Not the business tired, the other kind. A long pause. It means I've been in this room, she said. This office working on this response for 5 hours. And the first person I wanted to call wasn't my attorney or my financial adviser.
It was you. Her voice was quieter. That's what tired means. Daniel was still. I'm here, he said.
I know. A breath. I don't need you to fix it. I just I know, he said. I know what you need.
He knew because it was what he'd needed for 6 years and never had someone to tell. Not to fix it, not to solve it, just to receive it. Walk me through it, he said. The whole thing, what they're offering, what you'd lose, what you'd keep, all of it. She talked for 40 minutes.
He listened to all of it. Every number, every fear underneath the number, every version of the future she was afraid of and the one she was more afraid of wanting. He asked questions when he needed to understand something. He didn't offer opinions until she asked for them. And when she was finished, when she had laid it all out in the particular way that exhausted people lay things out, when they've finally found someone safe enough to say the whole truth, too.
He said, "What do you want? Not what's smart, not what's strategic. What do you want? Silence. I want to keep it, she said.
I built it. I want to keep it. Then keep it. It might be the wrong financial decision, Victoria. She stopped.
You just told me you've been in that office for 5 hours. And the first person you wanted to call was me. He said, "That means you already know what you want. You called because you needed someone to tell you it's okay to want it. Quiet, is it?"
She said very quietly. "It's okay to want what you want," he said. "That's actually enough." He echoed her own words back to her, the ones she'd said to him at 7:00 in the morning in that coffee shop 3 months ago when he'd told her he just needed someone to tell. She recognized them.
He heard her exhale long, slow, the specific exhale of someone releasing something they've been holding. "I'm going to call my attorney back," she said. "Okay, and tell her we're fighting it." Okay. A pause.