"Your mother took my hand near the end," Harold went on, "and she said, 'Harold, you are the most stubborn, self-sacrificing man I have ever met, and I'm not worried about you being sad when I'm gone. I'm worried about you being alone, and I'm worried about our Emily.'" Emily's breath caught. "Me?" "You."
Harold looked at his daughter with an ache that had clearly been living in him for 3 years. "She said, 'Emily is so busy being strong that she's forgotten she's allowed to need anybody. She takes care of everybody and lets nobody take care of her. Promise me you'll watch out for that. Promise me you won't let her turn into a woman who spends her whole life proving she doesn't need a soul.'"
His voice broke on the last word. "And I promised her. And then I watched you do exactly the thing she was afraid of for 3 years. Ever since Daniel, you built a wall so high nobody could get over it. And you called it strength, and it broke my heart every single day."
Emily was crying again, but quietly, differently now. "Dadโ" "Let me finish. I'm on a roll and my knees hurt." Harold turned to Marcus. "And you?"
"When I saw you, you stop that day. I wasn't lying about what that meant. Two cars went around me. I was on the ground. And this man skids to a stop and runs across the road like it's his own father down in the dirt."
He shook his head. "I've spent 75 years reading people. Forty of them designing buildings, which is really just the science of figuring out what'll hold weight and what won't. And I looked at you, Marcus, and I saw a man who'd hold weight. A man who'd been holding it alone for a long, long time and never once put it down or asked anybody to help carry it."
His eyes went between the two of them. "And I thought, Lord, there they are. Two people who spend every waking hour taking care of everybody but themselves. Two people who forgot they're allowed to want something for their own sake. And I thought maybe, just maybe, if I got them in the same room, they'd recognize each other."
The kitchen was silent. "That's why I did it," Harold said. "Not to marry Emily off. Not because I'm bored. Because I made a promise to a dying woman that I'd make sure our daughter didn't spend her life alone, proving she didn't need anybody."
"And because I met a man on the side of the road who was doing the exact same thing, and I couldn't stand to watch two good people waste their one shot at not being lonely just because they were both too proud and too scared to admit they wanted it." Emily reached across the table and took her father's hand. "You never told me that," she whispered. "Bird about what she said." "I'm telling you now," Harold said.
"Because you've got a phone call to make about Chicago, and I'll be damned if you make it out of fear." Either way, he squeezed her hand. "You go because you want the job. That's a good reason. You stay because you found something here worth staying for. That's a good reason."