Building the Future
Three years after that fateful Thanksgiving, I met Maya.
We met at a community art gallery opening downtown where my firm was sponsoring a renovation project. Maya was an architect—ironically, given Grandpa’s old notes about me sitting on the basement stairs reading architecture books.
She was sharp, grounded, and laughed with her whole body. She didn’t have a chaotic family orbiting her like a dying star; her parents were retired teachers who lived quietly in Vermont, and her brother was a landscape designer in Seattle.
When we’d been dating for six months, she came over to my townhouse for dinner.
I had spent the afternoon cooking—braised short ribs, garlic mash, and roasted carrots. As Maya walked around my living room, running her fingers over the bookshelf and pausing to look at the framed print above the table, she noticed the small wooden horse sitting on the mantelpiece.
