He called Vanessa at 8:15. She answered on the first ring, which told him she'd been waiting. Marcus, her voice was different from what he remembered. Or maybe the same, and he was different. Careful where it used to be loose.
Deliberate where it used to be impulsive. Vanessa, he said, you said it was important. It is a pause. I watched the press conference yesterday. All of it.
Another pause. Longer. I didn't know any of that was happening. I had no idea what you'd been dealing with at that airline. No reason you would have, he said.
I know, but she stopped. He could hear her working up to something, which she always did by stopping and starting that particular rhythm he knew from 4 years of marriage. Marcus, I've been doing a lot of thinking about everything about how things ended between us about Zoe. Her voice shifted on Zoe's name became something less managed. I miss her.
He kept his voice level. She misses you, too. She always has. I want to see her. I want to be.
I want to try to be in her life again consistently. Not like before. Marcus was quiet for a moment. What changed? Silence.
He waited. You did, she said finally. I watched you stand up there yesterday in front of all those cameras and microphones and you just you told the truth and I thought about the man I knew who used to file those reports who used to come home frustrated because no one was listening and I thought her voice cracked slightly. I thought I knew that man. I lived with that man and I called him too small.
He didn't say anything. I was wrong. She said, "I was wrong about you, and I need you to know that." The kitchen was very quiet. Outside, somewhere down the street, a lawn mower started up. Marcus looked at the wall.
He thought about the version of himself that would have needed to hear this. That had spent months after the divorce running a kind of internal audit. What had he done wrong? What could he have changed? What was it about him that wasn't enough?
He thought about that man who had gotten very good at existing and not very good at living, who had filed 43 memos into the void and kept showing up and kept being precise and kept doing everything right while quietly believing. Somewhere under all of it, that he was fundamentally insufficient. That man would have needed this call very much. He took a breath. Vanessa, he said, "I hear you and I think you mean what you're saying, so I'm going to be straight with you because that's the only way I know how to do this." He paused.