Victor looked up. He registered “Pinnacle” and placed it — he knows the logistics landscape in our region. He said Owen Reed had done good work there. He said it was a good position.
Then he said: “We’ll miss you. We already miss you.”
This is, I think, the most honest thing he said to me in the months following the conference room meeting. It was true. And it was also — I thought this and kept it to myself — insufficient to the size of what had happened. Missing someone who is no longer available because you decided she wasn’t necessary is a feeling that arrives after a decision, not before. The feeling is real. It doesn’t revise the decision.
I said: “I know.”
We ate the roast. My mother had made potatoes two ways, which she does when she wants a meal to feel generous. Luke was quieter than usual. His girlfriend Mara asked good questions about the new job and I answered them, and the conversation stayed in that register for the rest of dinner.
Afterward, in the kitchen, Elaine found me alone.
She said: “I want to say something.”
I waited.
“I should have spoken up more,” she said. “When the decision was being made. I should have said something different.”
I asked what she would have said.
She looked at the counter. “That it was a mistake. That Luke wasn’t ready to do what you were doing.”
“Did you think that at the time?”
A long pause. “I think I did. I think I thought it and decided not to say it because your father had already decided and I didn’t want — I didn’t want to make it harder.”