Chapter 4

TARIK

The conference room on thirty-eight is full by ten, associates and senior partners packed around the table for the Hendricks Tower kickoff, and I’m at the head of it walking the room through phase one of the build. It’s the kind of morning I used to live for — the room hanging on every word, every question landing exactly where I want it to.

“You’ve got it all, man,” Greg says afterward, clapping me on the back as the room clears out. Greg’s been at the firm almost as long as I have, VP of client relations, the kind of guy who says exactly what everyone else is thinking. “Biggest deal of the year, beautiful wife, great kid at home. You’re living the dream, Tarik. The perfect life.”

I smile. I don’t correct him.

It’s easier not to.

My phone buzzes against the table — three, then four times in a row. Sophia. I glance at the preview without opening it. Malik loved the gifts. Thank you for remembering, even late. Then, a minute later: He wants to know when you’re coming home tonight.

I turn the phone face down and go back to the drawings spread across the table, tracing the line of the east facade with my finger like it needs my full attention right now more than anything else does.

SOPHIA

That afternoon, Malik sits at the kitchen table with a box of crayons, tongue between his teeth in concentration, working on something he won’t let me see yet. When he finally slides it across to me, I have to blink twice before I understand what I’m looking at.

Two figures holding hands — a woman with yellow hair, a small boy beside her — standing on a patch of green grass with a sun in the corner. Off to the side, far off, near the very edge of the paper, a tall gray rectangle with little squares for windows. And beside it, small and separate from the rest, a stick figure with dark hair.

“Who’s this one?” I point to the figure by the building, even though I already know.

“That’s Daddy.” He says it so easily, so without complaint, that it breaks something in me more than tears would have. “He lives at work.”

“Baby, Daddy doesn’t live there. He just works long hours.” The words taste wrong in my mouth even as I say them, a lie I’ve told so many times it comes out automatically now.

“That’s okay,” Malik says, already reaching for another crayon, completely unbothered. “I like drawing him there. It’s a good building.”

I fold the drawing carefully and set it on the counter, and I have to turn away from him for a second, busy myself at the sink, so he doesn’t see my face.

My phone rings around four while Malik naps, worn out after his afternoon treatment. Adrian’s name lights up the screen, and I almost don’t answer — but something makes me pick up.

“Sophia, hey. I hope this isn’t weird, I got your number from an old contact list.” He sounds a little sheepish, which is almost charming. “I talked to my partners after we ran into each other. We’re expanding the residential division, and I mentioned you. They’d love to have you consult — flexible hours, remote when you need it, in-office when you can. No pressure at all. I just — I think you’d be incredible at it. I always did.”

I sit down slowly at the kitchen table, my heart doing something complicated in my chest. “Adrian, that’s — that’s really generous.”

“Just think about it. No rush.”

I tell him I will. I tell him thank you, truly, and I mean it. Then I hang up and sit there a long moment, phone still warm in my hand.

I walk down the hall and stand in Malik’s doorway, watching him sleep, his chest rising and falling steadily even now that the treatment’s done its work, his little fist curled up near his face the way it’s been since he was born. I think about spreadsheets and site visits and the particular thrill of watching a building rise out of the ground exactly the way I designed it. I think about who would drive Malik to his pulmonologist appointments, who would recognize the sound of his breathing changing before it became an emergency, who would be here if I wasn’t.

I call Adrian back that evening.

“I have to say no,” I tell him, and I keep my voice steady even though something in my chest is folding in on itself as I say it. “It’s not the right time. Malik needs me right now, and I can’t — I can’t split myself in half.”

“I understand,” he says, and he sounds like he means it, no bitterness in it at all. “The offer doesn’t expire, Sophia. Whenever you’re ready.”

I thank him again and hang up, and I sit there in the quiet kitchen for a long time, looking at nothing.

Somewhere in the last two years, without ever making a single decision to do it, I let my career end. Quietly. Completely. While Tarik’s has only climbed — bigger deals, bigger office, his name in the paper twice this year alone. He gets to keep becoming more of himself. I disappeared into being everything Malik needs, and I don’t regret loving my son that much. I just didn’t know what it would cost.

Tarik gets home a little after nine, later than he said, though I’ve stopped keeping track of the difference between his estimates and his actual arrivals. I hear his keys in the door, his footsteps down the hall, and I stay where I am at the kitchen table, Malik’s drawing still sitting where I left it that afternoon.

He sees it before I say anything. Picks it up. Studies it a moment longer than I expect him to.

“What’s this supposed to be?” he asks, though I can already see, in the way his jaw tightens, that he understands exactly what it’s supposed to be.

“That’s you,” I say quietly. “By the office. He drew it on his own, Tarik. Nobody told him to.”

He sets the drawing back down on the counter, very carefully, like it might do more damage if he isn’t gentle with it.

“He said it’s a good building,” I add, and I don’t know if I mean it as comfort or as an accusation. Maybe both.

Tarik doesn’t say anything for a long moment. He just looks at the drawing — the two small figures holding hands on the grass, and the tall gray rectangle standing far off on its own — and something moves behind his eyes that I haven’t seen there in a long time.

For a second, just a second, I let myself hope it’s going to land somewhere. That this is the thing that finally does it.

Then his phone buzzes in his pocket. He glances at the screen, and whatever was moving behind his eyes closes back up like a door.

“I have an early call tomorrow,” he says, and walks upstairs without touching the drawing again.

I stand alone in the kitchen a long time, listening to the shower run above me, and something in me quietly stops waiting for the next time to be different.

Thanksgiving is in three days. He already promised me he’ll be there.

TARIK

Elena spreads the plans across a folding table in the half-finished shell of the fourth floor, the Whitmore site loud with construction noise below us, sunlight cutting through plastic sheeting where the windows haven’t gone in yet.

“Tell me again what you said about the filtration,” she says, tapping the mechanical drawings. “Our engineer’s pushing back on the cost, and I want ammunition.”

I walk her through it—HEPA filtration, isolated air handling, negative pressure protocols to keep triggers from moving room to room. She listens the way she used to listen at the drafting table years ago, fully, like nothing else in the building matters more than what I’m saying. I’d forgotten what that felt like.

“This is good, Tarik. Really good.” She looks up, something warm and unguarded in her face. “You’ve got a gift for this. I always said you did.”

“You used to say I only had a gift for skylines. Big, impersonal things.”

“I was wrong.” She holds my eyes a beat longer than she needs to. “This actually helps someone.”

We go over the drawings for another hour, then another, falling into the same rhythm we used to have without either of us deciding to let it happen—finishing each other’s sentences, arguing gently over sightlines. My phone buzzes in my pocket at some point. I don’t check it.

It’s past six when we finally stop, the crew long gone, the light outside amber and low.

“You should come by again soon,” she says, rolling the plans back into their tube.

“I will,” I say, and I mean it more than I should.

I don’t check my phone until I’m in the car.

Special Person morning was today. He kept asking where you were. I don’t know what to tell him anymore.

I sit there a long time, the message glowing on the screen, and I don’t have an answer for that either.