I hear Jace come to stand behind me.
He is quiet for a moment.
"Don't make it weird," he says.
I turn from the window. "I don't know what you mean."
I pick up my glasses from the floor. I go to my desk. I sit. I pull the nearest stack of documents toward me and begin to sort them. They are already organized. I organized them this morning before the meeting started. I sort them again. Same stack. Same order.
"Take the advice of your older brother," Jace starts.
"Eleven months older."
He continues as though I haven't spoken. "Listen to me when I tell you not to make it weird. I know you have feelings for her." He holds up a hand stopping my protest. "Don't. I know you do. We all do. And I don't think Maya is exactly immune to any of us either." He sits on the edge of my desk. "Let it play out. Don't do what you always do."
"And what is that."
"Shut yourself inside." No hesitation. Just the plain fact of it. "You go quiet. You make yourself invisible and you wait until the outcome is certain before you commit to anything. And by then sometimes it’s too late."
I keep sorting the papers.
"I think she's already made a choice," I say.
Same stack. Same order. Again.
"You saw two people holding hands in the snow."
"I know what I saw."
"You saw the beginning of something." He leans forward. "Not the end of everything else." He pauses. I can tell he is selecting his next words with more care than he usually does. "Let me put this in terms that will actually land for you. You're running this like a binary equation. One woman, one outcome, winner takes all. But that's the wrong model entirely."
I look at him.
"One woman," he says. "Three variables. The result isn't zero sum. The result is something none of us have a precedent for, and I think it's worth working for."
I hold his gaze for a long moment.
"You're insane," I say.
"Consistently." He stands. "But you like research. So do some. Start with polyamory."
The front door opens. Boots on the entry floor. Reid's voice, low, and underneath it Maya's, lighter, carrying the sound of a laugh just finished.
"I don't know about you," he says, moving to the door, "but I intend to make sure I'm part of the calculation." He looks at me once from the doorway. Then he's gone.
The office goes quiet.
I have operated my entire life according to simple rules. Assess before acting. Weigh the variables. Never expose a position before the probability justifies the risk. It is the principle I built in childhood, sitting in a corner with a book while other children moved in groups I had neither the instinct nor the invitation to join. The quietness was supposed to be protection. It wasn't. The bullying came anyway. Quietness is not invisibility, I learned that young. It just means you don't see it coming until it's already arrived.
I carried the principle into university. Into the firm in New York where I worked for two years, before returning home. I was competent and precise. And alone.
I brought it back here. Into this office. Into the company I helped build and can account for in every column and every model.
I set the papers down.
The stack is perfect. It was perfect before I touched it.
I look at the window. At the path below it. Their footprints are still pressed into the snow, side by side, tracking from the tree line to the porch. Two sets. Close together.
