6. Grant
CHAPTER SIX
Grant
The Loom House looked exactly the way I'd pictured it a year ago when it was still just architectural drawings and a leaking roof, and for the first hour of the party I let myself feel, without guilt, genuinely proud of what we'd built.
The old brick had been cleaned and left exposed, the original ceiling beams restored and lit from below, and two hundred people in cocktail attire moved through a space that six months earlier had been full of pigeons and structural engineers arguing about load-bearing walls.
I'd spent the better part of a year on this project, coordinating contractors, negotiating with the historic preservation board over which architectural details had to stay and which could be modernized, staying late more nights than I could count to keep the timeline from sliding.
Miles found me near the bar and put a hand on my shoulder and told me, in front of two board members, that I'd delivered the impossible timeline nobody thought I would, and I let that land the way you let a good thing land when you've earned it honestly.
I checked my phone constantly, the way I'd promised Jenna I would.
Nothing from her. A text from my mother wishing me luck at the event.
A calendar reminder about a vendor call the next morning.
I felt good. I felt, for the first time in weeks, like I'd actually figured out the balance Jenna had been asking me to find, present at work, present at home, no static between the two.
I made a point of introducing Jenna, in absentia, to two of the investors, mentioning that she was home finishing the nursery and would have loved the space, particularly the way the lighting designer had used the old factory windows.
One of the investors, a woman close to my mother's age who'd built her own hospitality portfolio from nothing, told me to bring my wife by once the baby was old enough to travel, that she'd love to see the place through fresh eyes.
I remember thinking, standing there with a drink I wasn't really drinking, how easily I could picture that future version of us, Jenna and Sophie and me walking through this restored warehouse together on some ordinary Sunday afternoon, and how close, in that moment, that future felt.
Tessa was there, professionally, in her capacity running brand development, and she looked sharp and composed in the way she managed for public company events even when her personal life was falling apart, dark green dress, hair pulled back, moving through the investor circle with the easy competence that had made her good at her job long before any of this started.
We spoke twice, both times about the event itself, whether the signage was reading correctly in the low light, whether the caterers were keeping pace with the second wave of guests.
Normal. Fine. I remember thinking, actually, that this was proof the boundary was working.
We could exist in the same room, doing our jobs, without any of the after-hours weight that had built up over the fall.
It was close to nine when Derek showed up.
Nobody had invited him. He wasn't on any guest list, wasn't connected to Bellcourt in any professional capacity, but Tessa had mentioned once that he had a friend on the investor side, someone he'd apparently used to get through the door, and I found out later that was exactly how it happened.
One minute the party was moving along fine, and the next there was a commotion near the east entrance, raised voices, and by the time I got over there Derek had Tessa backed against a pillar, not touching her, but close enough and loud enough that two of our security staff were already moving in.
I didn't think about it as anything other than a problem at my event that needed managing.
That's the honest truth. In that first minute, Tessa was almost incidental to it, in my head, she was a colleague whose ex-husband had crashed my property's opening night and was making a scene in front of investors and press.
I stepped in the way I'd step into any operational crisis, calm, low-voiced, telling security which direction to move Derek, telling the nearest server to redirect guests away from that corridor, doing the job I was actually good at.
I remember, in the middle of directing security, glancing at my watch out of some old habit of tracking event timelines, 8:52, and thinking, with real relief, that we'd contained the disruption before it could touch the rest of the evening, that the two hundred guests circulating through the restored warehouse behind me would likely never even register that anything had happened at all.
I felt, in that moment, entirely in control, entirely competent, the version of myself I liked best, and I had no idea how completely that feeling was about to be tested.
Security got Derek out the side entrance within a few minutes. It could have ended there. It should have ended there.
One of the investors, the same woman who'd asked me to bring Jenna by once the baby was old enough, found me a few minutes after security cleared the corridor and asked, with real concern, whether everything was all right, whether this kind of disruption happened often at our properties.
I assured her it didn't, walked her through exactly what our security protocols had caught and how quickly, and watched her visible relief settle back into the easy enjoyment of the party, another small problem handled, another piece of evidence that Bellcourt could manage whatever came through its doors.
I felt, even in the middle of it, a flicker of pride at how cleanly I'd turned a potential embarrassment into a demonstration of competence, the kind of instinct that had built my whole career.
My phone rang while I was still watching the door Derek had gone through, making sure he wasn't circling back. Jenna.
"Hey," I said, already stepping away from the noise of the party, into the relative quiet of the coat check hallway. "Everything okay?"
"I don't know. Something feels off. I've got this ache that won't ease up, low, and it's been going on for like twenty minutes, and I just, I don't know, it doesn't feel right, Grant."
I didn't hesitate. I want that on the record, because it matters for what came after. I didn't ask her to wait and see. I didn't tell her it was probably nothing. The second she said it didn't feel right, every other thing in that building stopped mattering to me.
"I'm coming home. I'm leaving right now, okay? Call the doctor's after-hours line while I'm driving, tell them what you told me, and I'll be there in twenty minutes."
"Okay."
"I'm coming home, Jenna. I'm already walking to my car."
I was. I want to be honest about that too, because it's the detail that made everything after it so much worse, in retrospect, so much less forgivable.
I wasn't lying to her. I meant it completely when I said it.
I stopped only long enough to find Miles and tell him I had to leave, that Jenna wasn't feeling right, and he told me, without a second's hesitation, to go, that he had the rest of the night handled, that nothing happening in that building mattered more than getting home to my wife.
I remember him actually saying those words, nothing here matters more than that, and I remember agreeing with him completely as I walked toward the exit, keys already in my hand.
I was in the parking lot, keys in my hand, genuinely on my way, when my phone rang again.
Tessa.
I almost let it go. I actually looked at the screen and thought, not now, and started to silence it.
But some old habit, some reflex built over months of being the person who answered, made my thumb move before I'd finished deciding, and I heard her voice, thin and shaking in a way I'd never heard from her before, not even at her lowest points over the divorce.
"He came back around the side of the building, he's saying he's going to wait for me in the parking structure, security says they can't remove someone from a public garage without more cause, I don't, Grant, I don't know what to do, I'm scared to walk out there alone."
I stopped with my hand on the car door.
"Call the police," I said. "Tell them exactly what you just told me, that he's threatening to wait for you, that's enough for a report at minimum."
"I already called them once tonight, they're not going to treat a second call as urgent, you know how this goes, I've been through this all year." Her voice cracked. "You're the only person here I actually trust to make it stop without making it worse. Everyone else here is a stranger to me."
I told her, I need to go, Jenna needs me, and I started to say goodbye, and I want to be honest that the version of the story where I hung up immediately and drove straight home did not happen, because I let the conversation keep going for another full minute, telling myself I was giving her the fastest possible path to safety before I left.
I told her to go find Miles, that he'd walk her to her car personally, that security could at least escort her to a different exit even if they couldn't remove Derek from the garage outright.
"Please," she said. "Just five minutes. I know it's a terrible time to ask, I know your wife needs you, but I don't have anyone else right here right now, and you're already downstairs."
I made the calculation right there in the parking lot, and I made it wrong, and there is no way to tell this part of the story that makes the decision reasonable, no matter how many times I turned it over afterward trying to find the version where it made sense.
Jenna was home. Paige was fifteen minutes away if it came to that.
My symptoms, Jenna's symptoms, sounded uncertain, something that might resolve on its own, might be nothing, the doctor herself had said plenty of things felt alarming and turned out to be Braxton Hicks or a strained muscle.
Tessa's situation sounded immediate, physical, a man in a parking structure who had already crossed one line that night.
I told myself five minutes wouldn't matter.
I told myself I could split the difference, be useful to both women who needed me, the way I'd been splitting my attention for months and telling myself it cost nothing.
I turned around. I walked back into the Loom House instead of driving home.
I sent Jenna a text from the hallway, thumbs moving fast, something happened here, dealing with it, home soon, don't worry.
I read that message back to myself so many times afterward that I can still see the exact wording, the casual, minimizing tone of it, don't worry, as if there were anything reasonable about telling a woman with a possible medical emergency not to worry while I stood in a hallway helping someone else.
I found Miles. I told him what was happening.
He moved fast, called our head of security personally, arranged for Tessa to be walked to her car by two staff members and for someone to watch the garage exit until she'd cleared it.
It took, in total, maybe fifteen minutes from the moment I turned my car around to the moment Tessa texted that she was safely on the road home.
I stood in that hallway the whole time, watching the door, my own phone silent in my hand, and some part of me, even then, understood that fifteen minutes wasn't nothing, that I should have been counting them differently than I was.
Fifteen minutes doesn't sound like very much. I've had to live with how much it actually was.
I checked my phone the second Tessa's message came through and found four missed calls from Jenna, two voicemails, and a text from Paige that made my stomach drop straight through the floor of that hallway: Taking Jenna to the hospital now, where are you.
I don't remember the walk to my car after that.
I remember starting the engine and pulling out of the lot too fast, gravel spitting under the tires, my hands shaking in a way they never shook, not in fires, not in floods, not in any of the dozen genuine emergencies I'd handled calmly over the years.
I called Jenna. No answer. I called again.
No answer. I called Paige, and she picked up on the second ring, her voice flat and controlled in a way that scared me more than screaming would have, road noise behind her.
"I'm driving her to the hospital right now. You need to get there."
"Is she okay? Is the baby okay?"
"I don't know yet, Grant, that's why we're going." A pause, and I could hear, underneath the flatness, something sharper trying to get out. "You were already supposed to be coming."
"I know. I'm on my way, I'm fifteen minutes out."
"You told her that an hour ago."
Paige hung up before I could answer. I drove with both hands locked on the wheel, headlights cutting through nearly empty intersections.
Four missed calls. Paige taking Jenna to the hospital.
My promise that I was already coming home.
The facts crowded in faster than I could arrange them into anything that made sense.
I knew I'd turned around. I knew I shouldn't have.
Beyond that, all I could think about was getting to Jenna and Sophie.