Archie
The days passed slowly, each one blending into the next with a sameness I hadn't experienced since the loneliest stretches after my mother died. I threw myself into work the way I always did when I didn't know how else to process something, back to back meetings, contracts reviewed until my eyes blurred, decisions made with a sharpness that my board seemed to appreciate even as I felt myself hollowing out further with every passing hour.
I noticed the absence in small, unexpected ways.
No one reminded me to eat anymore. I realized this on the third day, sitting in my study at nearly nine in the evening, a headache pounding behind my eyes, and understood suddenly that I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, and no one had appeared to gently suggest otherwise, the way she always h
