Page 12 of Main Event

“Already planning to, babe.”

She lies back. I turn off the lamp and lie beside her. She finds my hand in the dark—not tight, just present.

“Thank you for telling me tonight,” she says.

“I almost didn’t,” I say. “You had enough today.”

“I always have enough.” She pauses, her hand flat on my chest. “Tell me anyway. Always. I can handle it, Luke. You’re beside me.”

I close my hand around hers.

Outside, the neighborhood does its late-night quiet—a sprinkler down the street, a dog briefly, then nothing.

We sleep despite our intruder’s return.

CHAPTER FOUR

BRANDON

The governance advisory council meets in a building on West Peachtree that announces itself through understatement—no signage visible from the street, a quiet, well-appointed lobby that is neither showy nor ostentatious, the kind of space that communicates resources without requiring you to count them. I’ve been in rooms like this my entire career. I know what they mean.

Eight people around a conference table. Introductions brief and professional. A former federal appointee whose name I recognize from a decade of policy work. Two philanthropic directors I know by reputation. A woman from a family foundation with interests in education and housing. The others, I don’t know yet.

And Evelyn Carrington.

She’s introduced simply—governance consultant, longtime council advisor—and she arrives at the table the way certain people arrive in rooms: without announcement, already present. Late fifties, I’d say, though it’s genuinely difficult to place. Composed in the way that money and practice produce—not the performed composure of someone managing nerves, but the settled composure of someone who stopped needing to manage them a long time ago.

She listens more than she speaks. When she does speak, what she says is measured and exactly right for the moment—the precision that comes from having sat in enough of these rooms to know which words matter and which ones only think they do.

I watch people like this for a living. I know how to read a room.

She’s good. She’s very good.

Toward the end of the meeting, as the conversation moves to potential initiatives that overlap with the youth center’s work, she turns to me directly for the first time.

“Your brother is Luke Woods,” she says. Not a question. “I’ve followed his career for some time. Remarkable trajectory.”

“He’s worked for it,” I say.

“Of course.” A pause, a beat of warmth that arrives without being performed. “And his fiancée—I understand she’s doing important advocacy work. The legislative testimony this week was substantive.”

“Andi does important work, yes.”

She nods. “The institutional structures around foster care reform really need to be examined. We must find ways to support that effort.” She addresses the room, not just me—using a general tone that makes her personal observation feel more widespread.

The meeting ends forty minutes later.

I drive home thinking she seemed impressive.

Marin is at my apartment when I get back.

She has a key. I gave it to her four months ago, during the stretch of time when her presence stopped feeling incidental and began to feel like something solid—something my life had begun to organize itself around. She uses it the way she uses most things: with precision and no waste. She was here when I needed her to be and absent when I didn’t, and the combination made me feel, for a while, like I’d finally found someone who understood exactly how I function.

She’s at the kitchen counter with a glass of wine and a file she’s reading. She looks up when I come in.

“How was it?” she asks.

“Productive.” I pour myself a glass. “Interesting group. There was a woman there, a governance consultant, Evelyn Carrington. Have you heard of her?”