He said, “It was still an error that I made that you wouldn’t have made.”
I said that was probably true and that he would make fewer of them as he learned the account.
He said, “I didn’t know — I didn’t actually know what you were doing. Dad made it sound like –” He stopped. “I don’t know exactly how Dad made it sound. I know how I heard it.”
“How did you hear it?”
He looked at the table. “Like you were holding the accounts. Not managing them.”
Holding versus managing. The difference between a container and an engine.
“I know,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I said I believed him and that the apology was accepted and that I was starting a new job in three weeks, so the practical effects of the past several months were working themselves out.
He seemed surprised by the timeline. I think he had expected the consulting arrangement to extend. Or he had expected that I would stay available to Morgan Freight in some informal way, as I had informally been available my entire career.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
I told him. He knew the name — we overlapped in carriers — and he understood what the role was.
“Senior operations lead,” he said.
“Yes.”
He said, “That’s — that’s a good role.”
“Yes,” I said. “It is.”
The family dinner where I told my parents was a Sunday in late November. My mother made a roast that she’d been promising for three weeks. Victor was at the head of the table. Elaine was moving between kitchen and dining room in the way she does when she’s managing something.