He wrote up his maintenance log for the day, which was thorough and accurate, and included a note about the server room backup verification that any auditor could read without concern. He texted Ava running 20 minutes late. Leftovers in the fridge. She texted back already ate. Dad, did you do something important today?
He stared at the text, then typed, "Why do you ask?" She sent back, "I don't know. You seem different in your texts." He thought about that, typed, "I'll tell you about it when I get home." She replied, "Okay, but bring me something from the vending machine on your way out."
He bought her a bag of pretzels from the machine on the lobby level and put them in his truck and drove home through Atlanta in the early dark. And he thought about 6 days. He thought about what it meant that she had said, "Me, too." And then walked into a board meeting to face down a man who had just tried to dismantle everything she built. He thought about what kind of woman does that.
He thought about what kind of man she deserved next to her when she did. The answer to that question was uncomfortable in the way that true things sometimes are because it required him to be honest about something he had been carefully not naming for 3 years. He wasn't afraid of Richard Hawthorne. He was afraid of himself, of the version of himself that would step forward, claim something real, and then not be enough to hold it. He was afraid of the grief that still lived in the house with him in the empty chair at the kitchen table, in the worn copy of Angela's favorite book on Ava's nightstand.
He was afraid that love was something that had happened to him once fully, and that he had used his share of it. He pulled into the driveway. The kitchen light was on. He could see Ava's shadow moving around inside, probably making herself a second dinner, which she did whenever she thought she could get away with it. He sat in the truck for 60 seconds.
Then he grabbed the pretzels and went inside. Ava was standing at the counter eating cereal. "You just said you already ate," he said. "I did. This is dessert."
She looked at him. That look the Angela looked accurate and unhurried. you okay getting there?" He said honestly. She handed him a spoon. He sat at the counter next to her and they ate cereal together in the kitchen light.
And outside the city moved through its evening the way it always had. And Marcus Reed thought about 6 days. 6 days. And this time he was not going to use none of them. The board meeting ran until 11:30 that night.
Marcus knew because he was still in the building when it ended. He had no official reason to be there that late. His shift had ended at 6:00, but he had found reasons to stay. A lighting calibration on the lobby panels that technically could have waited until morning. A pressure check on the service elevator that was well within normal range, but warranted documentation.
Small legitimate tasks that kept him in the building without requiring him to ask himself why he was still there. He was in the lobby when the elevator opened and the board members came out. He watched their faces. He was good at reading rooms and he was good at reading people. And what he saw in those faces told him the meeting had not gone the way Hawthorne intended.