A smile pulls at me. It’s been years, but Hannah’s voice still rings in my head exactly as I remember it—sharp, dry humor softened by a kind of fierce loyalty. She was my manager throughthe Graduate Management Associate Program, the one who pushed me hardest and trusted me most.
The FT piece came out last week, highlighting the acquisition I led—my first time steering a full deal team. I’d pitched the framework half expecting to be dismissed, but Charles had listened, asked questions, and ultimately handed me the reins even though I was the most junior in the room. It was a risk on his end. A huge leap for me. And closing it felt like crossing a threshold I’ve been walking toward for years.
But none of it would have landed the way it did without the time I spent in London. Those two years at Castor & Wyatt equipped me with a solid foundation—discipline, perspective, a level of professional fluency that still anchors me now.
And just like that, I’m back in that memory: arriving at Heathrow airport in the early-summer haze with Nathaniel beside me, London opening itself in all its gray-and-gold promise.
For so long, I believed I had to choose between love and ambition. But standing there, suitcase in hand, Nathaniel’s fingers laced through mine, it struck me just how wrong I’d been. How astonishing it was to realize that he’d kept his promise. That I could have this city, this opportunity,andhim—without losing anything in the process.
We moved into a flat tucked off a quiet street in South Kensington—warm and inviting in a way that had everything to do with my taste and very little to do with his ability to acquire whatever he wanted. It was the kind of place that was meant to be lived in rather than displayed, even though every amenity was as polished as his resources allowed. The palette was soft, the layout open, the furniture chosen for comfort instead of effect. He made it feel like a refuge, a place I could come home to after a long day. A space that felt like us.
Living together was blissful. Mornings blurred into shared coffee and sunlight spilling across our counter. Evenings became long walks through streets we didn’t yet know, discovering restaurants tucked into alleys and bookstores we returned to again and again. There was no urgency to it, only a sense of adventure and discovering a rhythm that belonged entirely to the two of us.
There’s one morning I return to more than the others. It was a Sunday, and I woke to Nathaniel still heavy with sleep beside me. When I tried to slip out of bed, he caught my wrist without opening his eyes and murmured, “Five more minutes.”
It was such a small request, but it marked a shift I didn’t recognize at the time: he wasn’t forcing himself awake before me anymore—the many months of vigilance, of rising before the sun so he could be sure I hadn’t slipped away, had come to an end. He was finally allowing himself to drift, fully, because he trusted the life we were building together.
Now, on weekends, he stays in bed as long as I do.
And then there was the version of Nathaniel I watched emerge in London—the one who took charge of Caldwell Ventures’ further expansion in Europe with the kind of confidence I’d known he had in him. The distance from New York gave him space to build something on his own terms, outside the long shadow of expectation. By the time he and Charles began working more closely together again, their dynamic had changed. Their trust had deepened. London had given him the autonomy he didn’t realize he needed until he had it.
After two years, the program wrapped. The offer for a permanent role from Castor & Wyatt’s London office was received with a surge of pride and immense satisfaction. I’d grown in all the ways I hoped I would; I’d achieved what I set outto find. And with that realization came another: I was ready to leave.
When I told Nathaniel I planned to decline the offer, worry flickered across his face.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “I don’t want you to cut this short for my sake. I’m happy to be wherever you want to be.”
I could hear the sincerity in his voice. “I know. But I’m ready to gohome…to New York.”
He stilled for a heartbeat, processing my words. Then, his expression broke open into a wide smile—unrestrained, almost luminous. All because I had chosen the city he loved as the place I wanted my life to unfold alongside him. Not out of obligation or compromise, but because I wanted it too.
London had given us plenty, but naming New York as home felt like marking the beginning of our future.
My gaze drops to my left hand.
Even now, the sight of the ruby at the center of my engagement ring makes me a little giddy. It’s another reminder of how precisely Nathaniel understands me—how he chose something so perfectly aligned with who I am, even when I’d never stopped to consider what I’d want. I can’t fathom anything else on my finger.
Above it, my wedding band sits flush: simple gold, set with a neat line of diamonds. We’ve been back in New York for three years now, and I’ve been Nathaniel’s wife for just as long.
I smile as the memory of our wedding surfaces. A fall afternoon at the Caldwells’ estate in the Hamptons, the air crisp enough to warrant a shawl, the trees tipped with early color as sunlight caught in the leaves as if the day itself had slowed just for us. By Caldwell standards, it was intimate—designed for connection rather than show.
I’d never spent much time imagining what my wedding would look like when I was younger, but standing there that day,I knew with certainty thatthisis what I would have wished for. Everything was as it should have been, without effort or excess.
My parents weren’t in attendance. At the time, I struggled with the decision. Now, I’ve come to terms with it. It has been three years since I last spoke to them, and the distance that once hurt has become necessary. Even freeing.
When I first started working in London, I sent money home every month. Most of my salary, if I’m honest. I told myself it was the right thing to do. Part of me believed they would see the effort behind it, recognize how much I was giving, and meet me somewhere in the middle. Instead, the requests multiplied. They became more frequent, more elaborate, detached from any sense of care or restraint. There was no gratitude, no consideration for what it cost me. It was simply expected.
Nathaniel saw it long before I was ready to. He hated watching the toll it took on me, but he never intervened. He understood that this wasn’t something he could fix on my behalf. I had to reach the conclusion myself—that the way they saw me was not a phase or a misunderstanding, but a settled truth. I was nothing but useful to them. And I always would be.
By the time we returned to New York, I knew I couldn’t keep contributing to a dynamic that would never change. Walking away wasn’t an act of anger. It was the first honest boundary I’d ever drawn with them.
In place of my father, Charles Caldwell offered me his arm and walked me down the aisle on my wedding day.
Somewhere along the way, Charles and Renée have become the parents I’ve always longed for. The Caldwell family has transformed in ways that I once hoped for but never dared to expect. It didn’t arrive through a single moment or grand reckoning. It happened gradually, through conversations that were uncomfortable, through habits relearned, through showing up again and again even when it would have been easier not to.
Eventually, weekly dinners stopped feeling like something to navigate and more like something to anticipate, characterized by a sense of ease that took root without any of us noticing exactly when it happened.
Perhaps the most unexpected gift has been watching Nathaniel with his parents.
