4. Thea
FOUR
THEA
Divorced at twenty-nine.
I turned the word over in my mouth on the walk from the subway to the nonprofit. Divorced. It didn't sound like me. It sounded like something that happened to other people — people who married wrong, married fast, or married the kind of man who leaves.
Caleb wasn't that man. Caleb was forever.
It happened fast. So fast it didn't feel real.
We filed papers. We signed them. No courtrooms. No long arguments.
No one made us explain what broke. We agreed on everything because there was nothing left to fight over, and maybe that was the worst part.
It was like closing a folder. Like ending a chapter no one planned to close.
Now Caleb was a name on a divorce decree finalized five weeks ago, and I was walking to work on a gray morning in a gray city under a sky that matched the inside of my chest.
I wasn't supposed to be here. I was supposed to be a mother by now. Our daughter was supposed to be sleeping in the room with the mint-green letters on the wall. Instead, the room was locked, the key in a drawer, and my ring finger bore a tan line where the band used to sit.
I walked into the nonprofit building, and Margot was in the hallway.
She didn't say a word — just opened her arms. I walked into them.
Her scarf smelled like cocoa butter and the lavender oil she kept in her desk drawer.
Her twists tickled my cheek. I stayed for ten seconds, nine more than I usually allowed.
Then I pulled back. "You can stop hugging me. I can’t be feeling like this every day."
Margot didn't laugh. She just let go. "It's just — you always look so sad when you walk in… But alright. You really think you're ready?"
I nodded. "We need this funding."
"The secretary at Vanguard confirmed the meeting time again this morning. We're presenting to the head of corporate social responsibility." Margot grabbed her bag from the hook on the wall. "I've got the slide deck. We're going to get this. I can feel it."
I saw how sure she was. How hopeful. And all I could do was wish — God, I wished — that I could feel even a sliver of that for myself.
The Vanguard building made me aware of my shoes. Crossing the lobby, I glanced down at my flats — the leather already creased at the toe. I wished I'd worn something else. Beside me, Margot's heels clicked against the marble.
A woman with a headset and a silk blouse checked our names against a screen, printed visitor badges, and escorted us to a private elevator.
We rode up in silence. Margot adjusted her scarf. I adjusted my navy blazer — my best secondhand find, almost intentional if you didn't check the stitching. My canvas tote hung on my shoulder, stuffed with printouts, backup copies, and a granola bar I probably wouldn't eat.
The elevator opened onto a floor of glass walls. A young man led us down a corridor past offices where people spoke in low voices behind expensive doors, to a conference room at the end of the hall.
The table was long and polished, reflecting the overhead lights like still water.
At the front sat Claire Dumont, the head of the Corporate social responsibility (CSR) we were here to see.
She looked mid-forties, her golden hair in a high ponytail that complemented the tailored green dress. She stood when we entered.
"Ms. Calloway. Ms. Osei. Thank you for coming in." She gestured to the chairs at the opposite end.
We sat. Margot opened her laptop. I opened the folder with our impact reports and laid the pages in front of me.
"Thank you for making the time, Claire." Margot clicked to the first slide. "We'd like to walk you through the emergency housing program we've been running for the last three years, specifically the placement outcome data and the funding model that sustains it."
Claire uncapped her pen. "Please."
"Last fiscal year, we placed two hundred fourteen families in emergency housing. The cost per family comes to approximately $1400, which includes casework, the housing subsidy, and the transitional support package."
"That's lower than the city average," Claire said.
"Significantly." Margot nodded. "Because we don't run shelters. We broker directly with landlords who've agreed to subsidized short-term leases, eliminating the overhead of physical facilities."
Claire wrote something down. "And the retention data?"
Margot clicked to the next slide. "Over the last twelve months, our placement rate has held at 87%. That's families who entered emergency housing through our program and transitioned to stable, long-term arrangements within — "
The door opened. A man stepped in. My eyes started at his feet — dark shoes — then traveled up to his black suit, his open collar revealing a peek of a toned chest. A lock of dark hair had fallen across his forehead; he pushed it back with his whole hand as he crossed the room.
Then I saw his face.
His face looked carved from stone. His eyes swept the room and found me — light blue, an innocence that looked out of place with his strong features and the powerful, confident way he moved.
He sat at the far end of the table and didn't introduce himself. He didn't need to.
He nodded at Claire. "Continue."
Claire didn't miss a beat. "You were saying — 87% retention."
"Right." Margot recovered faster than I did. "87% of families transitioned to long-term stable housing within eighteen months. We track them through the full cycle."
"Impressive," Claire said. She turned to me. "And the qualitative side? You mentioned case studies."
I stood, moved to the front of the room with the clicker, and opened with Terry, one of our most recent cases.
"Terry is thirty-one. Two kids, ages four and seven.
She had a restraining order against her ex-husband that expired six weeks before her housing placement came through.
" I clicked to the next slide. "During those six weeks, Terry and her children had nowhere safe to go.
The shelter waitlist was ninety days. The transitional housing program had frozen intake.
She called our office at midnight on a Tuesday because there was nowhere else to call.
By Wednesday morning, we had her in an emergency unit. "
Claire's pen kept moving. I opened my mouth to continue, then glanced toward the end of the table.
He was watching me. His eyes appeared gray from this angle, intense — matching his aura better than the innocent blue earlier.
I looked away. "Our program exists to close that gap. The women we serve fall between the shelter system and the street, and the window in which they're most vulnerable is — "
I glanced again. I didn't mean to. My eyes just went there, pulled like a compass needle. He was still looking at me, chin resting on his hand, elbow on the armrest, eyes pale and clear, framed by dark lashes. My thumb fumbled on the clicker. The slide jumped past the one I needed. I clicked back.
"Sorry." I cleared my throat. "The vulnerability window." I tugged at my collar. The room was warm. "The vulnerability window is typically four to seven months — the period between crisis displacement and stable housing, where the system loses the most women."
I kept my eyes on Claire, on the slides, on the numbers. Then I looked at him again.
He hadn't moved. Neither had his eyes. I felt his focus like a palm pressed flat against my back. I could feel it on my skin, on the side of my face, on my hands. Like standing in a beam of light in a dark room.
I hated that I was aware of it. Hated that my body tracked his gaze.
Stop it. I was a grown woman. I would not lose my footing because a man was looking at me from across a conference table.
I held his gaze for two seconds, then three. His expression didn't change. He didn't smile, look away, or adjust.
I couldn't take it any longer. I looked back at my slides.
My hand was unsteady on the clicker. A curl had come loose from my bun; I tucked it behind my ear.
I forced myself through the last two slides with my eyes fixed on the screen.
If I looked at him one more time, I'd lose the thread of my own sentence.
Reaching the last slide, I finished, sat down, took a sip of water, and set the glass down. It clinked against the table. I felt Margot's eyes on me. I didn't glance back.
"Thank you both," Claire said. She closed her notebook and folded her hands on top of it. "The data is strong. The program model is clearly effective."
"We think so," Margot said.
Claire paused. "I want to be transparent. Vanguard's CSR budget for this quarter is fully allocated. The work is impressive, and the need is clear, but the timing doesn't align with our current funding cycle." She looked at me. "I could revisit this in Q3."
The third quarter was four months away. We didn't have four months.
"On what grounds does the timing not work?" I kept my voice level. "Is it the program model? The impact data? The ask amount?"
"Purely a budget question. We have existing commitments through June, and the evaluation cycle for new partnerships doesn't reopen until September."
"I understand." I did understand. It was the word no that stung. "Thank you for your time, Claire. We appreciate the consideration." I gathered the printouts and slid them back into my tote.
Margot closed her laptop.
We stood. Claire shook our hands. The meeting was over.
The man at the end of the table hadn't moved, hadn't spoken, and hadn't looked away from me once.
I walked fast down the hallway. Margot kept pace beside me, already talking. "Okay, so CSR is out, but listen, I've been looking at the Harmon Foundation, and there's also the city grant cycle opening in — "
"Ms. Calloway?"
We stopped and turned. A young man in a slim gray suit was walking toward us. "Mr. Hale would like to see you in his office, if you have a moment."
Mr. Hale? I looked at Margot. Her eyebrows climbed into her hairline.
"Go ahead," I told her. "Wait in the lobby."
"I'll be timing you."