I had measured the space twice before ordering furniture. The desk was walnut, broad and simple, placed directly in front of the west-facing windows. Behind it, I installed shelves for my professional library: clinical trial binders, leadership books, pharmacology texts, compliance manuals, territory planning notebooks I had kept out of habit. A pale wool rug softened the floor. A reading chair sat in the corner beside a brass lamp. I mounted a whiteboard on one wall and left another blank for art I had not found yet.
It was not a spare bedroom. It was not unused space. It was the room where I could think.
That night, after the movers left and the boxes were stacked in neat towers, I stood barefoot in the living room with a paper plate of takeout sushi on the counter and watched downtown turn from blue to gold to black. Windows lit one by one in the buildings around me. Cars moved across bridges below, red tail lights threading through the city. Somewhere far beneath me, a siren rose and faded.
For the first time in years, my phone was silent.