Chapter25
I woke up thinking about the number nine. Not Daniel. Not Margaret. The number itself, sitting in the center of everything I had been carrying since the previous night with the specific weight of something that changed the scale of what it touched rather than simply adding to it. Nine years was not a coincidence. Nine years was not two people who happened to attend the same conference or exchange business cards at an industry event and stay loosely in touch afterward. Nine years was a relationship with roots deep enough to sustain itself across career changes and institutional shifts and the gradual falling away that time applied to professional connections not built on something more substantial than proximity. And the more I thought about the nine years the more a realization formed th
- Writer
