Chapter 18: Derek

The video call started at exactly 2 p.m. Pacific, because Derek Morrison believed punctuality was the foundation of professional relationships and also because he was incapable of being late to anything.

Maya had set up in the dining room, where the light was good and the background—bookshelves, a glimpse of the Victorian's architectural details—projected the image of a capable professional working remotely rather than a woman unraveling her entire identity in her dead grandmother's house.

Derek's face appeared on screen: tanned, polished, aggressively healthy in the way of men who ran marathons and drank green smoothies and never questioned whether their ambition was sustainable. He was forty-two, three years older than Maya, and they'd been partners for five years. In that time, they'd built Chen & Morrison Architecture into one of the most respected firms on the West Coast.

"You look tired," Derek said.

"Hello to you too."

"I'm serious. Are you sleeping?"

"I'm fine. Let's talk about Henderson."

Derek's expression shifted into business mode—a transformation Maya knew well. He pulled up documents, shared his screen, walked her through the latest revisions to the waterfront residential complex. The designs were good. Derek was talented, even if his talent came wrapped in a personality that grated on Maya's nerves more with each passing day.

"They loved the revised atrium specs," he said. "The glass manufacturer confirmed the custom panels are feasible. We're looking at a March groundbreaking if everything stays on schedule."

"Good."

"But there's a problem." Derek leaned back, and Maya recognized the posture—he was about to deliver news he knew she wouldn't like. "The Thompson project. They want to meet. In person. Next week."

"Send—"

"They specifically requested you. Said they signed with Chen & Morrison because of your design philosophy, and they want to discuss some major modifications directly with you." He paused. "Maya, this is a forty-million-dollar project. We can't delegate it."

The Thompson project was a corporate headquarters in South San Francisco—a commission Maya had been developing for eighteen months. It was complex, ambitious, the kind of project that defined careers. And Derek was right: she couldn't delegate the client relationship indefinitely.

"When?"

"Thursday. I can push to Friday, but that's the limit."

Thursday. That gave her three days to fly to San Francisco, handle the meeting, and fly back. Doable, if exhausting. But the thought of leaving Willow Creek—of stepping out of the investigation, of interrupting the fragile momentum she'd built with Eli and the house and the truth—made her chest tighten.

"I'll be there," she said.

"Good. I'll send the meeting details." Derek's expression softened slightly. "Maya, I know this situation with your grandmother is complicated. But you can't put your career on hold forever. The firm needs you. *I* need you."

There was something in his voice—an undertone that Maya had been ignoring for years but couldn't quite ignore now. Derek's "need" had always been professional on the surface, but she'd caught glimpses of something else beneath. Glances that lasted too long. Invitations to dinner that felt like more than business. A possessiveness about her time and attention that exceeded partnership norms.

She'd never addressed it because addressing it would have been messy, and Maya Chen didn't do messy. But now, with Willow Creek and Eli and the seismic shifts happening in her internal landscape, Derek's undercurrents felt more significant.

"I'll be there Thursday," she repeated. "Send me the prep materials."

"Already in your inbox." Derek smiled—his camera-ready smile, the one that charmed clients and intimidated competitors. "See you soon, partner."

The call ended, and Maya sat staring at the blank screen.

---

Eli found her in the garden an hour later, attacking a rose bush with pruning shears that were slightly too dull for the job.

"You're murdering that plant."

"It was already dead."

"It's dormant. There's a difference." He gently removed the shears from her hands. "What happened?"

"I have to go back to San Francisco. Thursday. Client meeting I can't avoid."

Eli's expression didn't change, but something shifted in his posture—a subtle tension that hadn't been there before.

"How long?"

"A day. Maybe two." Maya wiped her hands on her jeans. "I'll be back by Saturday."

"Okay."

"That's it? Just okay?"

Eli shrugged. "What do you want me to say? That I don't want you to go? That every time you talk about San Francisco, some part of me wonders if you're going to get on a plane and not come back?"

"Eli—"

"I'm not going to say those things because they're not fair. You have a career. You have responsibilities. The fact that you're here at all is—" He stopped, ran a hand through his hair. "I'm trying really hard not to be the guy who makes your life harder."

Maya stepped closer to him. The garden was overgrown around them—wild roses, escaped lavender, the oak tree's shadow falling across them both. She could smell him—that familiar scent of soap and outdoors that had never stopped meaning something to her.

"You don't make my life harder."

"I make it more complicated."

"Complicated isn't the same as hard."

He looked at her—really looked, with those dark eyes that had always seen too much. "What are we doing, Maya?"

The question had been hovering between them for weeks, unasked and unanswerable.

"I don't know," Maya said honestly. "I know what I want. I just don't know if I'm capable of having it."

"What do you want?"

"To stop running. To finish the investigation. To restore this house. To—" She faltered.

"To what?"

"To not be alone anymore."

Eli's breath caught—she heard it, saw his chest stop moving for a fraction of a second.

"You're not alone," he said quietly. "You haven't been alone since you came back. You've just been pretending."

"Pretending is what I do."

"It doesn't have to be."

They stood close enough that Maya could feel the heat radiating off his body. Close enough that if she leaned forward—just an inch—their lips would touch.

She didn't lean forward. Neither did he. The moment stretched, trembled, and then passed.

"I should pack," Maya said.

"I'll drive you to the airport."

"You don't have to—"

"I know I don't have to. I want to." He stepped back, putting safe distance between them. "Thursday morning. What time's your flight?"

"Seven."

"I'll be here at five."

He walked back to his house, and Maya stood in the ruined garden watching him go, and felt the ache in her chest that she was beginning to recognize as something other than fear.

---

That night, Maya couldn't sleep.

She wandered the Victorian, restless, touching things—the doorframes, the banisters, the worn spots on the floor where generations of feet had walked. The house was quiet around her, the old creaks and sighs almost familiar now.

She ended up in the attic, as she often did. The letters were organized now—James's to Rose, Rose's unsent to James, Margaret's brief correspondence—but Maya wasn't here for the letters tonight.

She was here for the photograph. The one of James and Rose in Portland, 1943. *The happiest day.*

Maya held it up to the attic's single window, where moonlight came through.

"What happened to you?" she asked the man in the uniform. "Where did you go?"

James smiled back at her from eighty years ago, his arm around the woman he loved, his future unknown and apparently worth risking everything for.

Maya thought about risk. About what she was risking by going back to San Francisco—the thread of connection she'd been building with Eli, the momentum of the investigation, the tentative sense of home that was taking root in her chest.

But she also thought about what she was risking by staying. The career she'd built for fifteen years. The reputation she'd earned project by project. The identity that had sustained her through a decade of loneliness.

*You can always find a reason to run, sweetheart. Sometimes you need a reason to stay.*

Rose's words, from the letter in the sealed envelope. Maya had memorized them by now.

"I'm coming back," she said aloud, to the photograph, to the house, to the ghost of her grandmother that seemed to inhabit every corner. "San Francisco is two days. Then I'm coming back."

She went back to bed and dreamed of airports and gardens and a man in uniform writing letters by candlelight, and when she woke at four to Eli's knock on the door, she was more certain than she'd been in years about where she was supposed to be.

She just needed the courage to say it.