Amara ate in silence for a moment. Then is she your girlfriend? Darius sat down his coffee. No, she's a colleague, a work friend. But you want me to meet her?
Yes. You don't usually want me to meet your work friends. He looked at his daughter, 7 years old, sitting across from him with eggs and an elephant and the most accurate internal compass he'd ever encountered. And he said, "She's going through something hard, and I'm helping her with it. I wanted you to meet her because she's important right now. " Amara considered this with the seriousness it deserved.
Is she scared? I think so. Yes. Then we should be nice to her. Amara said with the simple authority of someone for whom the logic was self-evident.
Scared people need nice. Darius looked at his daughter and felt something move in his chest that was too large and too specific to name. Yeah, he said quietly. They do. They arrived at the farmers market at 10:57.
Victoria was already there. She was standing near the entrance with a coffee from the vendor on the corner, wearing dark jeans and a simple jacket. And she looked different. Not the CEO, not the woman in the charcoal suit with the controlled hair, just a person slightly uncertain in the way that people who are always certain look when they've stepped outside their known territory. She saw Darius first.
Then her eyes went to Amara and something happened to her face that she didn't manage in time. A softening, quick, instinctive, entirely unguarded. The way a person's expression changes when they see something that reaches past all their defenses because their defenses weren't built for this. Amara saw it, too. Darius felt his daughter's hand tighten slightly in his, which was her signal that she was paying close attention, not that she was nervous.
Victoria," he said as they reached her. "This is Amara. " Victoria crouched down. Not the way adults sometimes crouch to talk to children, the performative, condescending version, but genuinely bringing herself level, meeting Amara eye to eye. "Hi, Amara," she said. "Your dads told me about you.
He told me about you, too," Amara said. He said, "You're complicated. " Victoria glanced up at Darius with an expression that had laughter in it. Did he? He also said, "Complicated usually means interesting. I hope he's right about that. " Amara studied her for a moment with the frank, unhurried scrutiny of a child who has not yet learned that staring is rude.
"You're scared," she said. Victoria blinked. "What? " Daddy said, "You're going through something hard and you're scared. It's okay. We're going to be nice to you. " She said it with the matter-of-act warmth of someone delivering good news.