The morning it happened, I left the house at six-fifteen.
I want to tell you this detail because it matters to the sequence of events, because the early departure was itself a kind of sacrifice, the specific sacrifice of a man who understood that the pitch was important and who had therefore set his alarm for five-thirty and been at his desk by five-fifty, going through the deck one more time, checking the numbers, running the transitions.
My daughters were still asleep.
Lily was seven and Cora was five and they slept in the specific way of children whose sleep is complete and uncomplicated, and I had looked in on them before I left, which I always did, the small ritual of a father checking on the people who organized his sense of purpose.
My wife Claire was also still asleep.
She had been up late the night before with Cora, who had a ear infection that was on its third day and that required the specific nighttime management of a child who woke every two hours uncomfortable and needed to be held back to sleep.
I had done my half of it until midnight.
Then I had gone to the desk and worked on the pitch until two-thirty.
Then I had slept for three hours and gotten up and showered and put on the good tie and left.
The pitch was for a pharmaceutical company that had been circling our agency for four months, the kind of account that did not come along regularly, the kind that, if we landed it, would change the trajectory of the business in ways that would affect everyone who worked there.
My name is Sebastian Reyes.
I am forty-one years old and I was, at the time of this story, a senior account director at a mid-sized creative agency in the city that had twelve employees and aspirations that occasionally outpaced its resources.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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