There wasn't time for everything, but enough. The company she'd built, the engagement she'd ended, the morning she'd stood at her window in Denver and felt the particular loneliness of a life full of the wrong things. The motorcycle she'd bought on impulse and barely ridden. The storm. He listened the way he did everything, completely.
"You weren't running away," he said when she finished. "What was I doing? " "Running toward something. " "You just didn't know what it was yet. " She looked at him in the fluorescent light of the hospital hallway. "When did you get wise? " she said. "Sophie's been coaching me," he said. "She has thoughts. " Sophie came home on a Saturday.
She came home with strict instructions about screen time and a temporary ban on ice and an enormous stuffed bear from the gift shop that she'd negotiated Riley into buying, and that immediately displaced Gerald from his position of honor on the bed, a demotion Gerald appeared to accept with equanimity. "You can put your stuff in the second closet," Sophie told Riley with the casual certainty of a child who has decided a thing and sees no reason to discuss it. "The one with the blue hangers. I moved my old art supplies. " Riley looked at Daniel. Daniel looked at his daughter.
"Sophie. " "What? " "There's room. " Sophie arranged the bear against her pillow. "And Riley's been sleeping on the hotel couch, which is dumb. "The Jerome is a hotel. "" "It doesn't have couches," Riley said. "I know. I was being" Sophie thought metaphorical.
"You've been reading Dad's books. " "Some of them. " Sophie gave this approximately 1 more second of consideration before moving on to something that interested her more, namely, whether Gerald would accept the new bear as an ally or consider him a rival. The verdict appeared to be ally. Riley stayed, not in the second closet, not yet. But she stayed in Aspen. She had conversations with Noah and her board that were, in their own way, harder than anything she'd done in the Chicago conference room.
She restructured her role, not leaving, not abandoning what she'd built, but repositioning herself in a way that let the company function at full capacity without requiring her constant, consuming presence. She hired a COO she'd been putting off hiring for two years because she hadn't trusted anyone enough. She found that she trusted him. She found a small house three streets from the garage, with a porch that looked at the mountains and a kitchen with enough space to actually cook. She bought it in February.