Gerald's approval is not easily given. I gathered. A silence. The log in the wood stove popped and settled. I don't know what's happening here, Daniel said.
Not accusatory, just honest, in the way he was always honest. I'm not looking for anything. I told myself I wasn't. Sophie needs stability, and I need to be the person who gives her that. And so I stopped.
I stopped. He made a gesture with one hand that seemed to mean all of it. But then you came, and she made you hot chocolate, and now I'm finding myself watching the road to see if your bike is coming. The words fell into the room. Riley's throat was tight.
Daniel, you don't have to say anything, he said quickly. I'm not I'm not asking you for anything. I know you live in Denver. I know you have a life there. I just wanted to be honest because I'm not good at at pretending I feel differently than I do.
She looked at him across the kitchen table, this quiet, careful man who fixed thing two things with his hands and made sure his daughter knew how to notice when people were cold, and she understood that she was in serious trouble. I'm watching the road, too, she said. He was still for a moment. Then he nodded once, slowly, the way he nodded when a piece of information had been filed correctly. Okay, he said.
Okay, she agreed. They sat with the leftover evidence of the evening between them, and neither of them needed to say anything else. Her phone rang on a Thursday morning while she was in the garage handing Daniel a torque wrench. She looked at the screen. Her CFO, Noah Brenner.
She'd been dodging Noah's calls for four days. I have to take this, she said. She stepped outside into the cold. She could hear Noah's voice before she even raised the phone to her ear, clipped, precise, the voice of a man who had spent the last 72 hours managing something that had gotten significantly out of hand. Riley.
The Caldwell Group wants a response by end of day tomorrow. They're reevaluating our Series D terms, and if we don't get in front of this I know, Noah. Do you? Because your assistant told me you've been in Aspen for three weeks, and no one seems to know. I know the situation.
I'll get on a call at 4. They want you in person. Chicago. The board is I'll fly tomorrow. She closed her eyes briefly.
Set it up. She stayed on the phone for 12 minutes. When she hung up, she stood in the snow outside the garage for a moment, her breath clouding in the cold air. The mountains were very still. She went back inside.
Daniel was still working on the truck. He didn't look up immediately, but she saw something in his posture, the slight change in how he held his shoulders that told her he'd heard. Your company, he said. Not quite a question. There's a situation I need to deal with.
How big is the company? She hesitated. 430 employees. He set down the wrench. He turned and looked at her, really looked at her with an expression she hadn't seen before on his face.
Not anger. Something more complicated. The look of a man solving a problem and not liking where the answer is going. What kind of company? He said.
Analytics. Software. We build. She stopped, tried again. I should have told you earlier.
You have 400 employees. He said it evenly. You're not just a company in Denver. " The silence in the garage was different from their other silences. This one had weight. "What else? " he said.
"I'm the company is worth a significant amount. " I should have been clearer about what that How much? She looked at him directly. She owed him that. At last estimate, between 40 and 60 million, depending on the round. He stood very still.
"I wasn't lying to you," she said. "I just didn't I was so tired of being seen as that. " "I came here and you didn't ask, and it was the first time in years someone didn't. I don't care about the money. " His voice was flat, not cold, but controlled. "I care that I've been talking to you for three weeks and I didn't know who I was talking to. You did. " "You were.
Riley, you know me better than most people who've known me for years. " She felt the sting in her own voice and didn't try to hide it. "You know how I take my coffee. You know I can't braid hair correctly, no matter how many times Sophie tries to teach me. You know I built the south wall too high, and you didn't say anything because you knew Sophie liked it. " "You knew. " "I need to think," he said quietly, definitively. She nodded.
She picked up her jacket from the hook by the door. She walked to the Triumph. She rode out of the lot and on to the highway, and she didn't let herself look in the mirror. She took a room at the Hotel Jerome. She flew to Chicago.
She sat across a mahogany table from three men who collectively controlled a significant portion of her company's future, and she was, as she always was in these rooms, composed and precise and entirely in command of every variable except the ones that mattered. Noah told her afterward that she'd been brilliant. She looked at him and felt absolutely nothing. She flew back to Denver. She sat in her apartment and watched the city below her window, the lights, the grid, the orderly geometry of a place that made sense on paper.
Her phone showed three unanswered calls from Sophie's school number. Then, she remembered that Sophie's school didn't have her number. She looked more carefully. The calls were from a number she didn't recognize, Aspen area code. She called back.
The voice that answered was Daniel's, but wrong, tight, and rough in a way she'd never heard it. "Sophie fell," he said, "on the ice behind the garage, head injury. They're A" breath. "They're keeping her overnight. They want to do more imaging tomorrow. " She drove.
Four hours in the dark, snow falling again on the passes, white knuckles on the wheel. She didn't think. She didn't plan. She just drove. Aspen Valley Hospital was small and quiet at 2:00 in the morning.
The nurse at the desk directed her to the pediatric wing without asking for an explanation, which meant Daniel had put her name somewhere, which meant something, which she didn't let herself think about yet. He was in the hallway outside Sophie's room, sitting in a plastic chair with his elbows on his knees and his hands over his face. He looked up when he heard her footsteps. The expression on his face when he saw her was one she would remember for the rest of her life. "She's stable," he said, immediately giving her the information she needed before anything else.
The imaging showed a mild concussion. No bleed. They want to monitor her through the night because of her age. "Okay. " Riley sat down in the chair beside him. "Okay. " "What do you need? " He shook his head.
The meaning was unclear. "What do I need? I don't know. I can't think. What a strange question. " "Have you eaten? " she said.
"I'll find something. " She stood. "Riley. " His hand caught her wrist light, not restraining. She stopped. "I'm sorry," he said, "about what I said in the garage. I was You don't need to do this now.
I need to do it now because I need you to know. " He looked up at her, exhausted in the way people get exhausted when fear has been burning in them for hours. "I was scared. That's what it was. I was scared because something was starting to matter, and I looked for a reason to stop it before it could, before I could. " He stopped. "I was protecting myself. " "I know," she said gently.
"I know you weren't lying. I knew it then. I just—" "Daniel. "" She sat back down, close enough that their shoulders touched. "Sophie's in there. " "She's okay. Let's just Let's just stay here for a while. " He exhaled.