The call came on a Thursday morning in April.
Aria was at her desk in the Chicago office — the original office, the one with the north side street outside the window, the one that had started everything — working on the documentation for one of the Michigan referrals that Marcus Webb had sent. The work was good. The specific satisfying work of someone who was doing what they were actually built for, in a space that belonged to them, for clients who needed what they had.
Her phone rang. Diana.
She answered immediately. “Mom.”
“I have news,” Diana said. Her voice was — careful. The specific quality of careful that Diana’s voice had when she was managing something and had decided that the managing needed to stop. “Good news. But I wanted to tell you myself, in person. Can you come up?”
S
