Darius was in his kitchen. Coffee going. 6:40 in the morning. It's complicated. Most things we're thinking about are you want to talk or you want me to shut up?
I want to ask you something. Go. If someone does the right thing after the wrong thing was done in their name, does that count? Silence on the other end. Not blankness, Marcus was thinking.
Depends, Marcus said. Did they know the wrong thing was being done before you did? Darius was quiet. Yeah, he said. And they still did the right thing when it came to light.
She shut it down immediately. Rejected it the day it landed on her desk. The thing got out anyway because someone else wanted it to. Someone who wanted to hurt her and me. Both of us, I think, but mostly her.
Another silence. So, the question isn't really whether she's guilty, Marcus said slowly. The question is whether you can live in a world where people around someone will always be doing things in that someone's name that she didn't choose. Darius stared at the coffee pot. Yeah, he said.
That's the question. That's not a question about her. Marcus said, "That's a question about you, about whether you're built for that kind of proximity." Darius was quiet for a long time. "I'm going to call you back," he said.
"I'll be here," Marcus said. "And Darius, what? You're not a man who walks away from a thing just because it got complicated. You're a man who figures out what's actually broken and fixes it. Don't confuse the two."
He hung up. Darius set his phone on the counter. He poured his coffee. He drank it standing up facing the refrigerator. Looking at Amara's drawings, the solar system, the dinosaurs, the one she'd made last month of a woman in a suit that looked nothing like Victoria, but that Amara had titled in her precise third grade handwriting, the boss lady, and he thought about Marcus's question.
Not a question about her, a question about himself. He picked up his phone and called Victoria. She answered on the first ring. Hi, she said. One word and in it he heard the four days of silence.
Everything she had wanted to say and hadn't. Everything she had managed and arranged and handled and been unable to fix. I need to tell you something, he said. Okay. Her voice was steady.