"You won. Pick the chocolate one. Pick the chocolate. You pick it. " Victoria said. "You're the one who wanted it. " Ava hesitated for exactly one second because she was eight and the protocol of cakewalk prizes was apparently something she had opinions about.
Then she walked to the table with the focused purpose of someone completing a mission. Pointed at the chocolate buttercream cake and carried it back with both hands and a triumph that was fully proportional to the significance she'd assigned it. We won, she said. You won, Victoria said. Same thing Ava said.
And said it the way children say things that are actually just true. She looked over at Marcus. He was already looking at her. She held up the cake slightly. He shook his head slowly.
And it was the fondest kind of headshake. The one that means I should have expected this. And I'm glad they spent the next 2 hours moving through the festival. The way you move through a festival when you're with a child who has a plan and you're the adult who has decided your plan is her plan. They threw rings at bottles.
Victoria won nothing. Ava won a rubber duck. They ate popcorn that was exactly as overpriced as Marcus had promised. Victoria bought two cups of apple cider from a table run by what appeared to be the entire third grade and their parents. She handed one to Marcus when she found him near the gymnasium door.
He looked at the cup, looked at her. Thank you, he said. You brought me to a fall festival, she said. Cider seems like the minimum. He almost said something.
Then he looked out at the crowd at Ava who was now involved in a ring toss situation that was getting competitive. He said, "Instead, you look different today. " Different from what? Different from yesterday morning. He sipped the cider. Yesterday morning you looked like somebody who'd been wearing the same expression for about 10 years.
And today he didn't answer immediately. He watched Ava make a shot miss. Argue briefly with her own assessment of the miss and try again. Then he said, "Today you look like you're here. Three words.
Simple. " But they hit her in a place that was not simple at all. She looked out at the festival, at the people moving through it, families, couples, people she didn't know and who didn't know her. No one had approached her for anything. No one had handed her a business card. No one had said I heard about that last quarter or I wanted to pick your brain or my firm is looking for a strategic partner.