I was normally clear on what needed to be done. It wasn’t often that I got things wrong. But in that instant on the subway, I just might have, and my miscalculation was nagging at me. Maybe I’d overstepped, assumed she needed help when she was fine on her own. But she’d been so upset. And she’d shouted “Thank you” after me. I’d replayed it all a billion times in my head already, wondering if I’d done the right thing.

Whatever. I needed to let it go. I didn’t need the jacket back, and it was long gone now, along with her perfect curls and her torn dress and that cardboard box she’d been balancing in her hands. The beauty of living in a city of eight million people is that I’d never see her again.

*  *  *

Seeing who could get to work the earliest was a friendly, unspoken competition between Eleanor and me. We’d started Arbor Financial Partners three years ago, both of us eager and idealistic after burning out on Wall Street. We’d aim to arrive at six thirty, always with giant coffee cups in hand, bright-eyed and determined. Sure, the competition was fun, but I loved the ritual more. Routine settled me. It gave me the endorphin rush that kick-started my day.

This morning, though, I’d decided to extend my run by a couple of miles, and so I was running late, arriving at 7:34. As I passed Eleanor’s office, she glanced at her watch and gave me a self-satisfied smirk through the glass that separated her from the open floor plan. This morning, she was back in full effect: tortoiseshell glasses on, hands waving. She was doing what she did best, juggling fifty things at once, which is why she was simultaneously pounding away at her computer and grilling someone over the phone, her wireless earbuds poised precariously above gold hoops. I offered a casual wave, and she beckoned me inside.

“Uh-huh,” she was saying as I walked in, arms crossed. “Yup, yup, I hear you.”

I meandered over to where she’d hung framed pictures of all the press we’d gotten, and tweaked the frames that were slightly off-center: the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times. Forbes had even put us on their 30 Under 30 list two years ago, heralding us for being “a fund that invests with compassion, and donates 1% of its earnings to environmental groups around the world. They’re pushing the financial bro aside for something better: the financial do-gooder.” Eleanor had the cover and article framed for my birthday; I turned thirty exactly seventeen days after that piece came out.

“Thanks, Luis,” she said. “I’ll have Tyler send it over by Friday.”