Start the formal process. Protect the analyst and get the record corrected. She paused. Take the conference room back one meeting at a time. He was quiet for a beat.
Then you sound different. Then what? Then the last time you started a new job? She thought about what she'd been like when she first arrived at Meridian, sealed and competent and entirely unavailable for anything that required her to be vulnerable. I probably am different, she said.
You sound like yourself, he said. Your actual self, not the managed version. She considered that. Is that weird to say to someone? I don't know.
Is it wrong? No, she said. No, it's not wrong. Another pause. Lily started at Westbrook on Monday.
He said, "I know. You texted me three times. I know. I did. How'd she do?
She came home and told me her new art teacher has a wall of student work that stays up all semester and she's already planning what she wants to put on it. He paused. She seemed light, you know, like a kid who found a room she didn't know she was looking for. Something warm moved through Clare's chest. That's really good, Marcus.
Yeah, he said. It is. And then I keep waiting for something to go wrong. I know. like it's too clean, too right? Things can just be right sometimes, she said without a catch.
I know that, he said intellectually. But but I spent 3 years in crisis mode and now I'm in not crisis mode and it feels unfamiliar and I keep reaching for a problem to solve. She almost smiled. You could solve the fact that your daughter's new art teacher probably needs more supply budget. That's a pause.
That's actually probably true. See, problem identified. You're welcome. He laughed. It was a real laugh, low and unguarded, the kind he didn't produce on purpose.
She had cataloged the different varieties of Marcus Reed's laugh by now. The way you catalog the sounds of a place you've come to know well. I miss you, he said. Just like that. Clean and direct and without any of the hedging or qualification he used to wrap around anything personal.