Through the floor to ceiling windows, Marcus could see people dancing, toasting, laughing. His coworker, Dennis, had texted him twice asking where he went. His manager had probably noticed he was missing. None of that felt particularly important right now. You have a daughter, Adriana said.
It wasn't a question. He looked at her. The photo on your desk, I saw it during the Q3 walkthrough last spring. little girl, maybe seven or eight. Big smile, missing a front tooth. She was seven then.
She's eight now. got the tooth back. He paused. You remember that? I remember most things. She pulled her knees up slightly.
What's her name? Zoe. Is she with her mother tonight? No. He kept his voice even.
Her mother and I aren't. We've been divorced for 2 years. Zoe's with my mom tonight. I'm sorry. Don't be.
It is what it is. Adriana turned to look at him. How do you do that? Do what? Talk about something painful like it's just a fact.
Like it doesn't cost you anything. I was quiet for a beat. It costs me plenty. I just decided a while back that the cost doesn't have to show on my face every second of every day. I've got a kid watching me.
She reads everything I do. If I fall apart, she thinks falling apart is what you do when things get hard. He looked at his hands so I don't fall apart where she can see it. Adriana studied him like she was memorizing something. And when she can't see it, he met her eyes.
Then it's mine to deal with. She held his gaze for a long moment. Then she looked back at the fountain. I haven't cried since my mother's funeral. She said 12 years ago.
I was 22. After that, I just She shook her head slowly. I decided that if I was going to survive in rooms full of men who were waiting for me to break, I couldn't afford to. I couldn't afford to feel things in public. And after a while, you stop feeling them in private, too, because private and public start to blur together when your whole life is the company.
"That sounds exhausting. It's efficient. It sounds exhausting," he said again. She let out a slow breath. It is.
The wind picked up. She shivered slightly but didn't move from her spot. You should go back inside, Marcus said. It's cold. I know.
Neither of them moved. Do you trust the people in there? He asked. She considered this. I trust their self-interest.
I understand their self-interest. That's a kind of reliability. That's not trust. Maybe not. She tilted her head.
Do you trust people genuinely? A few. My mom, my daughter. Even though she's eight, she's got more integrity than half the adults I know. My friend Leon.
He paused. That's about it. What happened that made the list so short? My ex-wife. He said it matter-of-factly.
We were together for 6 years. I thought I knew her. Turns out I knew the version of her she was comfortable showing me. The rest of it. He exhaled.
That's a long story for a cold night. I've got time. He looked at her sideways. I thought you were drunk. I am drunk.
Drunk people still have time. A pause then almost to herself. For the first time in a long time, I actually have nothing else I'm supposed to be doing. They talked for a long time after that. Not in the way people talk at company events carefully, strategically with one eye on how they're being perceived.
They talked like two people who'd accidentally found themselves somewhere outside all of that. Like the fountain and the cold night and the broken bottle had drawn some kind of boundary around them that the rest of the world couldn't reach. Marcus told her about his marriage, about meeting Diane in his mid-20s when he was still figuring out what he wanted to be, about building something together that felt solid, felt real until the year Diane got restless and started wanting a life that didn't include a man who came home from a 12-hour shift and needed to be quiet for 20 minutes before he could speak again. She didn't leave for someone else, he said. That's what everyone assumed.
She just left for a version of herself I couldn't give her. And I couldn't hate her for it even when I wanted to. Even when Zoe cried herself to sleep for three weeks asking why mommy wasn't coming home. What did you tell her? The truth.
As much of it as an 8-year-old can hold. He looked at his hands again. I I told her that sometimes people love each other and still can't make it work. That it wasn't her fault. That it wasn't even really anyone's fault.
And I told her that no matter what, she had me. Every single day she had me. Adriana was quiet. Did she believe you? She tested it first, the way kids do.
She acted out for a while, pushed at everything, waited to see if I'd disappear the way her mom did. He shook his head slowly. I didn't. I showed up. Every morning, every school drop off, every nightmare at 2:00 in the morning, every bad day, every good one.
And eventually she stopped testing and just let me in. You make it sound simple. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. But simple and hard aren't the same thing. Adriana turned that over in her mind.
He could see it the way her expression shifted slightly like a thought rearranging itself. My father left when I was nine. She said he came back when I was 23 and the company was starting to generate real money. Made it very clear which part of me he was interested in. She paused and I let him back in anyway because I was still his daughter because some part of me still.
She stopped. Her throat moved. I still wanted him to see me. The real version, not just the CEO. Did he?
No. Her voice was flat now. Not sad. Just finished. No, he never did.
And now he wants to take what I built and call it his. The jazz inside had stopped. The party was winding down. Through the windows, Marcus could see people collecting their coats, saying their goodbyes. "You should get home," he said gently.