Page 35 of Reeves

Early morning lightspills across my desk as I twist a pen through my fingers. The laptop screen glows with the MidSouth acquisition proposal.

I'm not seeing patients today. I have a continuing education course in New Orleans, but I have to close this out so it isn't weighing on me

I click through the document again, pausing at the same clause I've read five times. "Streamlined productivity benchmarks." My patients aren't benchmarks. They're Melissa with cerebral palsy who laughs when we do mirror exercises. They're Trent who worked three months to stand unassisted for ten seconds.

The cursor blinks at me. My reflection in the screen looks tired.

I glance around my small office. It's nothing fancy, with cream walls with framed diplomas. Children's artwork adorns the corkboard behind my printer. The woven rug Mom found at a yard sale sits diagonally on the wood floor and the Fiddle Leaf Fig tree I've grown from a sapling to the five-foot giant it is looms in the corner.

This place is mine.

I reply and begin typing.

Dr. Henderson,

Thank you for your generous offer?—

The words come easily enough, but my mind keeps drifting to last night. Reeves in that black Hummer. The way his eyes scanned my house, lingering on Benjy's toys scattered across the yard.

I backspace, deleting a sentence that wandered off-topic. Focus.

While the financial terms are certainly attractive...

His eyes. They looked older. Harder around the edges. But still, that same intense focus that made me feel both seen and stripped bare.

I shake my head and plant my elbows on the desk, forcing myself back to the email.

After careful consideration, I've decided to decline the acquisition offer...

Did he get my letter? Does he know about Benjy? The questions circle like vultures, making it impossible to concentrate on a simple rejection email.

Of course he got my letter. I left it on his windshield while he was at the gym, just like I always left him letters. There's no reason to believe he didn't. It's only wishful thinking that he didn't instead of choosing not to respond to the reality that I was pregnant with his baby.

I straighten my shoulders and type more deliberately.

I've built this practice to serve our community in a specific way, and while your offer is generous, I believe maintaining independent operation best serves my patients and my professional goals.

There. Professional. Clear. Final.

I press send before I can overthink it further. The screenconfirms delivery with a soft swoosh, and just like that, a decision that should be monumental slides quietly into my sent folder.

The clock on my desk reads 8:15 AM. Forty-five minutes until my first patient arrives.

I close the laptop and walk to the window, watching sunlight paint the parking lot. A squirrel races up an oak tree near the building. Normal. Ordinary. Everything exactly as it was yesterday.

I rest my forehead against the cool glass.

Nothing has changed.

Reeves Stone drove through town, stopped long enough for an awkward conversation, and then left again.

That’s all.

Except now I know he’s here.

And for the first time in six years, the past doesn’t feel nearly as settled as I convinced myself it was.

NINE