finally began at nine-thirty, only one hour and thirty minutes late, which, according to family tradition, meant perfectly on time.

The strange thing about families was how quickly they could return to normal even with a broken decanter, a mysterious shadow in the garden, or an argument in the study: they were all forgotten the moment food appeared.

Almost forgotten because some people talked when they were nervous, while others drank, and Ty filmed.

"Okay," Ty announced, placing his phone beside his plate as he put down the soup bowl and took more confidence when he sat at his place at the table, and before anybody could start tackling the soup, he fired a question: "Question for Daniel."

Daniel looked immediately suspicious.

"That sentence has never ended well."

"I am genuinely interested “Ty's face was straight and phone down.

"Even more suspicious," commented Daniel as he started spooning some soup into his plate.

Ty grinned without losing his composure.

"So, we all know that you are a big and important ship engineer. New Year's Eve. Everyone is having fun, and you're hiding in the study."

"I was working."

"On what?"

"Ships."

"That's not  really an answer, that is rather just a category."

Daniel sighed as he stopped short of starting his soup, and some of the others laughed, not exactly loud, but a laugh it was.

"What exactly do you want to know?"

Ty leaned forward.

"Are we talking important ship things? Or are you secretly designing better coffee machines?"

Michael laughed first.

Daniel stared at Ty.

"Coffee machines?"

"Come on. People stuck at sea for weeks. The coffee machine goes down, morale collapses. Seems  a critical piece of equipment to me….”

Eleanor lifted her glass to start a toast, and clipped:

"The boy understands humanity."

Daniel tried not to smile, but finally he decided that it was New Year's Eve and the boy deserved a break, so he started slowly:

"Ships have propulsion systems, navigation, safety systems, structural integrity..."

"Sure, sure," Ty interrupted. "But answer honestly. Has anyone ever panicked more about a broken engine than a broken coffee machine?"

Daniel paused, a pause that made others stop talking.

"Actually..."

Everyone looked at him. This is how his remarks were received: he didn’t talk much, but when he did, others listened.

"No."

"I knew it!" Ty shouted.

Daniel shook his head, crossed his hands under his chin, and, with a small smile, calmly explained.

"You know what, years ago, I saw sailors handle major technical failures calmly. Professional. Organised. Disciplined."

"And?"

"Then the coffee machine stopped working."Now Daniel smiled broadly.

"And?"

"I have never seen a faster maintenance response."

Even Jack laughed.

Eleanor started playing imaginary piano keys on the table.

"An ode to caffeine. The fuel of civilisation."

Ty pointed.

"See? That's the content people want."

Daniel raised an eyebrow.

"The fact that you call normal conversation content worries me."

"Different generation."

"That cristal clear."

"What about the potato fryer?"

Daniel stopped.

"What about it?"

"I bet if the potato fryer breaks, full emergency."

Michael looked amused.

"He's probably right."

Daniel looked around the table. He didn’t know what to make of each of them. With people, you never know: traitors and friends were everywhere, and sometimes they changed sides from one day to the next, or they were pushed by whatever life threw at them.

Finally, he reluctantly admitted:

"There are certain pieces of equipment you don't underestimate."

"Like engines?"

"Yes."

"Navigation?"

"Even more if you intent to actually arrived at planned destination"

"Potato fryer?"

A long silence and then Daniel, with a rare smile, said:

"Well, if you wish to avoid a riot on board, it had better be fixed first”

The whole table laughed, and for one moment, the old Seaview House returned: no secrets, no shadows,no broken glass-just people

laughing around a table.

And that was exactly why everyone later remembered this moment, because it was the last time anyone saw Daniel Mason truly smile.