I haven't been keeping distance, she said. You've been visiting, he said gently. Exactly. There's a difference between visiting somewhere and deciding you're willing to belong there. She looked at him.
He looked back at her. Are you asking me to belong here? She said, "I'm asking you," he said, "to stop acting like the question scares you. " The question did scare her. She'd spent 20 years making herself unscarable. And here was a man in a hallway in Mil Haven.
Georgia asking her a question about belonging, and her hands were not entirely steady. "It does scare me," she said. "I know," he said. "Say it anyway," she breathed in. "I want to belong here," she said.
"I want to stop visiting and start. " She stopped. "Found it. I want this to be the place I'm going toward. Not the place I drive away from every Sunday. " Marcus was very still. "Then stay tonight," he said.
"Start there. " She stayed. She called in from his kitchen at 7:30 the next morning with her laptop open and her coffee in the mug she was starting to think of. As hers, the blue one, second from the left, and Marcus dropped Ava at school on his way to open the shop. And for two hours, Victoria Hail ran a billion-dollar technology company from a kitchen table in Mil Haven, Georgia. And it worked exactly as well as it worked from the 32nd floor.
Better actually, she told Daniel that when he said, surprised that her connection was unusually clear. Where are you? He said, Georgia, she said. Mil Haven. Yes.
A pause that contained considerable information. Then the board packet for December needs your sign off by Thursday. You'll have it Wednesday, she said. Okay, he said. And then because Daniel had worked for her for 7 years and understood her in the particular way that longevity and proximity produce.
You sound good, Victoria. I am good, she said. She meant it with the full and specific weight of what good actually meant. Not performing fine, not managing adequate, not keeping pace with a life that was moving faster than she could feel it. Actually good in the basic physical whole body sense of the word.
She left Mil Haven at noon with a meeting in Atlanta at 3 that she could not reschedu. Marcus walked her to the car. It was raining lightly. The soft November rain that didn't commit to anything. Just reminded you it existed.