In November Marcus received an email from Vivienne.
He showed it to me within the hour, exactly as he had promised he always would.
The email was professional. She was reaching out because her new firm had a project that required a consultation partner with Marcus's specific expertise in urban residential development, and she was asking if he would be available for a paid consultation call. She said she understood if he would prefer not to engage and that she would not follow up if he did not respond.
It was, objectively, a professional email. It was also, as Marcus and I both knew, a test. Not of his intentions, which I trusted, but of mine, and of the architecture of what we had built.
"What do you want to do?" I asked.
"I want to do whatever keeps this simple," he said. "If you are
