1:00, she said. There's a cakewalk. What's a cakewalk? Ava looked at her father. The look communicated volumes.
She doesn't know what a cakewalk is, Ava said in the tone of someone who has identified a serious problem that must be addressed immediately. Then I guess you'd better explain it to her tomorrow, Marcus said. Ava turned back to Victoria. You have to come, she said. You need the full explanation in person, then I'll be there, Victoria said.
Ava laid back down with the satisfaction of someone who has successfully organized an event. Good night again, she said. Good night again, Victoria said. She walked back through the hallway and out the front door. And this time she kept going and she got in the old Honda and started the perfectly functioning engine and sat for a moment in the driveway before she put it in reverse.
Marcus appeared in the doorway behind the screen. She rolled the window down. 1:00, she said. 1:00, he said. She drove back through Mil Haven toward the Birchwood Inn.
Through the four lights and the blinking yellows, past the church and the school and the fall festival sign. She got back to the inn at 9:47. She sat on the edge of the bed in room 6 with her hands in her lap. She pulled out her phone. There were 31 notifications, 14 emails, three missed calls from her chief of staff.
A text from her CO that said, "Everything's fine here. Hope you're getting rest. " She looked at the screen for a long moment. Then she turned the phone face down on the nightstand. She lay back on top of the covers with her shoes still on and stared at the ceiling. And in the dark, she thought about a child's drawing taped to a dashboard.
She thought about a rice pot on a stove and a woman who could tell in 30 seconds when an engine was fine. She thought about what it felt like to dry dishes and put them somewhere that turned out to be the right place and then wrong and then get corrected without consequence. She thought about a man who looked at her and said, "The rest of it is just information. " She thought about how long it had been since she'd been just information to anyone. A very long time. She fell asleep with the lights on and her shoes on and her phone face down on the nightstand.
And she did not dream about the board meeting or the acquisition or the 47 emails. She dreamed about a house with a blue door. She woke up at 6:14 Saturday morning, still in her clothes from the night before, shoes on, lights on, phone face down on the nightstand, exactly where she'd left it. For exactly 3 seconds after she opened her eyes, she didn't know where she was. And in those 3 seconds, she felt something she hadn't felt since she was a child waking up at her grandmother's house.
A clean, unlocated sense of possibility, like the day hadn't decided what it was yet. Then she remembered Milh Haven, Georgia, the Birwood Inn, Peck and Waffles downstairs, a school fall festival at 1:00 that she had committed to attending because an 8-year-old had told her she needed the full explanation of a cakewalk in person. She sat up, she looked at her phone, 39 notifications now. She looked at the number, thought about what each one probably contained, and put the phone back down. She went to shower.