Alexander's POV
Maggie's foundation lunch was Tuesday.
I hadn't attended one of her events in three years. Not because I didn't respect what she did with the foundation, she'd built it from a small charitable trust into something that funded education programs across five boroughs, but because her events required a version of me I found difficult to sustain. Warm. Accessible. Present in a way that board meetings didn't demand.
Emma had suggested it. So I went.
The venue was a townhouse in the Upper East Side that Maggie had used for foundation events for twenty years. Forty guests, board members, donors, a few city officials, and people Maggie described as community anchors, teachers, social workers, a woman who ran a food bank in the Bronx that the foundation had supported for a decad
