I wasn't upset because I lost a merger. I was upset because for 8 months having that deal alive meant I still had a reason to say his family's name out loud. And now I don't. Now it's really over.
All of it. Ryan didn't touch his wine. He just listened. We met when I was 26.
She said before the company was anything. Before I was anything, I was working 18-hour days trying to build sterling out of nothing. And I was so I was so hard, Ryan. Even then, I'd already decided the world was a thing you conquered, not a thing you lived in.
And Daniel, she smiled, and it was the first real smile Ryan had ever seen on her, and it transformed her face completely. Daniel thought that was hilarious. He thought I was hilarious. He was the only person who was never once impressed by me and never once afraid of me.
And it made me insane and then it made me She stopped. He used to leave me notes, little ones. I'd find them in my coat pocket in my briefcase folded into my day planner. Just nonsense.
You forgot to eat lunch, didn't you? The woman at the coffee cart says, "Hi. Stop working. Come home.
I made the bad pasta you like." Her eyes were wet now, but she wasn't fighting it anymore. 7 years and I still find them sometimes in old coats, in books. I found one last spring in a jacket I hadn't worn since and I sat on the floor of my closet for 2 hours. Ryan spent two hours reading four words in his handwriting.
What did it say? Ryan asked softly. It said proud of you always. Victoria wiped her face with the back of her hand, brusque, almost angry at the tears.
We were engaged. We were going to be married that October. And in July, he had a headache that wouldn't go away. And in August, they found the tumor.
And by the time the leaves changed, he was She stopped. She looked at Ryan and something passed between them. A terrible recognition because he knew this story. He knew it in his bones.
He'd lived the other half of it. 11 weeks, Ryan said quietly. You said by the time the leaves changed. How long from the first appointment?
10 weeks. 10 weeks and 4 days. Mine was 11 weeks. Ryan said first appointment to the funeral 11 weeks.
They sat with that. Two people who had each been handed by two different doctors in two different cities years apart. The exact same impossible arithmetic. The sudden violent shortness of it.
The way it doesn't give you time to prepare. The way you're still arguing with the diagnosis when the person's already gone. How did you Victoria started and stopped? You have a daughter.
You had to keep going. You had a three-year-old and you had to just keep being a person. How? I didn't have a choice.
Ryan said, "That's the honest answer. That's the whole answer. Emma needed breakfast the next morning. She needed breakfast the morning after the funeral.
She didn't understand where mommy went. And she needed somebody to pour the cereal. And it turned out the somebody was me. And it turned out you can pour cereal while you're falling apart.
You can do almost anything while you're falling apart. It turns out that's the thing nobody tells you. You think grief is going to stop the world and it doesn't stop anything. The mail comes, the rents do.
The kid needs breakfast. He turned his glass. You buried yourself in a company. I buried myself in a lunchbox.
Same instinct. You just had more money to do it with. Victoria laughed a real startled wet laugh. A lunchbox?
I make a hell of a lunch. Ask anybody. I bet you do. She wiped her eyes again.
I bet you're a wonderful father, Ryan. That's the thing I keep since Wednesday, since the break room. I keep thinking about it. You've got this.
You've got a whole person at home who needs you and depends on you. And I have this. She gestured at the empty echoing apartment. I have cheese I don't like and an empire I built so I'd never have to sit alone in a room.
And it worked. That's the terrible part. It worked perfectly. I never have to sit alone in a room.
There's always a meeting. There's always a crisis. There's always a Marcus Webb trying to rob me. I made myself so busy being feared that I never once had to be lonely.
She looked at him. And then you walked into the break room and said, "You look like somebody who could use a worse cup of coffee." And the whole thing just she stopped. The whole thing just what? Ryan said cracked.
She said, "The whole thing just cracked 3 days ago. and I don't know how to feel about the fact that it took a stranger 20 minutes to do what I've spent 7 years and a great deal of money making sure no one could do. She stood up abruptly and walked a few steps away, arms crossed her back to him. I don't know why I'm telling you this. I don't do this.
I want you to know that this isn't a thing I do. I know it's not, Ryan said. How do you know? Because you bought cheese, he said.
People who do this all the time don't panic by cheese. She turned around and she was almost smiling and almost crying and she looked at him for a long moment across the empty apartment. You're not what I expected, Ryan Carter, she said. Yeah, well.
He gave a small tired shrug. Nobody ever expects the sad guy from the 14th floor to be much of anything. It's kind of my superpower. Nobody looks twice.