She came through the thinning crowd and stopped in front of him and they were in a room with 150 people, but it felt like the rooftop. That specific quiet. She looked at him. "You okay?" He asked.
"I'm"? She started, stopped, let out a long breath that carried 12 years in it. "Yes, I'm okay." She looked at him steadily. "I'm better than okay."
Good. He said, "You said walk in like I know how it ends." She said, "How did you know?" "I didn't." He said honestly.
"But you did. You've known for 3 years how this company should be run. You didn't need me to tell you. You just needed someone to say it out loud." She looked at him for a long moment.
Then she said, "You wanted a real conversation after." I did. It's after. she said. The remaining people in the room were paying attention to each other, to their phones, to the catering table along the far wall. Nobody was paying attention to the CEO and the man in the clean dress shirt standing near the back camera positions.
I've been afraid, he said, not as a confession, as a fact stated cleanly. Since Angela died, I've been, he paused, found the right words. I've been standing slightly to the side of my own life. Close enough to take care of what matters. Far enough that nothing could reach me that I wasn't ready for.
He looked at her. You reached me anyway. 3 years ago in a hallway with a lighting fixture question and every conversation after that. She was very still. I kept telling myself the distance between where I am and where you are was too much ground to cover.
He said that wasn't honesty. It was fear wearing the wrong name and I'm done doing that. Marcus, she said, I'm not done, he said quietly. She waited. I have a daughter who is 10 years old and uses words I didn't know at 30 and reads her mother's books and told me this morning that I've always been enough and I just don't know it.
He paused. I'm starting to know it. I want you to know that I'm starting to know it. Victoria looked at him the way she had looked at him in the mirror that first night with something real behind it. Something that had been there longer than either of them had acknowledged.