The thing that had happened in Mil Haven was real. She was certain of that. She'd spent enough years reading rooms and calibrating people to know when something was performance and when it wasn't. Marcus Carter was not performing anything. Ava Carter was constitutionally incapable of performing anything.
What she'd experienced in that house with the blue door was the most honest 60 hours she'd had in longer than she could name. The question was what you did with 60 honest hours when you had to go back to your actual life. She drove. She crossed the county line. She passed through two towns she'd never heard of and would probably never see again.
She stopped for gas outside of Mon and stood at the pump in the October air and called her chief of staff. He answered on the first ring. Tell me everything's under control, she said. Everything's under control, he said. The arbitration team sent a revised proposal Friday afternoon.
Kendall's office called twice. I told them you were unavailable. The board packet for Wednesday is ready for your review whenever you are. A pause. How are you?
I'm good, she said. He was quiet for a second. In 7 years of working together, Daniel had learned to parse her the way forensic accountants parts, balance sheets, not just what was there, but what the discrepancy between expected and actual suggested. You sound different, he said. I'll be in the office at 8 tomorrow, she said.
Hold my 11:00. We need to talk about the workers initiative I mentioned last quarter. You want to revive that? I want to do it properly this time, she said. Not as a PR line actually do it, she hung up the pump nozzle.
I'll explain Monday. She got back in the car. She drove the last three hours thinking about the workers initiative, a program she'd sketched out for 14 months ago and shelved because the timing was wrong and the board was nervous and she hadn't fought for it the way she should have. A program that would fund trade apprenticeships, automotive and electrical and construction in underserved communities across Georgia. She'd called it phase three of their community investment strategy, which was the problem.
She'd given it a corporate name and put it in a deck and let it die in committee. She thought about Marcus Carter fixing cars in a shop with his daughter's drawing on the dashboard because his father had taught him and his father's father before that and the knowledge lived in his hands now and it was worth something real to real people every single day. She thought about how she'd called it phase 3. She should have called it what it was. She got back to Atlanta at 2:14 in the afternoon.
She rode the elevator to the 32nd floor. She unlocked the apartment. She walked in and set her bag down and stood in the silence. The view was what it always was. Atlanta spread out in every direction.