I'll think about it, he said. That's the best I can give you right now. That's enough, she said. Awesome. She spent the two weeks doing the thing she had always done when something mattered enough to be done correctly, which was to resist the urge to script it.
She had given enough prepared presentations in her professional life to know the difference between words that had been crafted to land and words that had actually come from somewhere. The board received the crafted ones. The breakroom got something closer to the real version. What she was planning for the hanger could not be crafted. If it was crafted, it would be hollow and everyone in the room would know it because the people who worked in that hanger had spent years developing precise instruments for detecting the difference between something true and something performed.
She told her senior staff one week out. She framed it simply, a company address, mandatory attendance where possible, a safety and culture review. She did not tell them what she was going to say. Howell nodded and asked no questions. Her communications director looked slightly alarmed and asked if she should prepare remarks, and Sloan said no.
Aldrich found out through some channels she still hadn't identified and called to ask what she was doing. And she told him it was an internal address and he should not be concerned. And he told her he was always concerned when executives gave unscripted public remarks. And she told him she understood and thanked him for calling and hung up. She called Caleb again on the Thursday before.
I'm going to be there, he said before she got the question out. Okay, she said. Garrett thinks I'm an idiot for going. What do you think? A pause.
I think I want to see it. He said, I've been trying to figure out what that says about me. I haven't landed on an answer. Maybe it doesn't say anything, she said. Maybe you're just curious.
Maybe, he said. He didn't sound entirely convinced. Can I ask you something? She said, "You're going to anyway." She almost smiled. "That morning in the hanger, after I fired you and you were walking out, you didn't say anything.