Chapter 24
Gwen
The conference room smelled faintly of burnt coffee and carpet cleaner. Gwen sat at the head of the table, the blueprints spread before her like a map of someone else’s life.
She folded her hands, blazer sleeves brushing against the cool surface.
The stainless steel watch at her wrist caught the light.
She rotated it slightly, a nervous habit she’d never broken, the way her thumb brushed the ridged bezel.
Maggie had given it to her for their seventh anniversary — slipped the box across the table at a quiet restaurant, murmured, You’re always on time, might as well look good doing it.
Across from her, Michael — one of the senior principals — beamed. “It’s a legacy project, Gwen. You’ll get promoted off this alone. The Board is ready to push you forward as Principal Architect.”
The others chimed in, all praise and handshakes. Words like visionary, leadership, career-defining.
Gwen nodded at the right beats, even forced a smile. But the drawings blurred. The sleek glass towers they were proposing would level an entire historic neighborhood. Shops she’d walked past for years. Houses people had raised families in.
Back on her desk, she had dozens of sketches of what the neighborhood could be if they’d invested in upgrading structures, increasing affordable living spaces, prioritizing the residents who already lived there.
She should’ve been thrilled. This was what she’d spent two decades climbing toward. Proof of worth. The kind of title she could hang around her neck like a medal.
Now, it all felt wrong.
Instead, her chest was tight, her throat narrowing like a vise.
“I’ll review the revisions tonight,” she heard herself say, her voice steady even as the edges of her vision sharpened, tunnel-like.
The meeting broke with back slaps and congratulations. Gwen gathered her notes with mechanical precision, slipped into the hallway, walked past reception, and didn’t stop until she’d locked herself in the bathroom.
The silence hit like a wave.
She braced her hands on the counter, knuckles white against the cold marble.
Her reflection stared back — polished, professional, controlled.
She hated this project. Oh god, she hated it so much.
She hated that it stood for everything she’d fought against — rezoning historic neighborhoods, leveling legacy just to be shiny and new and expensive.
Her chest heaved. She couldn’t get air down deep enough. The sound of blood rushed in her ears. She pressed a fist to her sternum like she could hold herself together physically, but her hands were trembling.
This isn’t who I am.
The thought came unbidden, raw.
She tried to remember Maggie’s laugh — loud, brash, alive. The kids’ shrieks when they ran into her arms on the weekends. The way silence had swallowed her sterile apartment whole in the three weeks she’d been there.
The air caught, jagged, but it broke something loose. She slid down the wall to the tile floor, knees drawn up, breath coming in short, uneven gasps.
Someone knocked on the door. She forced her voice to be steady. “Occupied.”
Here she was, panicked by the crushing realization that she didn’t want the job she’d been killing herself for. That she’d spent years proving she was indispensable, only to discover she’d made herself disposable in her own life.
She buried her face in her hands and whispered it into the sterile air: “I don’t want this.”
Her phone buzzed in her blazer pocket. She fumbled it out, still sitting on the tile.
A notification: Shared Calendar Update from Maggie Pierce.
She opened it with trembling fingers.
Trip to Michigan — 4 days
Notes: Kids with Gwen.
That was all. Just logistics.
No explanation, no context. Just confirmation that while Maggie was off somewhere lakeside with their friends, Gwen would be here — parenting alone, filling the silence, pretending it was enough.
She closed her eyes against the screen’s glow, letting the realization settle like lead in her chest. The promotion, the apartment, the calendar — it was all the same story: A life she’d built so carefully, and somewhere along the way, she’d managed to write herself out of it.
The bar was one of those sleek hotel lounges where the lighting was too dim and the martinis too sharp. Gwen didn’t belong here, not tonight, but Melinda had texted — Drinks? You could use one. — and Gwen had said yes before she could think of an excuse.
Now she sat across from her boss, her mentor, the woman whose approval she’d chased for the last decade. Melinda in her tailored blazer, hair smooth as ever, the faintest smudge of eyeliner. Buttoned-up, inscrutable, always.
“You look tired,” Melinda said simply, lifting her glass.
Gwen forced a small smile. “It’s been… a week.”
Melinda arched a brow. “Everything all right?”
The question was casual, but her eyes held her steady, and Gwen felt her defenses buckle in a way they rarely did. She could have lied. She usually did. But instead, she exhaled and said, “No. Not really.”
Melinda didn’t blink. Just waited.
“I’m separated,” Gwen admitted. The word still felt foreign on her tongue, like she was trying out someone else’s vocabulary. “We’ve worked out custody. I’m in a new place. It’s… new.”
“New?” Melinda echoed. “Is that good or bad?”
Gwen huffed a laugh. “It’s really bright and soulless, but it’s still nice at the same time. I don’t know how to explain it right.”
“Don’t,” Melinda said, taking a slow sip. “You don’t have to.”
Gwen wrapped her hands around her glass, fingers tight on the condensation. “I just… I thought I was doing it all for us. Working late, taking every project, building something big enough to carry both of us. And all she saw was me… gone.”
It was more than she’d meant to say. She clamped her mouth shut, cheeks heating.
Melinda set her glass down with a precise click. “You don’t owe me an explanation, Gwen.”
“I know.” Gwen hesitated. “I just — I can’t say it to anyone else.”
Melinda regarded her coolly, eyes sharp in the low bar light. For a long moment Gwen thought she wasn’t going to answer at all. Then Melinda leaned back, her posture elegant, detached. “I do understand, you know. I’ve been divorced twice.”
Gwen blinked. “Really?”
A faint, knowing smile. “Yes. Both times, the job came first. It always did. It always will.”
The words landed like a verdict, unflinching. Gwen felt them settle heavy in her chest. “And you don’t regret it?”
Melinda lifted her glass, swirling the liquid slowly before answering. “Regret?” She shook her head. “No. I’m proud of what I’ve built. My career gave me more than either marriage ever could. Stability. Recognition. Power. It’s not romantic, but it’s the truth.”
She looked directly at Gwen, her gaze cutting clean through. “You can try to pretend you can give both the work and the marriage your all, but one will always suffer. I chose not to be mediocre at either. I chose to give my all to the work.”
The truth of it pressed in on Gwen, sharp and suffocating.
Maggie’s face rose unbidden — her grief, her laughter, her warmth — and Gwen’s chest seized.
She’d always told herself she was the steady one, the provider, the ballast. But what had she really provided?
She hadn’t been carrying Maggie at all. She’d been carrying the job.
Melinda tipped her chin, eyes glittering. “It isn’t compartments, Gwen. It’s priorities. I think you and I are a lot alike in that way. We just find work to be the most rewarding part of our lives, and society says that’s wrong because we’re women, but only we get to say what’s right for us.”
Gwen nodded, mostly because Melinda was still her superior, and tried not to give in to her impulse to yell No. I’m not like that. I’m more than that. Instead, she sipped her drink in silence.
On the walk back to her car, Gwen’s phone buzzed again. The calendar notification glowed: Trip to Michigan — 4 days. Kids with Gwen.
She clenched the phone in her hand, the bitterness cutting sharp. Maggie off with their friends, Gwen left behind with the silence again.
And for the first time, she wondered if Melinda’s story wasn’t a warning at all, but a prophecy.
Two divorces, a glittering career, the kind of résumé people pointed to with admiration — and Melinda had sat there in the dim light, unapologetic. No regret in her voice, no wistfulness. Just steel. The job had come first. Always. And she was proud of it.
The words echoed long after. Gwen had followed the same map: build walls out of deadlines, stack accolades like bricks, convince yourself it was noble to be the steady one, the provider. But pride didn’t keep the apartment warm at night.
Her marriage hadn’t ended in a single break.
It was death by a thousand cuts. Missed birthdays.
Canceled weekends. Her phone always within reach, Maggie’s laugh sharpening until it lost its sweetness.
And then the final cut: Gwen carrying her boxes into a sterile two-bedroom, while Maggie explained to the kids in careful phrases about “Mommy’s new place” and “different houses, same love.”
Now, the silence was everywhere. Custody schedules taped to the fridge.
The coffee pot set for one. The kids’ toothbrushes in a cup by the sink, a reminder of weekends that passed too quickly.
She saw the outline of absence everywhere — the space on the couch where Maggie used to sit, the side of the bed that never dipped anymore.
She sat in the driver’s seat outside her building, hands locked on the wheel, throat tight.
She used to imagine growing old with Maggie, their kids loud around the dinner table, holidays crammed into a house that always felt too small.
Now the image dissolved every time she reached for it.
What remained was silence, and the weight of her own choices.
Maybe she was already too far down the road Melinda had walked. Maybe the truth was simpler: She had lost Maggie. She had lost the life they built. And prestige — the projects, the titles, the praise — wasn’t going to fill the empty rooms.