I'd written to Shay about feeling stuck in my career, wondering if I was good enough to make it as a professional illustrator or if I should find something more practical.
His response was three paragraphs of genuine encouragement, specific observations about my work that showed he'd been paying attention for years, and this line that makes my chest ache now.
You have a gift for making people believe impossible things are possible. That's not common. That's not something you should set aside just because it's hard.
I keep scrolling.
Another one, from six months before the wedding, when I mentioned feeling lonely in a way I couldn't quite explain. His response:I understand that. Being surrounded by people but still feeling fundamentally alone. Like you're performing but the real you is somewhere underneath, not quite connecting. Just know you're not as alone as you feel.
These aren't the emails of someone manipulating me.
I pull up the emails from after we got married, and now that I know to look for it, I can see the pattern. Shay's responses became more careful, more measured. But the care was still there.
I remember reading those emails and thinking Shay was being cryptic.
Now I understand.
Two months after the wedding, the emails shifted again. More vulnerable. More specific. Like he was trying to bridge the gap between Shay and Seamus without directly revealing the connection.
I'm learning something difficult,he wrote.I'm learning that the walls I built to protect myself are actually just keeping me lonely. That the person I'm most afraid of being vulnerable with is the person who most deserves my honesty. And I don't know how to fix what I've broken by being too afraid to trust.
I wrote back asking who he was talking about. He never quite answered, just said:Someone who sees me more clearly than anyone else ever has. Someone I'm terrified of losing because I don't know how to be what they need.
He was writing about me. To me.
And I was reading it as advice about my marriage instead of confession about our marriage.
I'm still scrolling through emails, tears streaming down my face as I re-read months of Seamus trying to be honest in the only way he knew how, when Luna bursts through the door with her phone in her hand and an expression I can't quite read.
"Rosie. You need to hear this." She's breathless, like she ran up the stairs instead of taking the elevator. "I just got off the phone with Marcus—you know, my contact at city planning?"
I close my laptop, wiping at my face. "What happened?"
"The Heritage Street building. It's being designated as a historical landmark." She says it like she can't quite believe it herself. "Apparently someone filed a comprehensive architectural survey and got the state preservation office involved. It was expensive. And fast."
I hurry around to hover over her phone to see what she's so excited about. Preliminary designation as of this morning. Subject to final city council vote in two weeks, but Marcus says it's basically locked in. The designation wouldn't stop the sale—O'MalleyMart still owns it—but it stops the demolition. They can't tear it down without going through years of review and appeals."
I stare at her, trying to process what she's saying. "But the council voted to table the application. Yesterday. We were there. They said it was too much administrative burden."
"I know. That's what makes this weird." Luna sits down next to me, pulling up something on her phone. “Marcus said someone with serious pull made a few calls. And suddenly the council found a reason to say yes.”
My heart is pounding. "Who? Who made those calls? It can't be Seamus," I say automatically. "His whole company has been fighting against preservation. Why would Seamus turn around and landmark the building they just bought?"
"Maybe because his wife cares about it?" Luna suggests gently. "Maybe because some things matter more?"
I want to believe it. Want to believe that Seamus looked at everything that happened—me leaving, the building being sold, the city council vote—and decided to fight for what I cared about even though I wasn't there to see it. That he used his resources and connections not to demolish faster but to protect what I love.
But it doesn't make sense. Landmarking the building he just bought would undermine his own company's development plans.
Why would he do that?
"Call Marcus back," I say to Luna. "Ask him if he's sure. Ask him if there's any way this came from somewhere else—state preservation groups, federal grants, anything that doesn't involve O'MalleyMart advocating for their own building to be protected."
Luna makes the call, and I listen to her half of the conversation. Asking questions, pressing for details, trying to find an explanation that doesn't require me to believe that Seamus did something this risky and selfless purely because it mattered to me.
When she hangs up, her expression tells me everything I need to know.
"It was him," Luna says quietly. "Marcus didn't say it directly, but said it was someone with serious resources making this happen fast."
