Marcus watched Victoria's face. He watched her absorb the information, not with practiced sympathy, not with the automatic and slightly distant condolence that most adults offered when they found out Angela was gone. She absorbed it the way someone absorbs something that actually reaches them. She had good taste, Victoria said quietly. She had the best taste, Ava confirmed.
She studied Victoria with the frank openness that only children maintain past the age of self-consciousness. You don't seem like a regular boss. No, regular bosses don't knock. They just walk in. Victoria looked at the door, then back at the girl.
I'll remember that, she said. She glanced at Marcus one more time. Something in that look, something that arrived and departed quickly, like a door opened and then closed before he could see what was behind it. Then she said, "Nice to meet you, Ava." And she was gone.
The breakroom felt different after she left. Ava went back to her book. Marcus looked at the work order in his hands and realized he hadn't read a single line of it. "She's lonely," Ava said without looking up. Marcus looked at his daughter.
"What, Victoria? She's lonely. You can see it if you look." Ava turned to Paige. You should be nicer to her.
I'm perfectly nice to her. You're professional to her, Ava said. That's different. Marcus didn't have an answer for that. He went back to the work order.
He read the same line four times before he retained it. The following Monday, Hawthorne made his first move. Marcus heard about it from three different sources within 90 minutes, which was how fast information traveled through a building where people worked in close quarters and had opinions. The story confirmed by all three sources and consistent enough to be reliable was this Hawthorne had gone to two board members over the weekend and proposed accelerating the merger timeline. The deal originally scheduled for a final review in 2 months was now being pushed for announcement within 3 weeks.
And attached to the announcement according to the version that reached Marcus through the facilities coordinator on 12 was a personal element. Hawthorne intended to propose to Victoria at the announcement event in front of the board, in front of the cameras, in front of everyone. Marcus put down the wrench he was holding. He was in the mechanical room on seven mid-repair on an HVAC coupling, and he set the wrench on the floor and sat back on his heels and looked at the ceiling. He thought about the sentence she hadn't finished in her office.
He thought about the way she'd looked the night of the gala when she walked through the crowd composed correct alone in a way that had nothing to do with how many people were in the room. He thought about Ava saying quietly over a worn paperback, "She's lonely." He picked up the wrench. He finished the repair. He went home that evening and made eggs and listened to Ava talk about her ecosystem project and then did dishes while she did homework and put her to bed at 9:00 and then sat at the kitchen table in the quiet and thought about what kind of man he was.
Not what kind of employee, not what kind of father, though that one mattered most. What kind of man? The kind who saw something real and walked away from it because the distance between who he was and who he thought he needed to be felt like too much ground to cross. Angela had never let him get away with that. She had pushed him toward every hard thing he had ever done.