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I wished I could call him. Instead, I called Priya. She was the next person who deserved to know.

She answered on the fourth ring, slightly out of breath. Music played in the background, the unmistakable soundtrack to one of her morning dance sessions. “If this is about the budget, I told you not to panic until after you slept.”

“We got funded,” I said. “Through the Blackwood Institute Residency Program.”

There was a pause. The music stopped. “I’ll be right there,” she said.

Within twenty minutes, three members of the team had arrived in my office, Priya leading the charge. They crowded around my desk and she read every line of the email aloud, making sure to pause between each sentence and look around for our reactions. Mateo did not disappoint, responding each time with, “That cannot be right.” Priya told him that if he continued looking for reasons it couldn’t be true, she would have him removed from the lab.

For a few minutes, we simply celebrated. There were laughs, tears, and hugs. No one stopped to decide whose victory it was. It belonged to all of us.

I let out a sigh of relief. I was not losing them. I was not losing the cell lines we had fought to create, the data we had spent weeks validating, or the patients we did not know but for whom we had kept going.

Then Priya reached the next part of the email and read it aloud.

“As a condition of the award, Project Aurora will relocate to Blackwood Hall Institute for Science and Fine Arts. Laboratory operations, administrative oversight, and future development milestones will proceed under the residency structure outlined in the relocation packet that will arrive in a separate email.”

Priya and Mateo looked at me. Future Emilia had officially arrived. I looked at them both and nodded.

Mateo broke the silence first. “Me?” I nodded.

Then Priya. “Me?” I nodded again.

I looked at the rest of the team. “Everyone stays with Aurora. The lab moves to Blackwood Hall, but only the three of us are required to live there.”

I decided Priya, Mateo, and I needed a few minutes alone. “Can you give the three of us a few minutes?” I asked the others. They filed out and closed the door behind them.

Their excitement mattered to me, but so did making sure neither of them mistook my happiness for obligation.

“I want you both to know you have a choice. I just can’t imagine this transition without either of you,” I said.

They looked at each other and then back at me. “This is the best thing to happen to us,” Priya said.

“Did you know there is an opera house there? And an observatory?” asked Mateo.

Priya lowered her voice. “Some say it is haunted.”

I laughed. “As long as the ghosts don’t rearrange our samples, I’m fine with sharing my residence.”

Our private celebration didn’t remain private for long. By ten-thirty, my department chair knew. She came to my office, congratulated me sincerely, and admitted that Columbia could not offer anything close to what Blackwood had promised. There was genuine disappointment on her face. She had been a good mentor to me and a strong advocate for Aurora.

By ten-forty-five, my phone battery was nearly dead from the flood of calls and messages, and I had to plug it in. Congratulations arrived from people who had not responded to my last four emails. A board member who once referred to Project Aurora as “ambitious but unfundable” wrote that she was delighted to see such important work receive the recognition it deserved. Several responses came to mind, but none of them would have made my father proud.

The rest of the morning passed in a blur with meetings, phone calls, and discussions regarding the logistics of the move. And through it all, the relocation packet had not yet arrived. It made the situation better and worse. Better, because I could not panic over details that I did not know. Worse, because my imagination snowballed into any of a hundred scenarios.

At noon, I returned to my office and shut the door. I sat at my desk and re-opened the email. My eyes moved to the signature at the bottom.

Personally Approved by Alexander Blackwood, Chairman.

The Chairman. Everyone in New York knew who that meant. Why would the Chairman personally approve a research grant? And why would it happen so quickly? Foundations ordinarily had review committees, scientific advisory boards, and sometimes entire departments dedicated to evaluating proposals. Chairmen attended galas and signed annual reports. Did Blackwood Hall simply do things differently?

I opened a browser and typed his name before I could talk myself out of it. The search results appeared instantly.

Architecture. Philanthropy. Blackwood Hall. Awards. Interviews about restoring historic buildings. Articles about Blackwood Hall Institute.

There was very little information about Alexander Blackwood himself. The same handful of facts appeared across different websites, rearranged in slightly different orders.

His online presence was carefully managed. He appeared in photographs so rarely that each image seemed deliberate. Dark hair with silver at his temples. Immaculately tailored coats. He looked natural in each photograph, never as though he were posing. Even standing still, he seemed to be the type of man who noticed more than he let anyone see.