She did not elaborate. She picked up her bag from where she'd set it against the wall. She looked at both of them. I have a car at 4:00. I'll call you this weekend, Victoria.
She started to leave, then she stopped. Without turning around, she said, Mr. Reed. Yes, ma'am. Feed her.
She forgets to eat when she's working. A beat. She's been doing it since she was 22, and it's my greatest failure as a mother that I never made her stop. And then, she was gone. Marcus looked at Victoria, who was staring at the space where her mother had been with an expression that contained equal parts exasperation and love, and something that might in 40 years of accumulated complicated emotion be called gratitude.
She's never said that before, Victoria said quietly. Which part? Any of it. She turned to look at him. The part about my father.
The part about the failure. A pause. Eleanor Hale does not admit to failures. He said nothing. He let the moment be what it was.
His phone buzzed. He pulled it out. A text from Ray. It said, Board at Hale just blocked the no confidence vote. Just got a call from their vendor relations director.
Your suspension review is being expedited. Looks like you're coming back. He showed it to Victoria without comment. She read it, then looked up at him. Something broke open slightly in her expression, Not dramatically, not theatrically, but genuinely.
The specific relief of someone who had been braced for the worst so long they had almost forgotten what it felt like when the worst didn't come. "It's not over." She said carefully. "Foss is still on the board. He'll find another angle."
"He will." Marcus agreed. "And we'll handle it." "Just like that." "Just like that."
She looked at him for a moment. "Then, you know what I keep thinking about?" "What?" "That terrace, the night we met. 41° and we stood out there for 40 minutes because neither of us wanted to go back inside."
She paused. "I've thought about that night every day for 2 months and I still can't explain exactly what happened." "Two people stopped performing." He said simply. "That's all."
She was quiet. "Victoria." He said. "Yes." "You need to eat something."
She blinked, then laughed, sudden and genuine surprised out of her the way the best laughs always were. "My mother just said that." "Your mother is a smart woman." "Don't tell her that. Her ego does not need the support."
But she was still smiling and the smile did something to the whole architecture of the day. It made it smaller and more human. All the cameras and boardrooms and stock prices and anonymous sources reduced to their actual size, which was manageable, which was eventually navigable. They went to her office. Carla had, with the quiet efficiency of someone who had been anticipating human need in high-pressure situations for years, left two sandwiches on the desk and a ginger tea next to Victoria's chair.
Victoria looked at the tea, then at Marcus. "You told her about the crackers." She said. "I may have mentioned the ginger tea." "You briefed my assistant on my pregnancy symptoms.
Someone had to. She sat down, picked up the tea, looked at it for a moment. Marcus, she said, "Yeah, what do we actually do now? Not today, not the press and the board and Foss. What do we" She paused.
"What does this actually look like? You, me, Ava. This" She gestured toward herself, toward the space between them. He pulled the chair across the desk around to her side and sat down. Not across from her, next to her.
"It looks like Tuesday nights when I can't figure out Ava's homework," he said. "And weekends when you need to work and I take her somewhere so you can think, and doctor's appointments that I'm going to be at whether you think you need me there or not." He paused. "It looks like learning, probably a lot of getting it wrong before we get it right." She was watching him.
Something very careful and very open in her face. "You make it sound simple," she said. "It's not simple. It's just not complicated in the way you're used to complicated." He met her eyes.
"You're used to problems that have a strategy, a play, a board of directors and a legal team and a quarterly review." He paused. "This is just people, just two people trying to do right by each other and by their kids." "Just," she said softly. "Yeah, just."
She was quiet for a moment, then, "I've never been good at just." "I know." He paused. "You're going to learn." She looked at him for a long time.
Outside the window, the city was doing what it always did, indifferent to personal reckonings, indifferent to press conferences and board votes and $20 million dollar offers refused just the ongoing enormous fact of itself. Light changing traffic moving the day continuing. Ava. Victoria said quietly. Does she Does she know what today was?
Not the details. She knows something was happening. He thought about Ava that morning watching him button his jacket with those steady observant eyes. She had said, "You look serious, Daddy." He had said, "I'm going to go do something important."
She had said, "Okay. Do it good." "She's going to want to meet you." he said. "On her terms.
She'll probably ask you about pancakes within the first five minutes." "Pancakes?" "Don't ask. Just know that your answer matters." She almost smiled.
"Can I learn Can you learn to make pancakes?" "Is that a deal breaker?" He thought about it seriously. For Ava, possibly. She nodded with great solemnity.
"I'll learn." His phone rang. He looked at it. A number he did not recognize, not a Chicago area code. He let it ring.
It went to voicemail. 30 seconds later a text from the same number arrived. He read it. His face did not move. Victoria noticed.
"What is it?" He handed her the phone. She read the message. It was short. It said, "Mr.
Reed, my name is Daniel Foss. Garrett is my father. I think we need to talk. What he has planned for tomorrow is something you need to know about before it happens. Please call me."
The room was very quiet. Victoria set the phone down on the desk between them. She looked at Marcus. He looked at her. Foss's own son.
Neither of them spoke for a long moment. Then Marcus picked up the phone and dialed the number back. It rang twice. A young man's voice answered, careful, nervous. Mr.
Reed, tell me, Marcus said, what your father is planning. And what Daniel Foss said next changed everything they thought they knew about how far Garrett Foss was willing to go and confirmed without any remaining doubt that the battle they had just won in that press conference was not the end. It was the opening move. The Daniel Foss was 26 years old and he sounded like someone who had been awake for 36 hours and was operating on guilt and black coffee. His voice was steady but tight, the way voices got when people had made a decision they couldn't unmake and were living with the weight of having made it.
Marcus held the phone and listened. Victoria sat next to him close enough to hear fragments, watching his face for translation. Daniel said, My father didn't lose the vote today. He planned to lose the vote today. Marcus went still.
Say that again, he said. The no confidence vote. He knew he didn't have the numbers. He's known for 3 days. Patterson and Kim were never going to go with him.
He has history with both of them that makes it impossible. He used those relationships himself to find that out. Daniel paused. He let the vote happen because he wanted the press conference to happen. He wanted you both visible on camera, committed.
Marcus looked at Victoria. She had heard it. Her face had gone very careful. Why? Marcus said, not a question, a prompt.