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“Sofia assigned the villas,” I point out.

“After I gave her the list.” Reid lifts his coffee. “She moved him because he requested white roses in his room.”

“We’re receiving white roses,” I tell him.

“Then perhaps fate wants the contract,” Reid suggests.

I make a note beside the projected revenue. “Fate can review the termination clause.”

The corner of Reid’s mouth rises before he returns to the report. We review payroll, freight, and expansion costs for the Oregon property. The figures demand focus, but dates appear across each page, all ending in September, and each brings me back to the same hospital call twenty-one years ago.

Reid allows the silence through another set of projections before closing the folder. “The lilies reached Mrs. Gusev yesterday.”

My hand stops beside the final column. “Sofia told me.”

“Elena called the office because she didn’t have your current number at home. I gave it to her.” Reid studies me across the table. “She said the flowers were beautiful.”

“They’re the same every year,” I answer.

“I know.” His voice holds no pressure, only the familiarity of a man who recognizes a difficult day and refuses to pretend otherwise. “Are you all right?”

The honest answer would require more history than Reid possesses. He knew Misha as a teenager with black hair falling into his eyes, an easy grin, and an ability to make every poor idea sound like a good story. He didn’t know the frightened seventeen-year-old who came to my window after midnight after men threatened his family, or hear me promise that wherever he went, I would go with him.

Reid also doesn’t know what that promise turned me into.

“I remember the first day we met,” I say instead. “My English was good enough, but I hated speaking it in front of the class. Misha heard my accent and sat beside me at lunch without asking permission.”

Reid leans back, his attention on me rather than the financials. “That sounds like him.”

“He told me his mother packed too much food and gave me half his lunch. Later, I learned he had taken his sister’s dessert and had plenty of room for his own.”

“That also sounds like him,” Reid agrees.

The memory brings Misha back with cruel clarity. He’s twelve again, with a bruise on one knee and two sweet rolls hidden in his backpack. He speaks Russian with an American accent, laughs when I correct him, and decides we are friends before I understand a decision has been made.

For six years, almost every memory of my childhood in Washington includes him. Then come the years I can’t explain to Reid, followed by the night when a telephone rings in a hotel room three states away.

“I was traveling when he died,” I continue. My voice comes out colder than I mean it to, but warmth would reveal too much. “A call came after two in the morning. The man on the other end told me Misha had been shot, and by the time I reached Seattle, Elena had already chosen the funeral home.”

Reid lowers his gaze to the closed folder. “I remember the service. You arrived after everyone else and left before the family went home.”

“I couldn’t stay,” I tell him.

He may believe grief drove me away. It was part of the truth. The rest involved men waiting outside the cemetery, blood still owed, and orders that did not pause because my best friend was dead.

“You never talk about that time,” Reid says.

“There is little worth discussing.”

His eyes return to mine. Reid listens well enough to hear the door close, but friendship makes him test the handle once. “There might be more worth discussing than you think.”

“Not today,” I tell him.

He considers me before nodding. “All right. Not today.”

Gratitude moves through me, though I don’t give it words. Reid has never demanded explanations I can’t offer. Perhaps that’s why his friendship has survived every version of me, including those he’s never seen.

He opens the folder again and taps the event projection. “Would you prefer to discuss why the tasting budget includes six hundred dollars for candles?”