Updated Apr 6, 2026 • ~12 min read
Chapter 6: The Company Directory
Declan
He was on his fourth book.
The first had been clinical and dense in the way of medical texts written for anxious non-specialists, full of statistics presented without context that made everything sound both normal and terrifying. He had not found this useful. The second was a father-specific guide that he’d approached with some skepticism and found, despite himself, genuinely readable — practical in places, occasionally moving in ways he hadn’t braced for, which was how he’d ended up sitting at his kitchen counter at eleven p.m. with the book open to a chapter on fetal development and a hand on his sternum like a person experiencing something he hadn’t named yet.
He had been on two parenting forums. He was now on nine, under a username that was absolutely not his name.
He had also downloaded an app that sent him weekly updates — embryo is currently the size of a kidney bean, embryo is developing the inner ear, embryo is now technically a fetus and has fingers, which he’d read on a Tuesday morning and sat with his coffee and thought: *fingers.* The whole morning had a different quality after that.
None of this had been requested by Scarlett. He had not told her about the books or the forums. He had not sent her the app notification about the fingers, which he’d wanted to and had exercised restraint about because he was trying to be present without being *much*, which was a balance he was finding required active calibration.
What he was doing was paying attention. He was good at paying attention; it was one of the things that made him genuinely good at his job — the ability to hold a lot of information about something and let it inform how he moved through it. He had been applying this to pregnancy in general and to Scarlett specifically, and the information was accumulating.
She had mentioned Groundwork Coffee once, six months ago. He’d been at an industry panel on digital media strategy and she’d come in three minutes late — which almost never happened — with a specific blue cup from somewhere that wasn’t the coffee cart in the conference lobby, and someone had asked and she’d said it was the place two blocks from her office, and he had filed this without intending to.
He knew she ran cold, from three winters of industry events — she was always the one who kept her jacket on longest, who gravitated toward the windows away from the air conditioning in summer. He knew her lunch order at three different industry-adjacent restaurants from overlapping client meetings. He knew she took her earrings off under stress — not consciously, just reached up and unclipped them while thinking, and he’d noticed this in pitch settings and thought it was interesting, the way certain tells were specific and unguarded.
This was, he was aware, a significant amount of information about a person he’d been claiming for three years was simply a professional rival.
He didn’t interrogate it. He had the information; he was going to use it in the service of actually being useful.
Week ten: he did a sweep of the current information. Her first trimester symptoms, based on what she’d mentioned at the cafe and what he’d researched: nausea, fatigue, the cold brew aversion. He knew from forum research — three separate threads, cross-referenced — that the nausea often peaked between weeks eight and twelve. He had checked. He had a specific list.
He assembled the bag on a Wednesday evening.
Prenatal vitamins: the specific ones that two OBs had mentioned in different threads as being well-tolerated with nausea, the kind with the smaller capsule format. Ginger chews: from the Japanese import grocery near his loft, not the generic brand. Saltine crackers of a specific variety that three separate forum posters had described as the only thing that worked — thin, unsalted, the blue-and-white box. A smoothie from Vibe Organic, because she’d mentioned in a passing comment at the Summit two years ago that it was her usual and he’d looked it up.
He put all of this in a bag.
He stood in his kitchen with the bag and looked at it.
Then he got in his car and drove to Nob Hill, which — he wanted to be clear with himself about why he was doing this, even if he wasn’t going to explain it to anyone. He was doing it because she was dealing with something difficult, partly because of him, and he was not a person who could know that and do nothing. He was not built for doing nothing. He had never been good at the managed-distance model she was trying to build, not because he didn’t respect her need for it but because proximity to someone who was struggling and staying back was not in his nature.
It was also possible that he simply wanted to see her. He was less clear on how much of that was co-parenting instinct versus something else, and he was not going to examine the distinction in the parking garage of a Nob Hill building.
He found her condo number on the panel and pressed the buzzer.
Silence for three seconds.
“Who is it.” Not a question. Her voice from the intercom had the specific flat register of someone who was not feeling well and also had not expected this.
“It’s Declan.”
Longer silence. He could actually feel her evaluating this through the intercom, could imagine her face doing the sequence — surprise, processing, the rapid calculation about whether to engage. “What are you — how do you know where I live?”
“You’re in the company directory.”
“I’m in the Lumen company directory.”
“The industry one. Pacific Coast directory. You’ve been in there since—”
The buzzer sounded. He went up.
She opened the door in what were clearly work clothes worn through a day that had not gone according to plan — a cream blouse with the top button open, charcoal trousers, dark red hair in the work updo but less precise than usual, two tendrils escaping the clip. She was in socked feet, which for some reason was the detail that made her seem most real — the only detail he’d never seen before, because it required being inside a space she controlled.
She looked at the bag.
She looked at him.
“Ginger chews,” he said. “Prenatal vitamins — the kind with the smaller capsules, for nausea. Saltines — the thin ones. Smoothie from Vibe Organic, but that one’s probably only good for another twenty minutes, so.”
She was quiet. Looking at the bag.
“You didn’t have to do this,” she said.
“I know.”
“The directory is not an open invitation.”
“I know that too.”
She was still looking at the bag with an expression he couldn’t entirely read — something layered in it, running underneath the surface resistance. Then she stepped back from the door and he understood this to mean he could come in.
Her apartment was exactly what he might have imagined if he’d imagined it, which — obviously — he’d never done, because that would be strange. It was a very Scarlett apartment: not minimal but precisely calibrated, every choice deliberate and aesthetically coherent in a way that was also lived-in rather than staged. Bookshelves organized by color, which he found interesting given her type-A reputation — he’d have predicted by category. A large desk with a monitor and an organized cable management system that was, genuinely, aspirational. The kitchen counter was clean except for two items: her laptop, open to what looked like campaign metrics, and a small dish that held her earrings.
The ultrasound printout was on her refrigerator.
He didn’t say anything about it. He set the bag on the counter and unpacked it in a logical order: vitamins first, ginger chews, crackers, smoothie.
“You should drink the smoothie now,” he said.
“I know how smoothies work.”
“There’s a timestamp concern.”
“Declan.” She opened the smoothie and took a sip, looking at him over the top of the cup. Then she looked at the crackers. “How did you know about the thin saltines specifically?”
He considered whether to mention the nine forums. “I did some reading.”
“What kind of reading.”
“General. Pregnancy things.”
She was watching him with the expression that had been, three years ago, purely a professional appraisal — the one that assessed whether information was reliable or a calculated move. Now it had something else in it. Less armor. Not no armor, but less. “You looked up morning sickness remedies.”
“Among other things.”
“For me.”
“You’re the one who’s pregnant.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then: “It peaked this week. The nausea. I’ve been good at hiding it from the office but this morning was—” She stopped. Set the smoothie down. “I’m fine.”
“I know you’re fine.”
“I’m not asking you to—”
“I know. I brought you crackers. I’m not rescuing you.” He looked around the kitchen. “Do you have tea?”
“In the cabinet.”
He found the cabinet. The tea selection was extensive and organized — she had approximately twenty varieties, labeled. He located ginger tea without difficulty. “Do you have a kettle?”
“Yes, I have a kettle. I’m not —” She stopped. Watched him find the kettle and fill it. “You’re just going to stand there and make tea.”
“I’m going to sit at your kitchen counter with my laptop and work while the tea steeps. If that’s all right.”
She looked at him for a long moment. “You brought your laptop to a wellness drop-off.”
“I have a pitch deck to finish. I can work anywhere.”
The kettle went on. He pulled his laptop from his bag — he’d packed it because he had genuinely intended to work, and because he’d thought that having a functional reason to stay would be easier for her to accept than the simple truth, which was that he didn’t want to drop off the bag and leave, because she looked tired in a way she wouldn’t admit to and the apartment felt large around her.
She sat on the other side of the counter on the single barstool there and opened her own laptop.
They worked.
It was quiet — not uncomfortable, but the specific quiet of two people who worked the same way, both going into the concentration that meant something was getting done. The kettle boiled. He made the tea and slid it across the counter. She added the exact amount of honey without looking up, which meant she’d noticed him put the honey out. She drank it slowly.
At some point she opened the ginger chews. She ate three of them without comment. He did not note this out loud.
At nine-fifteen she said, looking at her screen: “The Brightline prep call is next Thursday.”
“I know.”
“We’re going to be in the same room.”
“We’ve been in rooms together for three years.”
“This is different.”
He looked up from his pitch deck. She was looking at her screen still, not at him. “The room won’t know it’s different,” he said. “We’ll be professional.”
“We’re always professional.”
“Exactly.”
She typed something. Then: “Priya knows. I told her last week.”
“How did she take it?”
The corner of her mouth moved. The smallest thing. “She asked if the father was anyone she knew and I said no and she immediately knew I was lying. She has a ninety-six percent accuracy rate on my tells.”
“What gave it away?”
“I apparently do something with my left hand when I’m omitting information.” She looked at her hand. “I’m going to have to unlearn it.”
“What does she think?”
Scarlett was quiet for a moment. “She thinks it’s going to be okay.” Another pause. “She’s usually right about things.”
He didn’t push it. The tea was steeping to the right color. The ginger chews were open on the counter. The ultrasound picture was on the refrigerator between a magnet from somewhere coastal and a delivery menu, and he was sitting in her apartment on a Wednesday evening working on his pitch deck while she worked on hers, and there was something in the room that had nothing to do with the framework document or the co-parenting agreement or the professional context that they were both very carefully maintaining.
He didn’t say it. It wasn’t time to say it. He was paying attention to the signals and the signal was: *not yet.* But it was there, and he was aware of it, and he was pretty sure she was too.
He left at ten. She walked him to the door in her socked feet.
“The vitamins,” he said. “Take them at night if the mornings are rough. Less nausea that way. Third forum consensus.”
She looked at him. “Third forum consensus.”
“There’s some variance in the data.”
She said: “Declan.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you.”
He almost said *you don’t have to.* But she did, and they both knew it — not for the bag, but for the way he’d been here, not hovering, just present. He could see that she understood the difference.
“Thursday,” he said. “Brightline prep.”
“Brightline prep,” she confirmed.
He went. She closed the door and he stood in the hallway for a moment with the specific feeling of someone leaving a room that has more gravity than the room they’re walking toward.
He walked to his car. He drove home to Hayes Valley.
He had a very good evening finishing his pitch deck, which he would cheerfully deny had been helped in any way by the fact that the previous two hours had been, unexpectedly, the best two hours of his week.
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