Once or twice, he said. She nodded. Looked at her hands. I need to get back in there. I know.
She started to turn, then stopped. Darius, the arrangement, she began carefully. We don't have to talk about that now, he said. I know we don't. I want to.
She looked at him. The arrangement was contingent on the board situation. The board situation is resolved. A pause. I need you to know that what I said Tuesday night about protecting your position, your compensation, your contract that stands.
Regardless of what you decide about anything else. That is not contingent. That's a commitment. He looked at her for a long time. I appreciate that, but that's not what I'm thinking about right now.
She searched his face. What are you thinking about? He thought about Amara taking Victoria's hand at the farmers market and walking her to the strawberries. He thought about the way Victoria had looked when Amara said, "Scared people need nice. " He thought about standing in a hallway with a woman who had everything and nothing simultaneously and the particular courage it takes to admit that you need someone. I'm thinking, he said slowly, that Amara told me this morning to tell you she likes the strawberries you picked out better than the regular ones.
He paused. And she wants to know if you can come back to the farmers market next Saturday. Something happened in Victoria's face. Something that had been very carefully held together for a very long time quietly came apart just at the edges just enough. She said that Victoria said 7-year-olds don't say things they don't mean.
Victoria Hayes CEO daughter of a legacy woman who had just dismantled a board coup with the precision of a surgeon pressed her lips together and breathed and did not look away from him. Next Saturday she said 11:00 he said. She nodded once. Then she straightened, pulled herself back together, and turned to go back into the boardroom. At the door, she paused.
"Darius," he looked at her. "I don't know how to do this," she said. "Not the board thing, not the company thing, the other thing, the thing that lived underneath all of it and had no strategy and no precedent and no clause that governed it. I should tell you that now before it gets more complicated. I'm genuinely very bad at this.
I know, he said. I'm not that great at it either. How do people do it? He thought about his mother and father in the kitchen in Detroit. He thought about the particular ordinary courage of two people choosing each other in full knowledge of what it costs.