Marcus and Claire did not get used to it. They got better at managing it, which is a different thing entirely and they were honest enough with each other by now to know the difference. The calls happened every night. Not as a rule they had agreed on, but as something that evolved naturally, the way real things do, without a meeting or a decision or anyone saying, "This is what we're doing now." It just became what they did. 8:30, after Lily was in bed, sometimes for 20 minutes and sometimes for 2 hours.
Depending on what the day had been and what needed to be said and occasionally whether Marcus had gotten deep enough into the competitive baking podcast that he needed someone to process it with. She came to Nashville for the first time 6 weeks after he moved. She drove up on a Saturday morning, which took 4 hours and 12 minutes. And she listened to an audiobook for the first 2 hours and then turned it off and just drove in the particular silence of someone who is moving towards something they want and is still slightly amazed to be someone who knows what they want. Marcus was outside when she pulled up.
Not waiting dramatically, not stationed at the curb, he was carrying a box from the garage, clearly in the middle of something and he saw her car and set the box down and that was it. Just set it down on the driveway and walked over. And she got out of the car and they stood in front of each other in the Nashville autumn light and she said, "You look good." "You drove 4 hours," he said. "4 hours and 12 minutes," she said. There was construction near Murfreesboro.
He hugged her. Not tentatively, not with the careful geometry of people who are still figuring out what they are to each other. He hugged her the way you hug someone when you have been talking to them every night for 6 weeks, and have been physically 400 miles away, and the distance has been fine. It has been manageable. And also, you are extremely glad it is over for the next 48 hours.
She pressed her face into his shoulder and felt, with the particular clarity of things that are simply true, that she was exactly where she was supposed to be. Lily appeared in the front doorway. "You made it," she announced, like she had not been tracking Claire's location via updates from her father for the last 2 hours. "I made it," Claire confirmed. "Dad made breakfast for dinner because you said that was your favorite, and he did it twice yesterday to practice." "Lily," Marcus said, "she should know you practiced." Claire looked at him.
He looked very briefly like a man who would like to have a word with his daughter about information management. "The pancakes got better the second time," he said. "That's all she means. He also called Mrs. Patterson to ask about the syrup brand," Lily added helpfully. "Lily, I'm going inside," Lily said, satisfied, and disappeared.
Claire looked at Marcus. "She has no filter," he said. "She has perfect filter," Claire said. "She filters out everything except the truth." She picked up her bag. "Show me the house." The house was Marcus.
That was the only way to describe it. It wasn't big, and it wasn't decorated in any way that anyone had planned, and there were still boxes in the corner of what was clearly going to be the study, but it had the same quality as the house on Piney Grove Road, the sense of a place that was being genuinely lived in, where the mess was the kind that means presence and not neglect. Lily had already colonized the second bedroom entirely, which was evident from the art supplies on every horizontal surface, and the fact that three separate drawings were taped to the wall above her desk. Claire stood in the doorway of Lily's room and looked at the drawings. "She did those in the first week." Marcus said from behind her.
"They're good." Claire said, and she meant it not good for eight, just good. The horse from the refrigerator drawing was still there, the original from Piney Grove, but it had company now. A Nashville skyline that was impressionistic and slightly lopsided and completely alive. A portrait of Mrs. Patterson that captured something true in the set of the woman's eyes. And a third one, smaller, in the corner of the grouping that made Claire go very still.
It was her, a woman with dark hair sitting at a kitchen table looking at something off frame. It was loose and gestural, the way Lily drew everything, but the likeness was there. The posture was there. "When did she do this?" Claire asked quietly. "I don't know." Marcus said.
"I noticed it about 2 weeks ago." She stood there looking at herself drawn on the wall of a child's room in Nashville and felt something move through her that was too large and too complicated to have a single name. "She didn't say anything about it." Claire asked. "She said, and I quote, I drew the people who matter." Marcus said. Then she went back to whatever book she was reading. Claire turned away from the wall before she did something embarrassing in a doorway.
She walked back to the kitchen. Pancakes happened. They were in fact excellent. 2 months became 3. 3 became 5, and somewhere in the fifth month a thing happened that neither of them had engineered or even consciously planned for.
Which was that Claire started knowing Nashville. Not as Marcus's city, not as the place she drove to on weekends, but as a place with its own geography in her mind. She knew the construction on I-65 southbound. She knew the farmers market that Lily liked and the specific booth with the honey. She knew the coffee place two blocks from Marcus's office where the line was always too long, but the coffee was worth it.
And she knew the back road to Westbrook Elementary that saved 7 minutes if you timed the light right. She knew these things the way you know the details of a place you keep coming back to because you want to, not because you have to. Renata Osay noticed first, or at least she was the first one to say something. It was a Tuesday afternoon and Claire had stayed an hour late finishing the quarterly ERP review. The program had now processed 14 cases in 5 months with 11 resolved in favor of the employee when Renata knocked on her open door and said, "You have a minute?" "Sure." Claire said.
Renata came in and sat down in the chair across the desk and looked at Claire with the particular directness of a CEO who had not gotten to where she was by talking around things. "You go to Nashville a lot." She said. "Every other weekend generally." Claire said carefully. "My work is fully delivered regardless." "I'm not questioning your work." Renata said. "Your work is the best thing that has happened to this department in 6 years.
I'm asking about Nashville because I want to ask you something and I want to have the full picture first." Claire waited. "We're opening a Nashville satellite office." Renata said. "Small eight people, focused on regional client development. I need someone to head it." She paused. "I want that person to be you.
Partial remote, 1 week a month in Atlanta, the rest in Nashville. Full SVP title transfers, compensation increases." The air in the office went completely still. Claire heard it, the precise sound of the universe handing you something that you wanted badly enough that you had refused to fully imagine having it. "The ARP." she said, "stays under your authority regardless of location." Renata said. "You built it.
It runs on the structure you created, not on your physical presence. She paused. I'm not asking you to leave it. I'm asking if you want to take it somewhere bigger. Claire looked at her desk at the stacks of case files and the quarterly reports and the photo of Lily's gallery show that she had printed and put in a small frame in the corner of her work space 3 weeks ago because she had been there for it and it had been one of the best Saturdays she could remember.
"When would this take effect?" she asked. "January," Renata said. "If you want it." January was 2 months away. "I need a few days," Claire said. "Take a week," Renata said.