What's her name? Daniel. He was quiet for 3 seconds. Lauren. Marcus was quiet for five, which was more alarming than if he'd immediately responded.
Tell me, Marcus said carefully that she is not connected to your job. Daniel said nothing. Daniel Reginald Brooks, it's not what you think. What I think is that you are a single father with a good job who is about to do something that could cost him both of those things because a woman made him feel seen for the first time in 5 years. And I understand why, but brother, she's my boss's daughter.
Silence. Dead silence. Marcus, I'm here. I'm just I'm putting my phone down for a second. I haven't done anything.
I know you haven't done anything. You're incapable of doing anything without thinking about it for 6 weeks first. That's not the point. Marcus was back voice level now, the way it got when he was genuinely concerned rather than just reacting. The point is that you are apparently spending enough time with this woman that you told me about her, which means it's not nothing, which means it's heading somewhere.
And the somewhere it's heading heading is your boss finding out and deciding what it means before you get to Daniel heard that heard all of it. I know he said quietly. So what are you doing? I don't know yet. That's not an answer.
No, Daniel said it's not. He got off the phone with Marcus and sat in his kitchen for a long time. The thing Marcus had said, "Your boss finding out and deciding what it means before you get to sat in him like a stone in still water. " Because Marcus was right. That was exactly how this worked. That was exactly what Richard Whitmore did.
He arranged things. He decided what things meant before the people in those things got to decide for themselves. And Daniel had been without fully acknowledging it, walking straight toward the thing that would give Richard Whitmore the most leverage over him that anyone had ever had. He picked up his phone to call Lauren. He set it down.
He picked it up again. He set it down again. He went to bed. He did not sleep well. The next morning, Thursday, he almost canled the walk.
He had the text typed out and his thumb on send. Then he deleted it because cancelling was also a decision. And it was the kind of decision made out of fear, which was the kind he'd promised himself he was done making. She was already at the park entrance when he got there. She was looking at her phone, brow furrowed the way she looked when she was dealing with something she didn't want to be dealing with.
Bad morning, he said. She looked up. My father moved the Heartley brunch to this Saturday without telling me. I found out from his assistant who sent me a calendar invite. Daniel stopped walking.