Lily wiped her face with the heel of her hand. "You have to tell her you read it," Daniel said. "She'll be mad." "Maybe for about a minute, then she'll be something else." He waited until she looked at him.
"Your mother needs to know what you're carrying, and you need to give her the chance to show you she's strong enough to hear it." Lily went inside. 20 minutes later, Catherine came out and stood on the grass in the dark with her arms wrapped around herself. "She read it," she said. I know.
Did you tell her to tell me? Yes. Catherine's jaw worked. "You had no right." "That's fair."
Be mad at me. He set the drill in the case and closed it. You've got about 4 minutes before she comes back down. So, be exactly as angry as you actually are. I'm not going to use it against you.
And something in Catherine Hail came apart. She told him about the board. 11 years of it. The 5 a.m. Calls the dinners she'd missed the two Christmases she'd worked through.
And the investors who had praised that in profiles called it commitment, called it hunger, and who were now sitting in a conference room using those same 11 years as evidence that she was overextended and needed to be relieved. She told him about the trap she was in. That if she showed too much anger in a deposition, it would be written down as volatile. That if she went quiet, it would be written down as depressed. That every single reaction available to her would become an exhibit.
There's no version of me that reads as fine, she said. There's just a woman being evaluated. Daniel stood there and let her get to the end of it and did not once tell her it would be all right. When she'd stopped, he asked her a question. Who was the second person to put money in?
She blinked. What? Not the first. The first one's usually family or a fund. The second one, the one who didn't have to.
James Whitmore, she said slowly. He came in when we were four people in a rented suite. Has anybody told him the board's version of this? I assume they have. Has anybody told him yours?
Catherine didn't answer. What are they cutting? Daniel asked. You said they want a new direction. What's the direction away from the community programs, the three-year contracts, everything that doesn't book revenue this quarter?
Then you go get the numbers on those retention renewals, whatever you've got. You show what breaks in year three if they got it. He picked up the drill case. And you call Whitmore yourself before somebody else finishes telling him who you are. She stared at him.
Where does a man who builds fences learn any of that? Four months fighting an insurance company, Daniel said. They denied Sarah's treatment three times. I learned to write everything down, find the person who actually decides, and get to them before the file did. He shrugged.