Original fiction from Rarle USA. All characters and events are fictional. Illustration generated with AI.
At 2:40 on a Thursday morning, a photograph arrived from a number I did not recognize. My husband, Martin, stood at a conference table beside a woman in a gray business suit. They were smiling for someone just outside the frame. Between them sat a green folder I had not seen for three weeks.
The message beneath the photograph was brief: “You should know who is presenting tomorrow.” I enlarged the picture, expecting to recognize the room. Instead, I recognized the small white label on the folder. Harbor Lane. My project. My handwriting.
Martin had told me that the presentation was postponed. He had also told me that my planning documents were safely stored at his office. Now those same documents were on a hotel meeting table, ready for a presentation I had apparently been removed from.
For a moment, I wanted to call him and ask a dozen questions at once. Then I noticed something else: a place card with my name had been turned facedown beside his laptop. Someone had brought it to the meeting. Someone else had decided that I would not need it.
I set the phone beside my cup and opened the drawer where I kept my original notes. There was the first sketch of Harbor Lane, dated eleven months earlier, with a coffee stain across the corner. I remembered drawing it while the rain knocked against the kitchen window. Martin had glanced over my shoulder that evening and called it a nice little idea.
Harbor Lane was a proposal to turn an empty office building into affordable workspaces for independent businesses. I had interviewed the prospective tenants, found the building, and worked with an architect on the floor plans.
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