Dunt called the Saturday before to confirm and Marcus said, "We're doing Thanksgiving at my sister Celeste place the following Thursday. " Ava's already told Celeste about you. A pause. Wanted to mention that in case you needed time to prepare. She told your sister about me. She told my sister, "My cousin Jerome, Jerome's wife, and apparently Mrs.
Patterson at school, though that's secondhand, and I'm still investigating. " Victoria sat with that for a moment. The particular warm weight of it. What did she say? Victoria asked to your sister. That you don't know what a cakewalk is, but you're a fast learner, Marcus said.
And that you listen when she talks about dinosaurs without looking at your phone. That's a high bar, she set. For Ava, that's the whole bar, he said. She drove down the third Saturday and they went to Kora's diner for biscuits again. And then Marcus had two cars to finish.
So she sat in the waiting area and worked on her laptop real work, the kind she normally only did in the office, and found that working in the waiting area of Carter's Auto with the sound of the shop in the background was possibly the most productive 3 hours she'd had in months. She told him that afterward, and he looked at her with the expression that had replaced the almost smile as her favorite, the one that was partly amused and partly something warmer and more careful. That's either a compliment to my shop or an indictment of your office, he said. Both, she said. She ate dinner at the house with the blue door and helped Ava with a school project that required building a model of the water cycle and produced something that Ava declared a masterpiece.
And that Marcus photog photo photographed at and sent to Celeste who sent back a string of responses that made Marcus set his phone down and look at the ceiling. Is it bad? Victoria asked. She sent six question marks, he said. In a row.
Six, he said. That's her way of saying she has a lot to say and is choosing not to say it yet. Should I be concerned? He looked at her. Celeste is going to love you, he said.
That's the concern. She drove back Sunday morning because she had a conference call at noon and Marcus walked her to the car and they stood in the driveway in the early November cold and she pulled her jacket tighter and he said nothing and she said nothing and then she said I keep thinking about the business card, the three words he said. Don't go yet. She said every time I leave I think about that. He looked at her steadily.
What do you think about it? I think you wrote it before you knew anything about me. She said before the company, before Forbes, before any of it. You just you just didn't want me to go. That's right.
He said, "That's the most honest thing anyone has done for me in 20 years. " She said, "Three words on the back of a business card with no expectation of anything. " He said, "I didn't know if you'd find it, but you wrote it anyway. But I wrote it anyway," he said. She looked at him in the cold morning and thought, "This is the person, this specific, unhurried, honest person who writes things on the backs of cards whether or not anyone finds them because he believes some things are worth saying, even into uncertainty. " She thought, "I am not going to stand on this driveway every Sunday morning for the rest of my life. " She thought, "That is the problem I want to solve. " She didn't say it yet, but she thought it with the full weight of a person who had spent 20 years solving problems and had finally found one she was willing to rearrange everything for. She drove back to Atlanta. She had her conference call.
She worked through Sunday afternoon and into the evening. And then she opened her laptop and she started doing math that had nothing to do with quarterly earnings. The math was this. Hail Technology Solutions headquarters were in Atlanta. Her executive team was in Atlanta.
Her board was scattered across the country. She had an office in Atlanta that she needed. She also had in theory the ability to work from anywhere. A strong internet connection existed, which in the year 2024 was not a limiting factor. She had never worked anywhere but Atlanta.
She had never seriously considered it. She did not make a decision that Sunday night. She was not impulsive, not about the big things, not about the things that mattered. She was a person who thought carefully and moved with intention. But she started thinking, and once she started, she did not stop.
Thanksgiving at Celeste House was by any objective measure the loudest room Victoria had been in since her company's IPO celebration, and that had had a DJ. Celeste Carter was 45, ran a daycare out of her home, had three children of her own, and an opinion about everything, and the specific gift of making everyone in her orbit feel simultaneously seen and gently corrected. She hugged Victoria in the doorway with the full commitment of someone who had already decided this was happening and was merely confirming the decision in person. "Marcus told me everything," she said. Victoria looked at Marcus over Celeste's shoulder.
He made a face that communicated both apology and powerlessness. "He told me about the car," Celeste said, stepping back and assessing Victoria with the frank and generous attention of a woman who trusted her own judgment. "Absolutely. " "I want you to know I think that was brave. " "It was a little desperate," Victoria said. "Same thing," Celeste said. "Come in. " Jerome's already talking too loud and we haven't even started cooking yet.