But now, with Richard speaking plainly and without judgment, the part of him that had been held together by discipline began to feel thin. "What do I do?" He asked, and the question came out smaller than he intended. Richard looked at him for a long moment. Tell her the truth, he said.
Not the practical truth, not the version that sounds noble. The real one. He rose slowly gripped his cane and added, "And do it soon. People like you have a terrible habit of waiting until the moment is gone." Victoria did not answer his first call.
She did not answer his second either. On the third attempt, he left a voicemail and even though he hated hearing his own voice recorded, he forced himself through it. He told her he was sorry. He told her he had been scared not of her exactly, but of what it meant that he could feel something this strongly after spending so many years teaching himself not to. He told her that when the story first began, he thought the hardest part would be the money or the attention or the difference in their worlds, but that none of those things were the real problem.
The real problem was that she made him want a future he had already decided not to allow himself. He listened to the silence after he ended the message and knew even before she called back that it had changed something. She did call late that evening after Ethan was asleep and after Daniel had gone outside to stand in the cool dark beside the garage where the smell of oil and damp concrete was strongest. "That was better," she said instead of, "Hello." Daniel laughed once, a short relieved sound.
"I'm still terrible at this." "Yes," she said, "but at least now you sound like yourself." He could hear the smile in her voice, fragile but real. And suddenly he knew he could not keep backing away from the truth. "I don't want to lose this," he said quietly, then stop behaving like it's already lost.
She came to the garage the next evening, not in the black sedan, not with an assistant, not with the walls she usually carried around her so carefully, but alone in a simple dark coat. Stepping through the bay doors just as the light was beginning to turn gold. Ethan saw her first and with the enormous seriousness of a child who has appointed himself guardian of emotional outcomes, immediately found an excuse to go upstairs and help grandma with something. Tony, who had learned more from the atmosphere in the garage than from any direct explanation, disappeared into the supply room with a box of spark plugs and stayed there suspiciously long. Daniel stood by the workbench, hands shoved in his pockets, heart knocking hard enough that he felt absurd.
Victoria stopped a few feet away and looked at him with an expression that was part patience, part pain. "I got your voicemail," she said. "Good," he replied, then winced because it sounded ridiculous. She gave him a tiny, almost invisible smile. "You're still bad at conversation when you're nervous."
"I know." "Then tell me anyway." He took a breath. It felt deeper than any he had taken in weeks. I was wrong to push you away, he said.