During the recess, one of them came and found me in the hallway. He wanted to know if the regulatory exposure timeline was confirmed. What did you tell him? I told him it was confirmed by two independent legal assessments and that I had been managing the situation privately to protect the company from market speculation. Another pause.
He went back into the room. Ethan waited. The challenge was tabled. Serena said indefinitely, which in board language means permanently because nobody is going to revisit it once the Meridian story becomes public. She was quiet for a moment.
Victor resigned his advisory positions before the meeting ended. Apparently, he didn't wait for anyone to ask. Ethan let out a breath. " Good," he said. " Yes," she said.
There was something in her voice that was not quite what he expected. Not the clean satisfaction of a victory, but something more complicated. The particular exhaustion of a person who had been braced for a fight for a long time, and was now standing on the other side of it, and finding that the other side was just quieter, not easier. " How are you?" he asked.
A pause. " A different kind than the previous ones. tired, she said genuinely in the way I don't usually admit. You haven't eaten yet, he said. It wasn't a question.
I had coffee. That's not food, Serena. I'm aware of the distinction, she said. And there was a very slight something in her voice that was not quite amusement, but was in the same neighborhood. Go eat, he said.
Not at your desk. Somewhere with actual food on an actual table. Are you managing me? I'm telling you to eat lunch, he said. It's not complicated.
She was quiet for a moment. Then would you she stopped would I what would you want to get lunch? She said sometime. Not today. Today I she stopped again and he recognized the thing she was doing running the calendar against the desire against the calculation of what the desire meant.
Not today, she said, but sometime. Yes, he said without running any calendar. She was quiet for a moment. I should go, she said. I have 3 hours of calls that got pushed because of the morning.
Okay, Ethan. Yeah, the table looks very good in that room, she said. I walked past it this morning on the way to the meeting. I looked at the joinery on the legs. A pause.
You were right that it was the strongest option structurally. I usually am about structure, he said. Don't push it, she said. He smiled. Go make your calls.
She hung up. He stood in the middle of his workshop for a moment, holding the phone, the ash plank waiting on the bench in front of him, the smell of sawdust and linseed oil around him like a constant. the specific smell of the work that had been his whole life for 15 years. Then he went back to the planer. They had lunch nine days later at a place in the West Loop that was not fancy and was also not performing not fanciness, which was the specific quality he'd been looking for without knowing he was looking for it.
It was just a restaurant with good food and tables close enough together that you had to speak at a normal volume which suited both of them. Serena arrived without a driver, which he noticed, and without the quality she had carried at the gala of someone managing a public appearance, which he also noticed. She ordered a full meal, which he noticed most of all. You're watching to see if I actually eat, she said without looking up from the menu. I'm looking at the menu, he said.
You're doing both. The salmon looks good, he said. She looked up at him. The salmon does look good, she conceded. They talked for 2 and 1/2 hours without covering everything they'd meant to cover, which was the specific indicator of a conversation worth having.
She told him about the Meridian story breaking in the financial press 3 days after the board meeting, a federal announcement about preliminary investigations that had validated everything she'd said. The board had sent her a formal letter of confidence. Victor's name had not appeared in her professional life since the morning he'd cleaned out his advisory position. Daniel called, she said about her brother. What did he say?
He said he'd always believed in me. She said it without inflection. He said he'd never doubted my judgment. Ethan looked at her. What did you say?
I said, "Thank you, Daniel." She picked up her water glass. He's my brother. He's also someone I need to understand clearly and not expect to be different than he is. He paused.
Those two things can coexist. Most of the complicated things do, Ethan said. She looked at him. Is that the woodworking philosophy again? It's just regular philosophy, he said.
Things have weight and you figure out how to carry them. That's most of it. She was quiet for a moment, turning the water glass in her hands. I've been thinking about what you said at the gala, she said. About the part where you stop needing a clean conclusion and you just learn to hold something without the weight changing.
About grief, he said. About grief, she confirmed. I've been thinking about it in relation to my father. And also, she stopped. Also what also in relation to other things she said the way I've been carrying the last 3 years Victor the engagement what it meant that I chose him in the first place and what I think it says about what I was looking for and why I was looking there.
She paused. I've been doing a lot of thinking since Thursday. So have I. He said she looked at him about what he considered how honest to be and then decided that the only version of this conversation worth having was the honest one. about the part where you said you're not easy to know. He said, "I've been thinking about whether that matters to me and I think it matters in the sense that it's a real thing about you, not in the sense that it changes my interest in knowing you."