What did you do? He asked. When you were in that place. I asked myself one question, she said. The families in those 300 units, do they know your name?
He frowned. Some of them I've done work in adjacent neighborhoods. If they knew you had this choice and they knew you said yes, what would that do to who you are to them? The question went in clean and sat there. It would make me the same as every other developer who ever told them the right things and then signed the check," he said quietly.
"Yes, but my 22 employees are still employed," she said. "Because you built a reputation on being the man who says no to deals like this." "That reputation is why Meridian is calling you. They want your credibility attached to their project. They want the optics of Malcolm Carter signing on.
If you say yes, you don't just help displace 300 families. You give them cover to do it. She leaned forward. And if you say no loudly with your reasons stated clearly, what do you think that does for your standing in this city? Malcolm was quiet.
You'd be the man who turned down eight figures on principle. She said, "On record, in a city where everybody knows everybody and every community organization in the Tri County area would know your name by Tuesday." He looked at her. "You think I should say no?" "I think you already know you're going to say no," she said.
"I think you called me because you needed someone to sit with you while you found your nerve." That landed with a precision that made him blink. Not because it was wrong, because it was completely exactly right, and he hadn't fully admitted it to himself until she said it out loud. He looked at her across his kitchen table. This woman, who had come to his house and sat with him on a Thursday night and helped him find the answer that was already there, not because it served her, not because it advanced any agenda, but because he'd called and said he needed to think, and she had shown up.
Vivien," he said. "Don't make it a thing," she said. "Call Garrett Cole and tell him no." "I will." He paused.
"But it is a thing." She looked at him, said nothing. "You came here," he said. "Not to a coffee shop, not to your office, here, to my kitchen where my son is doing homework in the next room." "You asked me to.
I asked you to help me think. You could have done that anywhere." I know, she said. He held her gaze. Why here?
She looked down at her coffee cup, then back up at him, and something in her face, which was normally so controlled and so precisely managed, came fully open. Because here is where you actually are, she said quietly. Not the version of you that shows up to meetings, the real one. And that's the version I came for. The kitchen was very quiet except for the low sound of Jaden's pencil on paper in the other room.