You don't talk to me like I'm little. Victoria looked at this child, this small, direct, opinionated, entirely herself person, and felt something in her chest that thought might be the thing she'd been looking for on on a dirt road in the dark last night. Not the feeling of being seen. That was part of it, but something more specific. The feeling of being in a place that was real, that required nothing performed, that asked only for her presence.
"You're not little," she said to Ava. You're exactly the right size. Ava thought about that. Then she nodded and sat down the book. Good night, she said.
Good night, Ava. She went back to the living room and found Marcus standing in the kitchen doorway holding two mugs. Tea? He said, "She asleep reading about dinosaurs? " Victoria said, "I think she'll be out in 20 minutes. " He nodded. He moved to the couch and sat.
And she sat at the other end and the television was off and the house was settling into the particular sounds it made at night. She likes you, he said. She told me she tells everybody exactly what she thinks. He wrapped his hands around his mug. Gets that from her mother.
Is that a good thing? In a kit, it's extraordinary, he said. In an adult, it's either refreshing or exhausting depending on the day. He looked at her. You're pretty direct yourself.
I run a company. She said you can't afford to be indirect. It came out before she could stop it. She heard it the second it landed. Watched Marcus hear it too.
The word run. The word company. The context it implied that didn't fit with Victoria Wells vague tech worker from Atlanta. Marcus looked at her steadily. What kind of company?
He said I told you software business. How big? He said. The question was quiet, unhurried, but pointed. The silence between them stretched.
She could have kept it going. She was good at misdirection. She could have said something that was technically true and substantively misleading and steered the conversation somewhere else, and he probably would have let her because he was the kind of man who gave people the room they asked for. "She didn't do that. Bigger than I said," she said.
Marcus looked at her. Something was working behind his eyes assembling. Processing. How much bigger? He said.