Patterson called it a disappointing chapter that reflects the character of the company's ongoing leadership and how it was handled. "That's a nice sentence," Marcus said. "It's a very boardroom sentence," she agreed. "But yes." He could hear something in her voice.
Not triumph, exactly. Something quieter than triumph. More like the feeling of setting down something heavy that you've been carrying so long you forgot it wasn't always there. "It's done." He was on his lunch break sitting in the cab of his truck in the parking lot of the garage eating a sandwich Mrs.
Patterson had packed because she had started doing that recently, appearing in his kitchen on morning she brought Ava to school and leaving food in the refrigerator without comment. As if feeding him was a thing she had decided was simply part of her responsibilities now. He had stopped arguing with it. "How are you feeling?" he asked.
"Physically, 14 weeks is there are days." A pause. "Emotionally, I feel like I can breathe. Good. Marcus.
A longer pause. I want to talk to you about something, not on the phone. Something in her voice made him set the sandwich down. What is it? Nothing bad, she said quickly.
Not bad, just something I've been thinking about. I want to say it in person. A pause. Can you come over tonight? Yeah, after Ava's in bed, 9:00?
9:00, she confirmed. He spent the rest of the afternoon wondering what she wanted to say that couldn't be said on the phone. He was not anxious about it. He had been through enough with this woman in 3 months to trust that whatever it was, they could handle it. He was curious in the specific way that you were curious about something you were actually genuinely looking forward to.
He put Ava to bed at 8:15. She fell asleep mid-sentence the way she did when she'd had a full day, her hand wrapped around Gerald, her breathing going deep and easy and complete. He stood in her doorway for a moment. He thought about the morning this had all started, the invitation on his workbench that he hadn't wanted to accept, Ray slapping it down and saying, "Wear something that isn't covered in grease." The cab ride to the Langford Hotel, the 42nd floor and the ice sculptures and the string quartet, a man in a corner waiting out his 2 hours, a woman in a green dress looking for a way out of a room.
He left at 8:45 and arrived at 9:02. Victoria was in the living room. She had turned on the lamps instead of the overhead lights, which made the enormous apartment feel smaller and more like somewhere people actually lived. She had a glass of water and there was tea on the coffee table and she was sitting with her feet tucked under her, which was a thing he had noticed she only did when she felt safe enough to be physically comfortable. She looked up when he came in.
"Hi," she said. "Hi." He sat down next to her, not across the coffee table, next to her, which was where he always sat now because across from her felt like a negotiation, and that was not what they were anymore. She was quiet for a moment. He waited.
"I talked to my OB today," she said. "Everything is fine. Baby is fine. I'm fine. But she said I need to reduce my stress level significantly for the next trimester."
A pause. "She said, and I quote, 'Victoria, your body does not care about your quarterly projections.'" He almost smiled. "Smart doctor." "She's excellent." Victoria looked at the water glass in her hands.
"She also said that I've been doing this, the pregnancy, the work, the legal situation, in a way that's not sustainable. That I'm treating the pregnancy like another project to manage alongside everything else instead of something that needs to be centered." "What did you say?" "I said she was probably right." He waited.
"Marcus," Victoria said. She turned to look at him directly. "I want to ask you something, and I need you to know that there is no pressure attached to this. I've thought about it very carefully, and I've looked at it from every angle, and I want to be clear that my life is fine either way. I can do this."
"Victoria." "What?" "Just ask me." She looked at him for a moment. Then, "I want you to be here.
Not just present, not just available. Here. I want us to I want to try. Actually try. Not parallel parenting with legal documents, not managed from a distance.
I want" She stopped. Started again. "I'm not good at this. I've never done this. I don't know how to ask for things I need from people because I was trained from the time I was 12 years old that needing things was a liability.
She took a breath. But I need this. I need you here. And I'm asking. The room was very quiet.
Marcus looked at her, at this woman who had spent a decade building walls and 3 months slowly letting him see past them. Who had said, "I'm not okay." when she could have said, "Fine." Who had worn jeans to meet his daughter and made uneven pancakes and watched tutorials about not pressing down with the spatula because a little girl's opinion mattered to her. He said, "I've been here."
"I know." Her voice was careful. "I mean more than that." "I know what you mean." She looked at him.
"Okay." he said. She blinked. "Okay." "Okay."
he said again. Simple. Just that. Her breath came out slowly. Not dramatically.
Just the particular release of someone who had been holding something and was setting it down. "I should warn you." she said. "I work too much. I overthink everything.
I have opinions about how dishes should be stacked that are probably unreasonable. I don't know how to slow down. And my therapist says that's going to be a lifelong project." She paused. "I'm going to be difficult."
"I raised an 8-year-old alone for 3 years." he said. "I have a high threshold for difficult." She almost laughed. Not quite.
"That's different." "Not as different as you think." She looked at him. And then, she said something she said quietly, without performance, without strategy, just directly from the place she kept things that were true. "I don't want to be alone in this apartment anymore."
He held her gaze. "You're not." he said. The baby was born on a Tuesday in April, which Marcus thought was better timing than October-April, when Chicago was finally deciding to be warm again. When the light came back into the days and things that had been cold for months started opening up.
He was in the room. He had been in the room for 17 hours, which he would later describe to Ray as the longest and shortest 17 hours of my life, and which Ray would respond to by clapping him on the shoulder and saying nothing because some things didn't need words. When the baby came, Marcus held her first. The nurse placed her in his arms and he stood there with this new small person looking up at him or in his direction because newborns didn't really look yet. But he chose to believe she was looking at him.
And he felt something that he recognized. He had felt it once before. 23 years ago in a different hospital room holding a different baby. The same feeling. The specific enormous terrifying complete feeling of understanding what you were for.
He looked up at Victoria, who was watching him hold their daughter with an expression that contained everything. Exhaustion and relief. And something so open and undefended that he knew with the particular certainty of someone who had seen her in every version of herself over the last 6 months that this was the real one. This was Victoria Hale without a single wall left standing. Hi.
He said to the baby. The baby made a sound. Victoria said from the bed, "What are we naming her?" They had discussed names. They had a list.
Three names, all good, none of them decided. He looked at the baby. He thought about Danielle who had asked him to let himself be happy again someday. He thought about his father who had asked about his day every night for 29 years. He thought about Ava, who was at Mrs.
Patterson's right now, who had been informed she was getting a sister, and who had said after a long pause, "She can look at Gerald, but she can't touch him until she's older." He looked at Victoria. "Joy," he said. Victoria was quiet for a moment. Then, "Joy."
"Is that okay?" She looked at their daughter. At this small, new, improbable person who had arrived out of one accidental night and 6 months of two people choosing repeatedly every day not to run from what was real. "It's perfect," she said. Ava met her sister 2 hours later and stood very still for a very long time just looking at her, which Marcus recognized as Ava's highest form of attention and respect.
Then she said very seriously, "She's small." "She just got here," Marcus said. "Does she know about Gerald?" "Not yet." Ava considered this.
Then, gently, carefully, she reached out one finger and touched the baby's hand. Joy's fingers, with the automatic grip of the newborn, wrapped around Ava's finger and held. Ava looked up at Marcus with an expression he would remember for the rest of his life, completely undone, completely open the 8-year-old who had spent 3 years being the only child of a father who gave everything he had, meeting the person who would be part of her world now. "She's strong," Ava said. "She is," Marcus said.
"She's going to be okay," Ava said. And Marcus Reed, who had woken up at 4:47 for 3 years in the dark of a quiet house that was half empty, who had built a life from loss with both hands and no map, who had stood in a hallway outside a press conference and turned down $20 without blinking, who had loved one woman through her dying and loved another through her walls coming down, who had been a father before he was ready and stayed when it was hard and showed up when it cost him something real. Marcus Reed looked at his two daughters and the woman in the bed who was watching all three of them with tired, bright, unguarded eyes, and he knew the way. You know the things that are simply and permanently true, that he had not just survived what life had taken from him. He had built something better than what he'd lost, and he was never for one single day going to take the sound of it for granted.