Callum
Chapter Thirteen
David Okonkwo had his laptop open to a spreadsheet that looked like a casualty report. Three columns. Red highlights. The kind of document that made people stop mid-sentence when they walked past your desk.
“Morrison boathouse revisions are nine days past deadline,” David said. “Elaine Morrison called my direct line this morning. Not the office line. My direct line. She wanted to know if we’d outsourced the design work to someone who’d never seen a lake before.”
“She said that?”
“She said worse. I’m paraphrasing for morale.”
Callum set his pen down very carefully. He didn’t look at Laura, which was the first thing that made her stiffen in her chair.
“The Alden estate structural analysis is still in review,” David said.
“The underpinning fix added forty thousand to the budget, which the client is not thrilled about, and we have a design team waiting on direction for the stair hall. The original concept relied on load calculations no one currently on staff can replicate.”
“No one on staff,” Callum repeated.
“Holland did those calculations.” David said it the way he might read back meeting minutes. “She developed them three years ago for the Morrison project and adapted them for Alden. The file exists, but the methodology is hers. We don’t have it.”
Laura set her tablet down with a click that was slightly too precise. “Then we need to stop treating Holland’s work like some kind of proprietary magic. The firm has other designers. The firm has project managers. We can reassign the methodology.”
“You can’t reassign something you don’t understand,” David said.
“Then we learn it.”
“From what? The files she took with her? The client relationships she built? The design language she invented before this company even had an office?”
Laura smoothed the front of her jacket with two fingers. “You’re making her sound irreplaceable.”
“I’m not making her sound like anything. I’m telling you what’s in the spreadsheet.”
Callum stood up and walked to the window. The lake was gray this morning, flat and uncooperative, and the reflection of the boardroom table floated on the glass like a second, ghostlier meeting happening underwater. In the reflection, his own face looked back at him, older than thirty-one.
“The Thompson job,” he said, not turning around. “Is that still holding?”
“For now,” David said. “But the Thompsons flagged the foundation wall because Holland caught it. If she hadn’t been on-site three weeks ago, that three-inch discrepancy would have cost the firm a six-figure lawsuit.
And the Thompsons know that. They asked me yesterday if Holland was still with the firm. ”
“What did you tell them?”
“I said she was taking some personal time.”
“Good.”
“It wasn’t good. They didn’t believe me.”
Laura leaned forward with a sudden, sharp movement, as if she could no longer bear sitting still.
“This is exactly what I’ve been saying. The confusion isn’t about Holland’s work.
It’s about the lack of a clear executive structure.
Clients don’t know who to call. Teams don’t know who has authority.
Holland’s involvement was always informal, and now that informality is creating a vacuum. ”
“Her involvement wasn’t informal,” Callum said. “She built the company.”
“She funded the company. There’s a difference.”
“No. There isn’t.”
The room went quiet. David stared at his laptop. Laura’s gaze settled on Callum. Callum kept his eyes on the lake.
“The anniversary gala is five weeks away,” Laura said, and her voice had shifted into something softer, more careful, the tone she used when she was trying to lead him somewhere without letting him feel the leash.
“That’s the moment to show the industry who Crestline is now.
Not who we were seven years ago. Not who we were when Holland wrote the checks.
Who we are today. Who stands beside you today. ”
Callum turned around. “You think the gala solves a structural analysis problem? You think a cocktail dress and a speech make Elaine Morrison forget that her boathouse revisions are nine days late?”
“I think the gala shows the market that we’re not in chaos.”
“We are in chaos. That’s the point.”
Laura’s expression flickered, and for one second the polished surface of her cracked open.
Underneath was something hungrier and less patient.
“Then fix it. You’re the CEO. You’ve been the face of this company for seven years.
Stop acting like the only person who can solve a design problem is the woman you couldn’t keep. ”
“She didn’t walk out. I—” Callum stopped. He was not going to have this conversation in front of David Okonkwo. He was not going to have this conversation, period.
“You what?”
“This isn’t about optics.”
“Everything is about optics. That’s what you taught me.”
David closed his laptop. “I’m going to check on the Alden site. The contractor needs a decision on the stair hall by end of day, and if we don’t have one, he’s going to start making his own.
“Don’t let him,” Callum said.
“Then give me something to tell him.”
The door closed behind David with a soft pneumatic hiss, and then it was just the two of them and the burnt-coffee smell and the reflection of the gray lake on the glass.
Laura didn’t wait. “You keep saying this isn’t about optics, but you built a company where Holland does the work and I put a pretty face on it.
You decided she should be invisible. You’re the one who told me—told everyone—that I was the future of Crestline.
“And now you’re panicking because your invisible engine has quit, and I can’t reverse-engineer her methodology overnight. ”
“I’m not panicking.”
“You’ve sent her fourteen texts in five days. You’ve left seven voicemails. You drafted a message this morning before I even got here. I saw it on your screen.”
Callum’s jaw tightened, and he looked somewhere past her shoulder. “That’s not about the company.”
“Then what is it about?”
He didn’t answer. Laura’s eyes stayed on him, and for a long moment neither of them spoke, and the silence was more honest than any word they could have spoken.
“You don’t want her back because you love her,” Laura said.
“You want her back because you need her. Because without her, the company doesn’t work.
Because without her, you don’t work. And you’re terrified that if she doesn’t come back, everyone is going to see exactly how much of Crestline was never yours to begin with. ”
Callum swallowed. He didn’t deny it.
“That’s the thing you won’t say out loud,” Laura continued, and her voice was colder now, stripped of the careful polish.
“You don’t want me to replace her. You want me to stand in front of her—the face, while she stays invisible doing the work.
The public sees me, the clients trust her, and you get to tell everyone you have built this with your own hands.
And for that, I’m supposed to be grateful?
To smile at the gala and pretend I don’t know this firm is still standing because of the woman you’re trying to hide? ”
“That’s not what I want.”
“Then what do you want?”
Callum looked at her, the truth a pressure in his throat.
An image surfaced: Holland at her drafting table, the quiet hum of her focus making the work possible.
Then another: Laura at his side at the Morrison gala, her smile catching the light, making him look good.
He wanted the engine and the facade, the foundation and the finish.
He wanted both, each in her place, silent and unquestioning.
He didn’t say any of that. He said, “I want the company to stop bleeding out.”
“So let me fix it.”
“You can’t fix it. You don’t understand what’s broken.”
Laura stood up. She was tall in her heels, and her hair was perfect, and her blouse was the kind of cream silk that looked effortless and cost more than most people’s rent.
She looked exactly like the person who should be standing beside the CEO of a luxury design-build firm at its anniversary gala. And she knew it.
“I understand more than you think,” she said.
“I understand that you’ve been keeping Holland in a box marked ‘useful’ for seven years while telling yourself you were being generous.
I understand that you let her believe she was your partner while you made her your employee.
I understand that you’re still doing it—right now, this morning, while you draft another message that sounds like an apology but is really just a job offer with softer punctuation. ”
Callum’s hand was still on his phone. He could feel the weight of it, the screen dark, the draft message sitting in his outbox like a stone he hadn’t thrown yet.
Laura picked up her tablet. “And I understand that if Crestline still needs her, I haven’t replaced anything. I’m just the person standing in the empty space she left.”
She walked out. The door closed behind her with the same soft hiss, and Callum was alone in the boardroom with the gray lake and the burnt coffee and the reflection of his own face on the glass.
He pulled out his phone. The draft was still there.
Holland, I know things have been difficult.
I know I haven’t handled this the way I should have.
But the company is in trouble, and there are things only you can fix.
Clients are asking for you. The design team is lost without your direction.
I’m not asking you to come back for me. I’m asking you to come back for the business you built.
Please. Just one meeting. Just one call. We can figure out the rest later.
He read it twice. It sounded apologetic. It sounded reasonable. It sounded exactly like a man trying to make it right—and a perfectly constructed lie. He knew it. Laura knew it. Holland would know it the moment she read it.
He hit send anyway.
Then he set the phone down on the boardroom table and watched the screen go dark, and the only thing he could hear was the hum of the HVAC and the distant, impossible sound of a company coming apart at the seams.