He said, and I'm quoting, Olivia, the man stood in front of a camera in our boardroom two years ago and told us that leadership integrity was the company's most valuable asset. I'm not going to let Paul Renick use someone else's character against you. Marcus read that and said nothing for a moment, then typed, "Good man. The best," she wrote back. He's been on this board for 9 years.
He's tried to get through to me for seven of them. I think he thought I was genuinely unreachable. What do you think he thinks now? A pause. Then he told me I reminded him of his daughter and he said it like it was the best thing he'd said in weeks.
Another pause. I cried a little in his office. I am mortified by this and will never be mentioning it again. Marcus sat in his kitchen on a Sunday morning with the light coming in right and Amara still sleeping down the hall and his phone in his hand and he laughed a real one surprised out of him and typed. I think it was probably the best thing that happened in that meeting.
It was extremely unprofessional. She wrote it was extremely true. He wrote back. Those aren't the same thing. A long pause then.
No, they're not. Then Marcus, can I tell you something? Yes. I slept 8 hours last night. For the first time, she stopped.
A long time. He looked at that for a moment, then typed. Good. She wrote, "I know why, and I'm not going to say it, and you're not going to make me." He wrote, "I'm not going to make you do anything." She wrote, "I know. That's part of it." He put the phone down on the table and looked at the kitchen and thought about the flickering fluorescent light that he had not yet replaced because there was always something more urgent.
He got up, went to the cabinet above the refrigerator where he kept the extra ballasts and replaced the light. It took 9 minutes. The kitchen was suddenly significantly brighter. He stood in the brighter kitchen and thought that sometimes the things you put off fixing are smaller than you remembered and they were only dark for so long because you kept telling yourself you'd deal with it later. Amara appeared in the doorway at 8:20.
Same as every morning, pillow flat hair, eyes half open, feet already moving toward the table. The lights fixed, she said. Yep, he said. She sat down, looked at her orange juice, looked at him with those eyes. You're different today, she said.
Eat your eggs, he said. You look, she tilted her head lighter. He looked at his daughter, 8 years old. Terrifying. Entirely correct.
Eat, he said. She ate, smiling into her orange juice, and Marcus made coffee and stood in his bright kitchen on a Sunday morning. And for the first time in longer than he could honestly name, he was not managing or surviving or holding together or doing the next right thing through gritted teeth. He was just living and it was enough and it was real. Monday morning arrived with the weight of everything that still had to be handled.
Marcus got to the site early. Deshawn arrived at 7:30 on time as always, which Marcus had not entirely expected and which told him something important about Deshaawn's character. Even in this moment, they sat in Marcus' truck for 40 minutes. Marcus talked first, which was unusual. Usually, Deshawn talked and Marcus listened, but this required him to go first.