You know, he said, I've been on this board for 6 years. I've watched a lot of people come into rooms and tell me what I should think. Some of them were right and some of them were wrong and most of them were selling something. He looked at Adrien.
You're selling something, too. I want to be clear that I know that. I know you know that, but you're selling the truth. And in my experience, that's rare enough to be worth paying attention to.
He stood, which meant the meeting was over. Thank you for coming, Mr. Cole. Adrien stood. Thank you for the 30 minutes.
Use the stairs on the way out. The elevator bank on the north side is faster if you're heading back toward the Meridian building. I'll remember that. He took the stairs.
Tuesday passed the way days pass when you're waiting for something that can't be moved slowly and with the quality of held breath. Adrien worked. He processed the day's documents, managed the schedule, handled the 14 small operational problems that arose on a normal Tuesday on the executive floor. He sent Callaway the document references at 6:45 a.m. 12 references annotated with the relevant sections flagged.
He received an acknowledgement at 8:12 that said only received thank you. He did not speak to Victoria directly. They had agreed the agreement was mutual and unspoken which was how their best agreements worked. That Tuesday required distance and normaly and the kind of professional composure that would be read by anyone watching as the behavior of two people who had nothing to hide.
Marcus Webb passed his desk at 2:00 in the afternoon and did not stop, but he looked. The leisurely condescension was gone, replaced by something more careful, and Adrien recognized it as the expression of a man who had made a move and was waiting to see if the board was going to land where he'd expected. Adrien looked back at him pleasantly and went back to his screen. At 4:30, his personal phone buzzed.
A text from Victoria. How are you feeling about tomorrow? He thought about the question. He thought about what she'd told him about not answering it at work events and the car on the way to the gala and the way she'd looked out the window.
He typed calm you. The response came in 2 minutes. The same, which either means we're ready or we're both very good at telling ourselves we are. He typed we're ready.
A pause. Yes, we are. He put the phone away and finished the day. He was in the lobby of the Apex Meridian building at 7:55 Wednesday morning.
Not because the board session started at 9:00, not because he needed to be there early for operational reasons. He was there because he'd been awake since 4:30 andn had spent the time between 4:35 and 6 doing what he needed to think clearly reading. Not the document references which he had memorized. Not the board meeting agenda which he knew.
He'd read Maya's favorite dinosaur book, the one about the Cretaceous period, which she'd made him read aloud approximately 40 times, and which he could now recite from memory, and which had the particular property of being entirely absorbing and entirely uncomplicated, and which settled something in him that needed settling. Maya had found him at 6:15 padding into the kitchen in her socks and pajamas with her hair going in three directions and had looked at the book in his hands. Daddy, are you reading my book? I am.
She'd climbed into the chair beside him without asking why, which was one of the things about Maya that he loved without being able to explain her instinct for when a thing didn't need explaining. The part about the raptors is the best part. She'd told him seriously. I know.
I was just getting to it. She'd sat with him while he finished the chapter. Then she'd eaten cereal and told him about a conflict with a friend at school that she'd resolved by the method of explaining her position clearly and asking the other party to explain theirs, which was, Adrien had thought, a more sophisticated conflict resolution strategy than most adults managed. " Where'd you learn to do that?"
He'd asked. You do it, she'd said as if this were obvious. He'd held that thought the whole way to work. Now he stood in the lobby at 7:55 and straightened his jacket and took the elevator to the executive floor and set his bag at his desk and sat down.
At 8:47, Grant Whitmore walked into the lobby downstairs. Adrien knew this because he'd positioned the lobby camera feed on a secondary monitor, a thing within his operational purview that nobody had ever thought to question. And he saw Grant come through the revolving door with the particular composure of a man who believed the morning was going to go the way he'd arranged it to go. He watched Grant ride up to the executive floor, watched him step off the elevator.
Grant looked at Adrien's desk the way he'd looked at it the night of the gala with the pleasant us assessing expression of a man categorizing something he considered minor. Mr. Cole, Mr. Whitmore, busy morning. Every morning is busy on this floor. Grant smiled.
I imagine it is. He adjusted his cuffs. I hope everything works out for you. I genuinely mean that it was perfectly done.
Warmly delivered. Impossible to object to, containing within it the clear implication that things were unlikely to work out and that Grant's feeling about this was not one of genuine hope. Adrien looked at him. I appreciate that, he said.
I'll see you in there. Grant's smile held for one beat longer than it should have, and then he moved toward the boardroom and Adrien turned back to his screen and pulled up the session agenda one more time. 22 minutes. The boardroom at Apex Meridian occupied the northeast corner of the executive floor with a table that seated 14 and windows that looked out over the city in a way designed to remind everyone in the room how high they were.
Adrien walked in at 9:03. He was not on the agenda. He had not requested time. He had sent a single email to the board secretary at 8:15 that morning informing her he would be requesting an opportunity to address the board during the session on a matter directly relevant to the proceedings which was within the procedural rules that governed emergency sessions.