She stood. At the door, she turned back.
"You play well," she said. "At the parties. I always thought you were showing off. I don't think that anymore."
He looked, for a moment, almost startled.
"It's the only hour of the year," he said, "when nobody expects me to say anything."
* * *
The Halloran renewal pitch was on the twenty-second of January, at nine in the morning, in the big conference room on fourteen.
Margot came in at seven-fifteen to check the room, as she always did, and found the boards already up on their easels, the lights already set, the projector already warm, and Wes Delacroix asleep sitting upright in the chair in the far corner with his tie over his shoulder and a cold coffee in his hand.
She stood in the doorway and looked at him for a long time.
She did not wake him. She checked the clicker. She straightened one board that was a quarter-inch off, and then, after a moment's thought, put it back a quarter-inch off, because she suspected he'd done it on purpose and she was in no position to second-guess his eye.
At eight-thirty he woke with a start and saw her and said, "Oh, God, what time is it."
"Eight-thirty. You're early."
"I was here at six. I didn't want to—" He rubbed his face. "I wanted to be here first. That's all. For once."
"I noticed," said Margot.
Agnes Halloran arrived at five to nine in her truck with the cracked windshield, wearing a barn coat over a good dress, with both of her sons. Anil presented. His voice shook for the first thirty seconds and then didn't. Wes stood at the side of the room and said almost nothing, and when Agnes's older son asked a hard question about cost, Wes looked at Anil and let Anil answer it, and Anil answered it well.
When it was over, Agnes Halloran sat looking at the board of her father holding the calf for a long time.
"He'd have hated this," she said. "He hated having his picture taken." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, unembarrassed. "I want it. Why didn't you show me this last year?"
There was a silence in the room. Margot opened her mouth to say something smooth.