And the look on her face not soft exactly, but open in a way that required something from her said something that neither of them was going to put into words yet. Something that lived the space between two people who have been through something together and come out the other side still standing. "Marcus." She said, "I owe you." "You don't owe me anything."
He said. The way he said it wasn't dismissive. It was just true. He didn't want to be owed. Being owed was a transaction.
What had happened here was something different. She pressed her lips together. Nodded. "All right." She said.
"Then thank you." "As one person to another." "You're welcome." He said. "As one person to another."
He drove home that night with the city moving past the windows in the dark. He thought about Amara asleep at her grandmother's. He thought about Monday. He thought about what happened after Monday. Not in terms of the deal or the board or the company.
But in the smaller more private territory of two people who had been circling something for months and were now close enough to it that circling wasn't really available anymore. But he didn't have the language for that yet. He wasn't sure he was supposed to. He picked up Amara from his mother's the next morning. She ran at him the way she always did full speed.
Completely committed, no hesitation. He caught her. Held her. She smelled like his mother's house, like something warm and permanent. "Daddy," she said into his shoulder.
"Grandma taught me how to make biscuits." "Yeah?" he said. "They weren't very good," she said seriously. "But Grandma said the first ones never are."
He laughed. A real laugh from the same deep unperformed place as Claire's real laugh. "That's true," he said. "For biscuits and for most things." "What's most things?"
she asked. Pulling back to look at him with her eyes that were so direct they sometimes felt like a searchlight. "Most things worth getting right," he said. "The first try isn't supposed to be perfect. It's supposed to teach you something."