Chapter 37 Rosanna
Chapter thirty-seven
Rosanna
I'm supposed to be working on Chapter Nine of Mira's story, but instead I'm sitting on Luna's couch.
My apartment is too quiet, and Luna insisted I come over.
My laptop is open to my email archives, and I'm scrolling through years of correspondence with Shay.
Looking for proof that I was right to leave.
But that's not what I'm finding.
I pull up an email from two years ago, long before ERS or marriage contracts or any of this complicated mess.
I'd written to Shay about feeling stuck in my career, wondering if I was good enough to make it as a professional illustrator or if I should find something more practical.
His response was three paragraphs of genuine encouragement, specific observations about my work that showed he'd been paying attention for years, and this line that makes my chest ache now.
You have a gift for making people believe impossible things are possible. That's not common. That's not something you should set aside just because it's hard.
I keep scrolling.
Another one, from six months before the wedding, when I mentioned feeling lonely in a way I couldn't quite explain.
His response: I understand that. Being surrounded by people but still feeling fundamentally alone.
Like you're performing but the real you is somewhere underneath, not quite connecting.
Just know you're not as alone as you feel.
These aren't the emails of someone manipulating me.
I pull up the emails from after we got married, and now that I know to look for it, I can see the pattern. Shay's responses became more careful, more measured. But the care was still there.
I remember reading those emails and thinking Shay was being cryptic.
Now I understand.
Two months after the wedding, the emails shifted again. More vulnerable. More specific. Like he was trying to bridge the gap between Shay and Seamus without directly revealing the connection.
I'm learning something difficult, he wrote.
I'm learning that the walls I built to protect myself are actually just keeping me lonely.
That the person I'm most afraid of being vulnerable with is the person who most deserves my honesty.
And I don't know how to fix what I've broken by being too afraid to trust.
I wrote back asking who he was talking about. He never quite answered, just said: Someone who sees me more clearly than anyone else ever has. Someone I'm terrified of losing because I don't know how to be what they need.
He was writing about me. To me.
And I was reading it as advice about my marriage instead of confession about our marriage.
I'm still scrolling through emails, tears streaming down my face as I re-read months of Seamus trying to be honest in the only way he knew how, when Luna bursts through the door with her phone in her hand and an expression I can't quite read.
"Rosie. You need to hear this." She's breathless, like she ran up the stairs instead of taking the elevator. "I just got off the phone with Marcus—you know, my contact at city planning?"
I close my laptop, wiping at my face. "What happened?"
"The Heritage Street building. It's being designated as a historical landmark." She says it like she can't quite believe it herself. "Apparently someone filed a comprehensive architectural survey and got the state preservation office involved. It was expensive. And fast."
I hurry around to hover over her phone to see what she's so excited about.
Preliminary designation as of this morning.
Subject to final city council vote in two weeks, but Marcus says it's basically locked in.
The designation wouldn't stop the sale—O'MalleyMart still owns it—but it stops the demolition.
They can't tear it down without going through years of review and appeals. "
I stare at her, trying to process what she's saying. "But the council voted to table the application. Yesterday. We were there. They said it was too much administrative burden."
"I know. That's what makes this weird." Luna sits down next to me, pulling up something on her phone. “Marcus said someone with serious pull made a few calls. And suddenly the council found a reason to say yes.”
My heart is pounding. "Who? Who made those calls? It can't be Seamus," I say automatically. "His whole company has been fighting against preservation. Why would Seamus turn around and landmark the building they just bought?"
"Maybe because his wife cares about it?" Luna suggests gently. "Maybe because some things matter more?"
I want to believe it. Want to believe that Seamus looked at everything that happened—me leaving, the building being sold, the city council vote—and decided to fight for what I cared about even though I wasn't there to see it.
That he used his resources and connections not to demolish faster but to protect what I love.
But it doesn't make sense. Landmarking the building he just bought would undermine his own company's development plans.
Why would he do that?
"Call Marcus back," I say to Luna. "Ask him if he's sure. Ask him if there's any way this came from somewhere else—state preservation groups, federal grants, anything that doesn't involve O'MalleyMart advocating for their own building to be protected."
Luna makes the call, and I listen to her half of the conversation. Asking questions, pressing for details, trying to find an explanation that doesn't require me to believe that Seamus did something this risky and selfless purely because it mattered to me.
When she hangs up, her expression tells me everything I need to know.
"It was him," Luna says quietly. "Marcus didn't say it directly, but said it was someone with serious resources making this happen fast."
"I still don't understand why," I say, and my voice sounds small. "It doesn’t make sense. What does he get out of it?"
Luna looks at me with something that might be exasperation or affection or both. "Maybe that's exactly the point, Rosie. Maybe he's done being strategic. Maybe he's just trying to do the right thing because it's right, not because it gets him something."
I open my laptop again and pull up the most recent email from Seamus.
My finger hovers over it. I'm terrified of what's inside—more carefully crafted explanations that sound good but mean nothing, or worse, raw honesty that will make me question everything I've convinced myself is true about him and us and whether any of this was ever real.
I click it open.
Rosanna,
I don't expect you to read this. But I need to say this anyway.
You were right. About all of it. I kept the Shay secret because I was afraid.
I didn't tell you about the board's plans because I was a coward.
I accused you of using me when you were just trying to love me because I've spent so long being used that I couldn't recognize the real thing when it was standing right in front of me.
I don't know if you'll ever trust me again.
But I'm going to try anyway. Not because I think it will change your mind.
But because you taught me something important: some things are worth fighting for even when you know you'll probably lose. Some things matter more than protecting yourself from pain.
The Heritage Street building is being designated as a landmark. The demolition is stopped.
You were right. It matters.
I'm also placing two of my executives on administrative leave pending an ethics investigation. I think they crossed lines. I need to know if that’s true.
None of this fixes what I did to you. None of this proves I'm capable of being the partner you need. But I wanted you to know: I’m trying to do this differently. Even if I’m too late.
I love you. Both versions of you—Anna and Rosanna, though they were always the same person. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you sooner. I'm sorry I kept us separated because I was too afraid to merge them into one honest relationship.
I understand if you can't forgive that. I understand if the damage is too deep to repair. But I needed you to know that my feelings were always real. Shay's feelings, Seamus's feelings—they were the same feelings. I was just too broken to show you all of them at once.
You don't owe me anything. Not a response, not forgiveness, not another chance. But if you ever want to talk—really talk, no more secrets or strategic withholding—I'll be here.
— Seamus
(P.S. - I signed the advocacy group retainer. I know it's too late to help with the acquisition, but maybe they can do something with the landmark designation. Maybe they can help protect other buildings before they get to this point. I should have done it when you first asked. I'm sorry I didn't.)
I read it twice, then three times. And I think about the emails I've been reading all morning—years of Shay being vulnerable and honest in ways Seamus couldn't manage in person.
Trying to tell me how he felt, trying to bridge the gap between who he was as my pen pal and who he was as my husband, just never finding the courage to make it explicit.
He's the same person who's been trying to tell me he loved me in every email, every carefully chosen word, every moment of honesty he could manage through the safety of distance.
And now he's trying to tell me in person.
Without the distance.
I glance at my Seamus Project sketchbook.
Maybe I can do the same.