She looked at the empty road. She looked at Marcus Carter who had offered her a ride to his shop the way someone offers a neighbor a ride to the grocery store without calculation without ceremony, without any of the particular energy she'd learned to identify in men who wanted something from her. I'll ride with you, she said. He nodded and started for the truck. She grabbed her bag from the back seat, pulled the hood shut, and followed him.
The cab of his truck smelled like motor oil and coffee and something else, something warm and lived in. There was a kid's jacket on the back seat, small pink. A drawing on the dashboard taped there with scotch tape, a crayon sun above a stick figure house. The way children draw houses with a triangle roof and smoke curling from the chimney. The name AVA was written in the corner in large, careful letters that spoke of a child who was old enough to write.
But still proud of the doing. Marcus caught her looking. My daughter, he said, "She made that about 2 years ago. I keep telling myself I'm going to frame it proper. " He glanced at it. But then it seems fine right where it is.
How old is she? Eight. The single syllable landed with the full weight of a man's entire world. Third grade. Loves dinosaurs and hates math homework.
Victoria looked out the window as the trees started to thin. She with her mom this morning? A beat. A beat that was just 1 second too long. Her mom passed.
Marcus said four years back. I'm sorry, Victoria said, and meant it in the way she almost never meant things in those situations, not as filler, not a script. I'm genuinely sorry. Thank you. He said it simple and clean.
The way people say things when they've learned to carry grief like something that belongs to them, not something that's happening to them. Her name was Dana. She was good people. He didn't say anything else. He didn't need to.
Victoria sat with that for a while. The shop was a low, wide building set back from the main road with a handpainted sign above the bay doors. Carter's auto in red letters, the A slightly larger than the rest. Like whoever painted it had started bold and then reconsidered. There were three bay doors, a small waiting area visible through a front window, an American flag hanging still in the morning air.
Marcus unlocked the side door and held it for her. Inside the office was clean and practical, a coffee maker on a counter along one wall. A desk with a computer that looked like it was born around the same time as her Honda. Framed photos on the wall. A younger Marcus at what looked like a high school graduation.
Another photo of a little girl on a beach laughing at something off camera, arms out, hair wild with salt air. "Ava! " Marcus poured two cups of coffee without asking how she took hers, then stopped himself. "Black," he said. "Or black is good. " He handed her the cup and sat on the edge of the desk rather than behind it, which somehow made the space less formal, less like an office, and more like just a room two people were standing in. He said, "Atlanta," she agreed.
"What do you do in Atlanta? " If you don't mind me asking, she'd thought about this. She'd had a whole background story prepared. I work in consulting was what she'd planned to say. Small firm, nothing exciting. Vague enough to discourage follow-up.
What she said was technology. I work in tech, which was technically true. What kind of tech? Software, mostly business solutions. She wrapped both hands around the warm cup.
It sounds more interesting than it is. Most things do, he said. Not cutting, just honest. He sipped his coffee. You like it?
She opened her mouth to give the automatic answer. The answer she gave interviewers and journalists and people at Galas who asked the same question and expect the same response. I'm passionate about what I build. I believe in technologies power to some days she said instead. He nodded like that was the realest answer she could have given.
How about you? She asked. Do you like what you do? He seemed to consider the question genuinely which she wasn't expecting. I like fixing things.
He said finally. There's something satisfying about, you know, a thing comes in broken and you figure out what's wrong and you make it right. You get to see the result. You did that. That's yours.
He set down his cup. I don't get a lot of problems I can't solve in this job. He said it without any self-consciousness. Victoria thought about the last 12 months of her professional life. The acquisition that had stalled in arbitration, the board conflict she'd managed for 9 weeks without resolution, the talent crisis in her engineering division that had cost her 2 months of sleep.
She thought about the steady accumulation of problems that couldn't be solved cleanly, that required politics and patience and persuasion, and still sometimes just stayed broken. "That must be nice," she said, and she meant every word of it. Marcus looked at her, that same unhurried look she'd gotten on the road. Like he was seeing something and choosing carefully whether to comment on it. "You look tired," he said.
"Not as critique, not as observation designed to make her feel bad. Just as fact, delivered with the kind of directness that comes from someone who's learned to say what they see and let the other person do what they want with it. " "Victoria sat with that for a moment. " "I am," she admitted. Marcus nodded once, stood. Okay, he said. Let me get your car.