For me? I did it for Lily, he said.
But also, he stopped. She waited.
Also, yes, he said for you. The kitchen was very quiet.
Outside, the wind moved through the trees in the yard, and somewhere along the east property line, the new fence held the boundary steady. the way it was built to do the posts set deep, the mesh tight, the gate swinging clean on its new hinges.
Catherine looked at her hands on the table. Then she looked at him.
The shareholder vote is in 11 days, she said. I know.
James Whitmore called me tonight before dinner. He's got four votes committed.
He needs two more to create a blocking minority. She paused.
He thinks he can get them. He'll get them.
Daniel said, "You don't know that." No, he said, "But I know the work you've put in this week, and I know that what you built is real.
Real things have a way of surviving if somebody fights for them hard enough and long enough." She looked at him steadily.
"Is that experience talking again?"
"4 months," he said.
"Every form, every appeal." She reached across the table.
She put her hand over his. Not romantic, not dramatic, just a hand on a hand.
The specific warmth of another person saying, "I'm here. I see what this costs.
I'm not going anywhere." He turned his hand over.
She didn't pull away. They sat like that for a while in the quiet of a kitchen where the tea was going lukewarm and a boy was asleep on the couch and a girl was already dreaming.
And outside the new fence held the line exactly as it was supposed to. I don't know how to do this slowly, she said.
I've run a company for 11 years. I make decisions fast.
I know, he said. But you also got up at 4:30 and made the calls and walked into the room and said the thing that was true, he paused.
Fast isn't always the problem. What matters is what you're building.
"And what are we building?" she said directly, because she was Catherine Hail and she did not circle the real question twice. He looked at her hand in his.
"Something that holds," he said.
"That's all I know how to build." She was quiet for a long moment.
That's enough she said. Noah stirred on the couch and called out for his dad in the half asleep half somewhere else voice of a child who needed to know someone was near.
Daniel squeezed her hand once. He got up and went to his son.
He sat on the edge of the couch and said, "I'm here." Noah settled back to sleep in 12 seconds.
Daniel sat there for a minute longer. Then he came back to the kitchen.
Catherine was still at the table. She hadn't moved.