Desawn, I'm not going anywhere. I'm just saying we need to have a real conversation about I know. Come by Saturday, we'll lay it all out. He hung up and stood in the gas station parking lot for a moment, looking at nothing particular. The afternoon was hot.
The way Atlanta afternoons in summer are hot, not just temperature. But wait, like the air itself is something you have to push through, he thought of telling him that their kind of fine was better. He thought about whether he believed that on a Tuesday afternoon in a gas station parking lot after losing the fourth contract in 5 months. He he decided did but he also thought it needs to stop. Something has to change.
He just didn't know what yet or how. He got back in the truck, hit the dashboard twice below the passenger vent, and drove back to the Bennett property to finish the day's work. He was replacing support framing at the back of the property. It was late, later than he usually stayed, but he wanted to get this section closed in before rain was forecast for Wednesday when the headlights of a car once swept across the accord. Not Richard's car.
Richard drove a practical silver sedan. This was something low faster looking dark blue. Marcus kept working. It wasn't his business who was arriving. He heard the car door close.
Then heels on the stone path. Not uncertain steps, not someone feeling their way in the dark, but the deliberately confident steps of someone who owned the space they were walking through or had decided to act like it. Is my father here? The voice came from about 10 ft behind him. He straightened and turned.
She was standing at the edge of the worklight's reach dark blazer. Dark slacks, hair pulled back, the kind of posture that had probably become automatic years ago. She was looking at him the way you look at something unexpected, not rudely, but with a certain calibrating precision. The way someone takes stock of a situation before deciding how to engage with it. Mr.
Bennett left about an hour ago, Marcus said. He said to tell whoever came by that he'd be back in the morning. She was quiet for a moment, looking at him. Looking at the work. You're the contractor, she said.
Marcus Carter. He didn't extend his hand. He was in gloves. And they were filthy. You're his daughter, Olivia Bennett.
A pause. He talks about you. He talks about you, too. Something shifted slightly in her expression. Not much, just a fraction.
What does he say? Marcus looked at her evenly. That you're very good at what you do. That's all. He also says you don't sleep enough.
He said it without cruelty, just the way you say a fact and that he worries about you, not the company, you. Olivia Bennett was still for a moment. It was the stillness of someone who has received an unexpected piece of information and is deciding very quickly how to process it and whether to let to you see any part of that process. He says that to the contractor, she said, and her voice was carefully level, not quite cold, just controlled. He says it to someone who listens, Marcus replied.