But she made it. The conversation that she hadn't planned to have happened on a Thursday in late March at the kitchen table in his apartment after Ava had gone to bed. They'd been talking the easy ranging way they talked now about everything and nothing about his work week and her board calls and a book Ava was reading and a documentary Natal Abby had watched and thought he'd like. And somewhere in the middle of it, a silence settled that was different from their regular silences. She felt him sitting with something.
She'd learned to recognize it. The specific quality of Caleb Morrison processing something he was about to say. She waited. I want to ask you something, he said. And I want you to know before I ask it.
That the answer doesn't have to be yes. Any answer you give is the right answer. She looked at him. Okay. He looked at his hands on the table, then at her.
What do you actually want? Not from the company. Not professionally. not the strategic version. His voice was quiet, deliberate. What do you want when you imagine your life working?
When you see the thing you're building toward, not the company, just your life, what does it look like? She was quiet. I've been asking myself that question for 4 months, she said. I know. I'm asking because I think you might have an answer now that you didn't have.
Then she looked at the table at the cardboard under the short leg at the ring stain she'd made herself three Saturdays ago and which she had felt something private and specific about. Ever since I want Saturday mornings, she said the actual ones, not the ones where I'm reviewing documents while pretending to have a morning. The ones where something gets cooked and someone complains about something small and there's nowhere to be. She paused. I want to know what Ava becomes.
I want to be someone who got to watch that. Her voice was very even. She was not performing composure. She was just telling the truth, which had its own kind of steadiness. I want to be in a place that has a ring stain on the table and flowers in a glass and the smell of something cooking.
I want to be somewhere I chose to be because I wanted to be there, not because a calendar required it. He was watching her with the full level attention he gave to things that mattered. I want to be with you, she said. Not in the next step, not in the plan, not in the structure of something that makes logical sense. Just with you, the way we've been, but without the part where I keep waiting for the version of myself that decides to leave.
He was still for a moment. Are you afraid she's still in there? Yes. Honest, unguarded. She's been in charge for a long time.
I don't always know which version of me is making a decision. How do you tell them apart? She thought about it. The old one makes decisions in the negative space. What she needs to do to not lose to fall behind, not be left.