She picked up on the second ring. Daniel, there's something you need to know, he said. And I need to tell you in person. A pause. When?
She said before my shift. 7:00 a.m. If that works, it works. She didn't ask what it was about. Didn't push, just said, "I'll be there."
He almost said it could wait. He almost said it wasn't a big deal. He almost talked himself out of it the way he talked himself out of most things that required him to bring someone else into his actual life. Instead, he said, "Thank you, Daniel." Her voice was steady.
"Whatever it is, thank you for calling me." He hung up. He stood in his kitchen. Outside Amara's door, he could hear her talking to Gerald about marine biology. Her voice, the low, serious cadence of someone, explaining something important to someone who needed to understand.
He thought, "If this thing costs her anything, if whatever this is between me and Victoria puts one single shadow over my daughter's life, it ends." No hesitation, no grief about it. But then he thought about what Amara had said, like the you from before. And he thought she noticed. His 9-year-old daughter noticed the difference three weeks had made in the way he carried himself and she called it out and she said she liked it.
He didn't know what to do with that. So, he started making dinner and he let the thinking settle into the background the way you let a hot pan cool before you touch it. And he told himself he'd deal with it in the morning. 7:00 a.m. Came cold and clear.
Daniel was in the coffee shop across from Aara's Kitchen when Victoria walked in at 6:58. She was in a coat he hadn't seen, dark navy, her hair pulled back. She looked like herself, not the CEO version, not the rain soaked version from the alley, but something in between. A person who had gotten up early because someone had asked her to and hadn't thought twice about it. She spotted him, came directly to the table, sat down.
Tell me, she said. He told her all of it. Kevin Draper, the rumors, Sandra from the front of house, and the part that had actually cost him Amara at lunch. Kayla, the look on his daughter's face. Victoria listened without interrupting.
Her coffee arrived, and she didn't touch it. She just listened with the focused stillness of someone who was taking in every word and doing nothing with their face until they had all of them. When he finished, she was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "How's Amara?" "Not let me fix this.
Not I'll talk to Kevin." "Not here's what we do." "How's Amara?" Something in Daniel's chest unlocked. "She's fine," he said.
She told her classmate that anyone with a problem with her dad should come talk to him directly. Victoria smiled. "She sounds like someone who knows how to handle herself. She told me she wants to meet you," Daniel said. Before anything gets serious, her words.