Three months later, I stepped fully into my director role, hired two exceptional women to my leadership team, and turned the spare room Derek once called “his office” into a study with built-in shelves and a reading chair by the window.
Sometimes I stood there and remembered the look on his face when his key didn’t work.
Frozen.
Not because he loved me too much to lose me.
But because he never believed the door could close on him.
And that, more than anything, was why it had to.
