I didn’t open the email in the elevator. Some superstitious, protective instinct made me wait until we were in Vivian’s office, coffee actually poured this time, the four of us settled into something that almost resembled ordinary family ease, before I finally let myself tap the notification with hands that weren’t entirely steady.
“You got it,” Julian said, reading my face before I’d even finished the first line, and something in his voice held no strategy in it at all, just plain, uncomplicated joy on my behalf.
“I got it.” I read it twice to make sure, the words swimming slightly before they settled into something real — full funding, the two-year build partnership, my retrofit proposal for the east side textile buildings selected from a field the committee described as unusually comp
