Chapter 28
Gwen
The renderings sat in front of her, glossy and triumphant. Whole city blocks reduced to neat rectangles and gleaming glass towers, parks like green stamps, traffic flow modeled in clean arcs. It was supposed to look inevitable. Progress made tangible.
Gwen tugged at the edge of her blazer sleeve, her thumb brushing over the watch Maggie had given her, the one she always wore to big meetings as a kind of lucky talisman. She needed the strength of it now more than ever.
She swallowed hard and said, calmly, “I’m declining.”
The word dropped into the conference room like a stone into a pond.
Across from her, Melinda’s head snapped up. “Excuse me?”
“I can’t accept the Principal Architect promotion.” Gwen kept her voice even, steady. “Not at this time.”
The senior partner to Melinda’s right blinked. The junior associate at the far end of the table actually dropped his pen.
Melinda recovered first, her tone sharp. “Gwen, this isn’t a minor project. This is your moment. Years of work have brought you here.”
“I know.” Gwen forced herself to meet her eyes, rotating the watch against her wrist until the band pinched. “That’s why I need to step back. I’d like to request a leave of absence instead.”
Inside, her chest was a vise, each breath scraping. Her palms itched. Her pulse pounded hard enough she half expected someone to hear it, but her voice remained the measured, collected cadence she’d spent two decades cultivating.
Melinda stared. “A leave.”
“Yes.” Gwen smoothed a hand down the line of her charcoal trousers. “Effective immediately. I’ll work with the team to transition my active projects.”
“Gwen—” Melinda leaned forward, incredulous. “Do you understand what you’re saying? This isn’t a sabbatical. This is the culmination of your career. You’ve built a reputation for being unshakable, indispensable. And now you want to… vanish?”
The panic in Gwen’s chest threatened to spill, but she anchored herself with the feel of the watchband biting against her wrist. “I’m not vanishing. I’m preserving my ability to return.”
Melinda’s eyes narrowed. “This isn’t like you.”
No, it wasn’t. Not the Gwen who stayed late, who slept on office sofas during deadlines, who made herself a weapon of reliability.
Except that Gwen had watched her marriage disintegrate in the quiet margins between projects.
That Gwen had sat in sterile rooms with blueprints while Maggie sat on the kitchen floor with funeral potatoes and grief.
“This is what I need,” Gwen said finally, voice low.
For the first time, she saw it. The flicker in Melinda’s expression wasn’t concern. It was disappointment. Irritation. A calculation about how hard it would be to replace her. Gwen felt something inside her shift, like a lens snapping into focus.
Melinda wasn’t her friend. She had never been her friend.
She was her boss. Her mentor, maybe, but only as long as Gwen performed. The loyalty Gwen thought they’d built — the long hours, the late-night takeout, the half confessions over martinis — it was all transactional. A currency of usefulness.
Her best friend had always been Maggie. Maggie, who teased her, fought her, knew her flaws and loved her anyway.
Maggie, who’d seen her exhausted and brittle and still leaned in, still reached for her.
Even now, even separated, even drowning in resentment — Maggie was the only one Gwen wanted in this moment.
Sitting in that sterile conference room with the cold, flawless design plans between them, Gwen wanted nothing more than to hear Maggie’s laugh, to feel her hand on her knee under the table, to have her say It’s just a job, Gwen.
You’re allowed to choose something else that’s a better fit for you.
The realization gutted her. Because Maggie wasn’t here. Because Gwen had chosen wrong too many times.
The silence stretched. The others at the table looked everywhere but at her. Melinda’s expression hardened into something Gwen didn’t want to name.
“Very well,” Melinda said at last, clipped. “We’ll discuss the details with HR. But Gwen—” Her gaze cut sharp. “Think carefully. Some opportunities don’t wait.”
“I know,” Gwen said again.
Her chest screamed, panic clawing at the edges. But outwardly, she sat still, composed. She gathered the glossy renderings, stacked them neatly, and slid them toward the center of the table.
Melinda’s hand hovered, then withdrew.
The meeting ended in a flurry of awkward chair scrapes and murmured excuses.
Gwen walked out first, her dress shoes clicking across the polished floor, each step steady, betraying nothing. Inside, she was collapsing.
By the time she reached the elevator, her throat was tight, her breath shallow. Her reflection stared back from the stainless steel doors: blazer, trousers, the watch gleaming on her wrist. Immaculate. Unreadable.
She pressed the button, pulse racing, and whispered the words to herself, trying to make them true: “I did the right thing. I did a stupid thing, but the right thing. Oh my god. What did I just do? Was it the right thing?”
The parking garage was a half-empty echo chamber, the kind of place where footsteps ricocheted too loud. Gwen walked to her car with a measured pace. Inside, she was fraying apart.
She slid into the driver’s seat, shut the door, and the silence collapsed around her like a vacuum. For the first time all morning, there was no hum of conversation, no scrape of chairs, no steady drone of HVAC. Just Gwen and the ringing in her own ears.
Her chest seized.
She dropped her forehead against the steering wheel and finally, finally let herself exhale.
It came out ragged, almost a sob, though she forced it down before it could become one.
She gripped the wheel until her knuckles whitened, then reached instinctively for the watch.
She twisted it on her wrist, thumb pressing into the bezel, grounding herself in the weight of it.
Maggie’s gift. Maggie’s taste. Maggie’s reminder.
Her best friend, her anchor, the person she’d lost thread by thread.
She should call her. God, she wanted to call her.
The thought came like a flood: Maggie’s voice in her ear, Maggie teasing her for being dramatic, Maggie softening once she realized Gwen was serious.
Her thumb hovered over Maggie’s name in her contacts, screen glowing in the dim light of the car. Just one more push and she’d hear her voice. Just one more push and maybe everything wouldn’t feel like it was unraveling.
But then her stomach knotted, panic rising. What if Maggie didn’t pick up? Worse — what if she did, and sounded tired, or polite, or worse still… indifferent? What if the only thing Maggie heard in Gwen’s voice was desperation?
She swiped the screen off, tossing the phone onto the passenger seat like it had burned her.
Her breaths came shallow, tight. She pressed the heel of her hand to her eyes. She couldn’t afford to want so much. Not when she was the one who had made herself a stranger in her own marriage.
Her phone buzzed against the seat. She startled, fumbling to grab it, answering without even checking the ID. “Maggie?”
But it was Izzy’s voice, low and urgent. “Uh, no. Sorry. It’s, uh, it’s Izzy.”
Gwen didn’t like the tone in Izzy’s voice. Her heart stuttered. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m at the hospital,” Izzy said quickly. “With Maggie.”
Gwen’s grip on the phone tightened until the edges cut into her palm. “Hospital? What happened?”
“Well, it’s kind of a long story. She fell down off the dock. Danica was freaked it was broken. They’re doing X-rays.” Izzy’s voice wavered, like she was trying to keep it breezy but couldn’t. “She’s fine, mostly. But I thought you should know.”
Gwen’s mind filled in too many details at once: Maggie laughing on the dock, Maggie’s ankle folding, Maggie in pain, Maggie scared. Maggie without her.
“Is she—” Gwen swallowed hard. “Is she asking for me?”
“Not exactly,” Izzy admitted softly. “She doesn’t know I called. I’m out in the hallway. She’d kill me if she knew. But, Gwen—” Izzy hesitated. “She’s stubborn. She’s downplaying it. But she’s in a lot of pain and…”
The silence stretched. Gwen’s breath came shallow, panic clawing again.
She could stay. She could sit in this car and tell herself Maggie didn’t want her there. That Izzy’s call was meddling, that Maggie would be furious, that showing up would only make things worse. She could play it safe, respect the boundary Maggie had tried to draw.
Or—
She could go.
She could choose, for once, the opposite of what had wrecked them: showing up. Not with a blueprint or a plan or a neat solution. Just her, messy and present.
The thought terrified her. Because if she went and Maggie turned her away? That would be the final break. No ambiguity left. No thread to hold on to.
But if she didn’t? If she stayed here, caged in her car, watching her life shrink down to an empty apartment and a title she no longer wanted? That was its own kind of death.
Her thumb rubbed the edge of the watch, the gift Maggie had given her when time had still been on their side.
She exhaled, steadying her voice. “I’ll be on the next flight out.”
Izzy was quiet for a moment, then whispered, “Good. That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”
They hung up with Gwen promising to send through details as soon as she had them.
Gwen sat in her car, phone still pressed to her ear, heart hammering. Then she lowered it, started the engine, and pulled out of the garage.
For once, she wasn’t thinking about the cost. She was thinking about Maggie. And she wasn’t going to be too late this time.
At the first red light, she called her mom. “Gwen?” her mom’s voice said, wary but warm.
Gwen gripped the wheel, throat tight. “Mom, you know how you said you’d watch the kids anytime?” She swallowed, her voice catching. “Well…”