She called before I'd even sent you the message. She asked me, she asked me if I'd lost my mind. What did you tell her? I told her I'd found it. He was quiet and she cried.
My mother does not cry. She was born in Connecticut and she has never expressed an emotion with more force than a firmly worded sentence in my entire life. And she cried. Another pause. I think she's been waiting for me to find it for a long time.
What does she think you found? He heard something shift in Natalie's voice, a quality he'd learned to recognize over 4 months. The sound of her lowering a layer. She said, "I sound like myself." She said, "The last time I sounded like myself, I was 19 years old and hadn't decided yet to be someone impressive.
He didn't say anything. Let it land where it needed to. She wants to come visit." Natalie said, "That sounds terrifying." It is.
She'll have opinions about everything. How many opinions does one woman have? Her opinions have opinions. She's from Connecticut. They're very thorough up there.
A pause that had warmth in it. I think I want her to meet you if that's if that's not moving too fast. We've been slow for 4 months. I think we can handle meeting a mother. She will ask you direct questions.
I can handle direct questions. She once made a cardiologist cry by asking follow-up questions. I'm not a cardiologist. That's not the relevant variable. He laughed.
A real one in a parking lot in Rockville on a Tuesday in February. Tell your mother to come. He said, "We'll make the chicken and rice. Ava controls the chicken and rice. Then Ava will run the meeting and your mother will be charmed and everything will be fine."
A pause. You have a remarkable amount of faith in a 7-year-old. She's earned it. He heard something on the other end. Soft exhaled the sound of a woman who has been holding tension and just let some of it go.
Caleb. Yeah. The article is going to say, "I declined the move because of a change in personal priorities." Okay, is that accurate? He looked at the parking lot at the ordinary Tuesday reality of it.