Come at 7:30. I'll be there. She was there at 7:28. Which was how Victoria Hayes did everything. 2 minutes early because being exactly on time felt unprepared and being late was not a vocabulary she possessed.
She knocked and Darius opened the door and she walked into his apartment for the first time. It was small and warm and completely alive. Amara's drawings on the refrigerator. A library book on the kitchen table, the navy blue tie with the yellow stars hanging on a hook by the hallway. It smelled like the chicken his mother had apparently brought over earlier because a pot of it sat on the stove and a note in his mother's handwriting was propped against it.
Victoria looked at the note without reading it. She looked at the drawings. She looked at the tie. Amara, picked that out, Darius said from the kitchen. First day of work here.
She said it was the smartest tie in the world. She's right, Victoria said. Don't tell her that. She already knows. Victoria sat at the kitchen table, Amara's kitchen table, with the homework on one end and a crayon that had rolled to the edge and felt something settle in her that had not been settled in longer than she could name.
Something about the smallalness of the space and the warmth of it. The evidence everywhere of a life fully lived, fully present, fully invested in the people in it. She had a penthouse apartment with a view of the entire city. It had art on the walls and furniture that had been selected by a professional and surfaces that were never cluttered and rooms that were always perfectly ordered. It had never felt like this.
Darius set a bowl of his mother's chicken soup in front of her without asking if she wanted it because she did and he knew it and sat down across from her with his own bowl. And for a moment they just ate in the comfortable quiet of two people who have moved past the stage where silence feels dangerous. Then Victoria said, "I called my father today. " Darius looked up. I haven't talked to him about anything personal in years. Honestly, we talk about the company, about board governance, about industry trends.
She looked at her soup. I called him today and told him what happened. The clause Voss Nathan all of it a pause. And I told him about you. What did he say?
She smiled small and private and real. He said, and I'm quoting directly. Is he a good man? And I said, yes. And he said, then stop analyzing it and be grateful.
Darius was quiet for a moment. Smart man. He built a billiondoll company from 40 employees and a second mortgage. Victoria said he knows things. What did you say back?