Part 22:
That was the end of the conversation. Delia did not do long conversations. He started to leave. Ryan? It was Celeste. She had not turned around. Yeah. A minute. He stopped. Marcus looked at him, looked at her back, and quietly left the room. Delia gathered up a stack of papers, did not make a show of it, and left.
The door closed. Celeste was still at the window. He walked over and stood next to her. He looked out at the parking lot with her. The sodium lights were on. Theo’s car was parked at the end of the row with Theo in the driver’s seat reading a book that looked small in his big hands. “You should go home,” she said.
“I’m going.” “I mean it.” “I’m going.” She didn’t say anything for a minute. “Celeste?” “Yes.” “You all right?” “No, not especially.” “Okay.” “I do not like tomorrow. I do not like any part of tomorrow. It was your idea.” “It was my idea.” “Which is why I don’t like it.” “Most of the time when I’m nervous about something, it is because I think other people have not thought it through.
” “This time I thought it through. That is worse.” “You could call it off.” She looked at him. It was the first time she turned from the window. “Can I” “Yeah, you can.” “I would back out tomorrow if you told me to. I wouldn’t think less of you.” “Would you think less of yourself?” He thought about it. “Probably. Yeah.
” “Then I’m not going to call it off.” “Okay.” She looked at him for a long moment. Her face, under the bad lighting of the conference room, was very tired. “Ryan?” “Yeah.” “May I ask you a personal question?” “You can ask.” “What was your wife like?” He was quiet. He hadn’t expected that one. “Marlene.” “Marlene.
She was” “She was sort of a small person with a big voice.” “She laughed loud.” “She cried loud. She sang in the car whether she knew the song or not. She was a veterinary technician. She worked at a clinic in Rutland. She loved old dogs. She liked old dogs better than puppies. She said puppies were a lot of potential and old dogs were a lot of follow-through.
Celeste smiled small. I think I would have liked her. Most people liked her. How did she die? Cancer. It was fast. I’m sorry. Thank you. How old was Emma? Three. That’s young. It is. Does she remember her? Pieces. Mostly from what I’ve told her. There are videos. Marlene’s mother has them. Emma watches them sometimes.
Does she look like her? Yes. She has her laugh, the loud one. Celeste was quiet. Ryan. Yeah. I have not I have not talked about this with anyone, not for a long time. But my fiance died 6 years ago. He looked at her. Celeste. Plane crash, a small plane, not mine. He was with his brother. They were flying back from a property he was looking at for me.
They went down in Colorado. He was 31. I was 24. I’m sorry. It was It was a bad year. Yeah. I mention it only because when you told me yesterday that you hoped I would stop sitting at bus stops. Yeah. It was the first time in a long time that someone said something to me that suggested they had noticed I was a little bit alone.
People notice I am the CEO. People notice I’m wealthy. People notice I’m busy. Nobody has noticed in a long time that I’m a little bit alone. I noticed that you noticed. That is all I wanted to say. Ryan didn’t know what to say. He had the feeling again that she was a person, not a billionaire. That the suit and the SUVs and the reading glasses on chains were things, only things, and that underneath them was just a woman in a room at night saying the things she had not said in a long time.
You’re not as alone as you think you are, Celeste. Maybe not. For what it’s worth, it’s worth something. He looked out the window. Theo was still reading his book. Go home, Ryan. Okay. Sleep. Okay. He walked to the door. At the door he stopped. Celeste? Yes. I’ll come back tomorrow. I know you will. I’m telling you anyway. She smiled.
It was a small, real smile. She nodded twice. He left. He did not sleep much. He slept in pieces, the way he had slept 3 weeks ago, with the water stain on the ceiling doing its parade of shapes. At one point, around 4:00 in the morning, he got up and sat on the edge of Emma’s empty bed, because Emma was at Rosa’s, and he stared at her bookshelf in the dark for a while.
She had a worn copy of Charlotte’s Web face down on the top of the bookshelf, open to the page she had stopped at. He didn’t look to see which page. He just sat, and he looked at the book, and he thought about the fact that a 7-year-old was reading a book that had been on a bookshelf for 40 years and had made a dozen other kids cry before her.
There was something comforting about that, although he could not have said what. He got up. He made coffee. He ate eggs. At 12:55 p.m., there was a knock on the door. It was Theo. Ready? Ready. Theo looked him up and down. Vest? Vest. Good. Theo drove him downstairs in the truck, which had been staged in the lot that morning by someone Ryan had never seen.
Theo got out. Ryan got in the driver’s seat. Theo leaned in the window. I’m 2 miles behind you the whole way. I am not visible. I am not going to ride your bumper, but I am there. Okay. You take 89 to the 12A exit. You turn right. 3 mi north on your right, there’s an old wooden post that used to have a sign on it and doesn’t anymore.
The turnoff is 10 ft past that. You go in at a walking pace. You count exactly 440 yd on your odometer. That’s the quarter mile. You stop. You leave the engine running. Leave it running. >> Yes. >> You do not kill the engine. If you kill the engine and something happens, you want the engine already running so you can put it in gear.
