What you threw away? He repeated, not mocking the phrasing. Just repeating it the way people do when a word lands strangely. What the company threw away? She corrected herself.
For years. Not just me. Yeah, he said. For years. She looked up at him.
I also read about your wife. His expression shifted, not closing off, but steadying, the way a person steadies when something is approached that they're accustomed to carrying in a specific way. That's in the file. HR records, length of single parent status. It came up in a review I initiated.
He was quiet for a moment. Okay, he said. I'm not bringing it up because I think it explains your work record, she said carefully. I'm bringing it up because I said something that morning about people learning to manage their personal lives. And I want you to know that I understand now how obscene that was given what I know.
Caleb said nothing for a moment. He looked at the floor and then back at her. You know what what the worst part of that was? He said it wasn't just that it was wrong. It was that there were people in that hanger who knew who knew what I was doing, what I'd been doing for years.
And they had to stand there and watch you say it. Sloan felt the weight of that land somewhere precise and uncomfortable inside her chest. I know, she said. I'm not asking you to feel bad about it indefinitely, he said. That doesn't do anything useful, but I want you to understand what that room felt like from where I was standing and from where they were standing.
I'm trying to, she said. That's why I'm here. There was a pause. From deeper in the house, the children's program shifted to something with a different theme song. Then small footsteps and Mia appeared in the kitchen doorway in socks and pajama pants and a shirt that said, "Science is for everyone in block letters." She looked at Sloan with the undisguised assessment of a child who has not yet learned that staring is impolite.