Amara said, "Dad's soup is really good. You should stay." Darius looked at his daughter. The expression in who is deciding whether to be proud or mortified and landing somewhere between both. Victoria looked at him.
He shrugged. I can stay for soup, Victoria said. And that was how it happened. Not planned, not managed, not introduced with careful language and appropriate timing. Just a Tuesday evening with a sick child and a pot of soup and a woman in a $4,000 suit sitting at Darius Cole's kitchen table eating cornbread and answering Amara's questions about what it meant to be a CEO with the kind of unhurrieded honesty that Darius had come to recognize as Victoria at her most real.
Amara asked, "Do you have a boss?" "The board of directors," Victoria said. "Do you like them?" "Some of them. Which ones don't you like?"
Amara," Darius said. "It's a fair question," Victoria said. She looked at Amara. "The ones who don't listen." Amara nodded.
Seriously. "That's my answer, too." Mrs. Patterson doesn't listen. She already decided before you talk.
"Exactly," Victoria said. "That's exactly it." Omra looked at her father. "I like her," she announced. As though Victoria wasn't sitting 18 inches away, Victoria looked at her soup.
Darius looked at the ceiling. After dinner, after Amara had been put to bed with her book and her cold medicine and two glasses of water and the negotiated agreement that yes, the light could stay on until 8:30. And not a minute after, he came back to the kitchen to find Victoria standing at the sink washing dishes. He stopped. She didn't look up.
Don't say anything. I know where the dish soap is. I found it. You don't have to. I'm washing three bowls in a pot.
Darius, it's not a gesture. It's just dishes. He leaned against the counter and let her. She's remarkable, Victoria said after a moment. She is.
Where did she get it? Her mother was smart, he said. Straight, no bitterness. Amara got her mother's mind. And thank God her mother's organizational instincts.