“Yes. Everyone.”
“This week,” I said. “Not sometime soon. This week.”
“This week,” he said.
## What Marian Said
He called Marian the next morning, a Thursday. I know how the call went because Marian called me afterward.
This was not something I expected. Marian does not call me frequently, and the calls we have had have been warm but fairly surface-level, the calls of a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law who like each other without having the kind of established shorthand that comes from years of relationship. I was sitting at my desk when her number came up on my phone.
“Rachel,” she said. “I just spoke to Daniel.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I want to say something to you and I want to say it directly.”
“Go ahead.”
“I should have asked you,” she said. “When I started hearing things about you not working, I should have asked you directly what you were doing. I assumed — I took Daniel’s account and I assumed. That was my mistake.”
I was quiet for a moment. “I appreciate you saying that.”
“I feel terrible about the dinner. What I said to you in the kitchen. About finding something.”
“You were working with the information you had.”
“The information I had should have been checked with you,” she said. “Not assumed. You’re a grown woman running a business, not someone I need to worry about on Daniel’s behalf.”
That last sentence hit me harder than I expected. Not someone I need to worry about on Daniel’s behalf. It was the correct framing and it was generous of her to arrive at it on her own.