I keep trying to decide how bad it can be and I keep running out of categories. Did give you anything? Any indication?" He said it was about the business. She sat down.
David had a small consulting firm, mostly B2B marketing strategy. When he died, I wound it down over about 8 months. I thought I closed everything. She paused. Ryan thinks there's something I missed.
What kind of something? She opened her mouth. The doorbell rang. They looked at each other. Marcus stood up.
I'll get it, she said. She meant that this was her house. Her moment, her history. He understood. He stayed where he was.
She opened the door. Ryan Whitmore looked different in daylight than he had on the porch that evening weeks ago. He was still broad, still had that compressed quality, but the aggression was gone, or at least suppressed. What was there instead was something Marcus recognized from certain service calls he had made over the years, the look of a person who has found out something they didn't want to know, and has had time to realize the reason was there, the one who has to deliver it. Ryan saw Marcus and stopped.
"You brought him?" "Yes," Clare said. "Simply, completely unapologetically." Ryan looked at Marcus for a second. Then at Clare, and whatever argument he had prepared about privacy or inappropriateness dissolved, because something in Clare's face told him clearly that there was no version of this conversation that happened without Marcus present.
"Okay," Ryan said. He came in, they sat. Ryan had a folder. He set it on the coffee table between them and did not open it immediately, which told Marcus that whatever was in it had taken Ryan some time to decide to bring. "I want to say something first," Ryan said.
He was talking to Clare. "I know I haven't been I know the last few years haven't been good between us." "I know I came here angry. I was angry." He stopped.
I was angry because David was gone and I needed somewhere to put it and you were the closest thing. Clare said nothing. Her face said nothing. I'm not here to fight. Ryan said what I found.
I almost didn't bring it. I sat on it for 3 weeks. But I can't keep it and I can't throw it away. So he tapped the folder. It has to be yours.