She did not phrase it elegantly. She said, "I am asking you here in front of them because every one of them needs to hear that this is my choice and not your climb." I did not answer right away. I want to be clear that the silence was not for effect, though I understand how it must have looked. I stood there in a seven-year-old suit with a box of freight records under my arm, and I thought about a woman in my kitchen building, a volcano out of foil, and a folder against a wall at 2:00 in the morning, and a lawyer telling her to. Say one sentence that would have saved her career, and her refusing to say it.
The whole room was waiting. I could hear the air handling system. I could hear my own heartbeat which I am told is not a thing that actually happens but I heard it. Then I asked no contract. She said no contract.
I asked no position. She said keep your company. I never want to sign your invoices again. I asked no conditions. She shook her head once and did not add anything to it.
Which for Viven was the single most extraordinary act of self-restraint I had ever witnessed. and I picked up the ring and I looked at it and I said, "Then this time, yes." Somebody at the far end of the table exhaled hard enough to be heard. Meredith Langford started to applaud and then stopped, which is the most board of directors thing that has ever happened. That was 7 months ago. There was no vast wedding because neither of us needed a spectacle to certify anything and because Laya had strong opinions about not missing the last week of school. We were married on a Saturday in June in a county clerk's office with nine people present.
And afterward, we ate at a place with paper napkins where Viven argued with my operations manager about hub and spoke route for 40 minutes and enjoyed herself more than she had at any gala I ever watched her endure. She wore a dress she already owned. I wore the gray suit. It is still a perfectly good suit. Nothing about our working lives collapsed into each other, which was the entire point.