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I found the drawer while Alexander was away. It wasn’t locked. A small handwritten label marked only a span of four years.

I slid the drawer open. Inside lay a neat stack of conference programs. I looked at them, wondering why they were there. Then I picked up the one on top.

American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting

I opened it. There, among the pages listing lectures and panel discussions, my name appeared. Columbia Medical Research Center. Three years ago.

I reached for the next. Then another. Different cities. Different years. Every program had been carefully kept.

I carried them to the table, laying them out one beside another as the realization settled over me. Seven conferences over nearly four years. My presentations had been neatly underlined in each program, and beside several of them, in handwriting I immediately recognized, were a handful of quiet notes.

A lecture title. A question I had been asked. A panel discussion.

Beside one presentation, only a single word. Excellent.

I became aware that I had stopped breathing. Alexander appeared in the doorway. His eyes moved to the programs spread across the table before returning to mine. There was no surprise in his expression, only the calm acceptance of a man who had known this moment would eventually arrive.

“You were there.”

“Yes.”

“Every year?”

“Almost.”

I thought of all those conference halls, the ones I’d left feeling invisible, certain no one was really listening. I hadn’t been invisible at all. Somewhere in each of those rooms, one person had been paying attention.

“Why?”

He was quiet long enough that I wondered whether he intended to answer at all. “When I first heard you speak,” he said at last, “I told myself I was interested in Aurora.”

A faint smile touched the corner of his mouth. “It took me rather longer than it should have to admit that I had been paying much closer attention to the woman presenting it.”

I looked down at the programs again. Cities I had almost forgotten. Hotels that had blurred together. Conference rooms where I had spent years speaking about research that seemed one grant away from disappearing. Through it all, Alexander had been there. Not waiting for an opportunity to interrupt my life. Simply bearing quiet witness to it.

“Why didn’t you introduce yourself?”

His smile remained, though it softened. “You were busy.”

“Doing what?”

He held my gaze with the same certainty that had accompanied so many of the truths he had shared with me that morning.

“Becoming.”

* * *

Alexander brought the coffee over to me. I thanked him and took a sip.

The last few minutes had caught me by surprise. I was flattered by his interest in Aurora, in me. But a nagging question followed. I had to ask now, otherwise I would always wonder if I deserved it.

“Alexander, did Aurora deserve the grant?”

Without hesitation, he answered. “Yes.”

“I need you to answer that as the Chairman, not as Alexander. You’d been following my work for years. Aurora received twenty-five million dollars less than ten hours after I submitted the application. I need to know whether we were the best proposal or whether I had an advantage I didn’t know about.”

“You had an advantage.”