She said, "I know. " He looked at her. I'm not asking you for anything right now, she said. I'm not asking you to decide something or feel something or commit to something. I'm just telling you that what happened this weekend was real for me. And I don't say that as someone who has things to offer you.
I say it as someone who she stopped, tried again. As someone who had forgotten what real felt like. Marcus was quiet for a long time. Then he said, "You said you want to come back. " Yes, as yourself. Yes, no false names.
No broken cars. No consulting the paw file before deciding how to feel about you. She almost smiled at that. That's the idea. He looked at her the same unhurried, seeing look he'd given her on the county road 30ome hours ago.
The one that went straight to her, not to the CEO, not to the money, not to the calculation, straight to the person she'd been spending two decades doing her best to protect and her best to hide. My numbers on the business card from the shop, he said. I gave you one this morning. She reached into her jacket pocket. She had not thrown it away.
She hadn't even thought about throwing it away. She held it up. He looked at it. Looked at her. You call me when you're back in Atlanta, he said.
And we figure out what real looks like when there's 5 hours of highway between two people and no fake breakdown to start from. Victoria looked at Marcus Carter in the low light of his living room with his daughter asleep down the hall and his late wife's photograph on the wall and the remnants of the best soup she'd ever eaten on the stove. And she thought about everything she had built and everything she had lost and everything she hadn't known. She teeted until she drove down a dirt road at 5:00 in the morning and deliberately broke down to find it. She said, "Okay," he said.
"Okay. " Neither of them said anything else for a long time. And that was exactly right. She left at 9:40. She drove through Mil Haven under a sky that was exploding with stars, the way city skies never were. And she thought about what he'd said.
5 hours of highway between two people and no fake breakdown to start from. She thought about what real looked like when you brought it with you. When you didn't leave it behind on a country road. She got back to room 6 at the Birwood Inn. And this time she unlocked her phone.
She opened her email. She looked at the list. She closed it. She opened her contacts. She pulled up her chief of staff.