“For me? No. I just didn’t want you to be surprised if you see him make a face when they read my bio.”
She laughed, slightly uncertainly. “Okay. Good to know. Do you want me to adjust the introduction?”
“No,” I said. “Use what’s in the directory.”
I finished setting up. By eight-fifty the room was filling. I stood at the side with a coffee and watched them come in. Account managers, facilities coordinators, two people from finance, a few faces I didn’t recognize. And then Daniel, coming in with two colleagues, stopping mid-step when he saw me at the front of the room, and continuing to a seat in the third row with only a slight adjustment in his expression.
I met his eyes for a moment and nodded. He nodded back. We were professionals.
Linda introduced me with the bio from the directory: former operations manager at Forrest Medical Distribution, nine years of process management experience, independent consultant specializing in midsize service companies, alumni speaker of the Midwest Operations Alliance. She said my name. She said I would be leading the morning session on workflow efficiency and bottleneck identification.
Nobody in the room, except Daniel, had any reason to think this was unusual. Forty-one people reached for their notebooks or their phones or their coffee. Daniel looked at his hands for a moment, then he looked up, and then he did something that I will always give him credit for: he looked at me with an expression that was not resentment or anger or theatrical shame. He looked at me with an expression that was more like acknowledgment. Like: here you are.