And what I was starting to understand, with every mile between me and the condo, was that I had been load-bearing all along. The walls, the roof, the foundation—all of it had been resting on me while Callum spent seven years taking credit for the view.
The first crack had appeared this morning, in the space between a client question and my silence. There would be more. I knew that. The gala was six weeks away, and the cracks would spread, and by the time I was done, the whole structure would be visible for what it was.
But that was later. That was strategy. For now, I was just driving toward my sister’s apartment, a divorce petition in motion, a bag on the passenger seat, and the strange, unfamiliar feeling of my own silence settling around me—not an absence, but a weight. Something solid. Something to build on.
Chapter Eleven
CALLUM
On the fourth ring,Callum realized the sound was coming from his desk line, not the cell phone he'd been staring at.
He'd been staring at his cell phone for twenty minutes. Holland's contact photo: three years old, the deck of the Morrison lake house, her hair blown sideways across her face, her mouth open mid-laugh. Something he'd said. He couldn't recall what it was. He couldn't recall the last time she'd laughed around him at all—not like that, not unguarded, with the kind of helpless joy he hadn't seen in years.
"Callum Hart speaking.”
"Mr. Hart, this is Elaine Morrison. I'm calling because I've left three messages with your office this week and no one has returned them."
The Morrisons. Legacy clients. Six years, two full estate renovations, and a standing referral that had brought in four other lakefront projects. Callum straightened, reaching for the Morrison file. It wasn't on his desk because Holland, who hadn't been in the office for four days, always kept it updated.
"Elaine, I apologize. We've had some internal scheduling confusion. Let me?—"
"I don't want an apology, Callum. I want the boathouse conversion revisions Holland promised me back in March. She said she'd have them by the fifteenth. It's now the twenty-second, and I've heard nothing."
The boathouse conversion. His mind went blank. The Morrison account was Holland's territory. He scanned his desk again for a file that wasn't there, a timeline he'd never seen, for drawings he couldn't begin to describe.
He stalled, the words sounding flimsy even to him. "Holland’s been out of the office. Let me have Laura pull the files and?—"
"I don't want Laura." Elaine's voice went crisp. "I've worked with Holland for six years. She understands what we want. The last time Laura Vale was on a call with us, she spent twenty minutes trying to upsell us on a glass staircase we didn't ask for."
He hadn't known about the glass staircase. A sharp, proprietary irritation tightened behind his ribs.
"I’ll make sure Holland gets back to you personally by end of week.”
"See that she does." Elaine hung up.
Callum set the receiver down and looked at his phone again. Holland’s name at the top of the call log, sitting there unanswered. The boathouse revisions were promised in March, so she’d been working on them for months. They had to exist somewhere—in her files, her email, her head—and he had access to none of it, because she had stopped answering his calls.
Fourteen texts in five days. Seven voicemails. One email from Mara Ellison’s office, formal and bloodless, redirecting all personal and legal communication through counsel and all project communication through official channels.
He’d read that email four times. Each time, the same subject line stared back at him: Hart v. Hart — Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.
He'd called it partnership. It covered seven years of her late-night solutions and structural fixes—her encyclopedic knowledge of every footing, beam, and client. He'd told himselfit was support. But the word felt thin now, a coat of paint over the load-bearing wall he'd refused to name.
Laura let herself in mid-sentence, still talking to someone in the hall.
Laura entered, tablet in one hand, coffee in the other. Dressed in cream-colored wool, she set the cup on the edge of his desk without asking, her expression one of practiced confidence—the look she wore when she believed she had a solution.
"The Alden estate team is asking for a decision on the stair hall," she said, settling into the chair across from his desk. "David's crew can't proceed without a revised load-bearing spec, and the client is getting nervous. I told them we'd have something by tomorrow."
"You told them we'd have something."
"I told them I'd handle it." She crossed her legs. "But I need Holland's original foundation drawings. David says she had a full structural analysis prepared before she left the site."
Before she left the site. The memory was sharp: the cold air in the Alden stair hall, the scent of plaster dust. Holland, tablet in hand, calmly detailing the micropile solution. Laura, standing by the door, polished and silent. He remembered Holland's expression when he'd said, 'Laura will handle the client presentation.' Her face had gone still, her gaze holding his for a long moment before she simply nodded once and turned away.
She'd walked out. She'd gotten in her car and driven away, and she hadn't answered a single call since.
"The structural analysis is in her files," Callum said. "Get David to pull them."
