Chapter 251: The Vote III
"Talk to Clara," said Sean.
"I will," said Okafor. He extended his hand. "It was the right outcome."
"Yes," said Sean. "It was."
Okafor moved away.
The room was thinning.
Clara appeared beside him.
She stood next to him for a moment looking at the emptying conference suite, the scattered papers, the chairs at angles, the specific aftermath of somewhere that had held something significant and was now returning to being just a room.
"Helen’s statement," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"The way she said his name," said Clara. "Richard. Just his name. Before the rest of it." She paused. "She didn’t need the whole statement. She could have said his name and asked the question and that would have been enough."
"The rest of it was for the room," said Sean. "Not for him."
"I know," said Clara. "She understood that." She looked at the room. "He’s going to think about what she said for a long time."
"Yes," he said.
"Whether it changes anything about how he operates," she said.
"I don’t know," he said honestly.
"Neither do I," she said. "I want to believe it does." She paused. "I’ll probably never find out."
"No," he said. "Probably not."
She picked up her notepad from the chair where she’d set it.
She looked at the count she’d written in her own hand.
Then she looked at him.
"You said we had it," she said. "From the beginning almost. You said the count was there and you said it with the specific quality of someone who actually knew rather than someone who hoped."
"The count was there," he said.
"How did you know," she said.
He thought about the honest version of that answer.
"Because I knew who the seventeen were," he said. "And I knew that people who believe in something before it exists don’t stop believing in it because someone offers them a number. That’s not a guess. That’s a pattern."
She looked at him.
"That’s the conversation," she said.
"What conversation," he said.
"The one I said I wanted after the vote," she said. "About the things I’ve been filing." She held his gaze. "You’re ready to have it."
"Yes," he said.
"Not here," she said. "Not in this room."
"No," he said. "Not in this room."
"Tonight," she said.
"Tonight," he said.
She nodded once and walked toward Thomas and Rachel and David who were still near the front of the room and had been waiting with the patience of people who understood that some conversations needed their moment.
Sean stood at the side wall for another moment.
He looked at the empty chair at the front of the room where Ashford had sat.
He looked at the tally sheet the recording secretary had left behind, sixty-eight point six percent, the number that meant three hundred and forty businesses were going to keep working with a product that actually worked for them.
He took out his phone.
He called Makima.
She picked up on the second ring. She didn’t say anything. She just waited.
"Sixty-eight point six percent," he said.
A pause.
"Good," she said. The real version. Quiet and warm and entirely genuine.
"Yes," he said.
"Come home and eat something," she said. "You’ve been running on coffee since Tuesday."
"After tonight," he said. "I have a conversation first."
"Clara," she said.
"Yes," he said.
A pause. "Okay," she said. "Come home after. I’ll be up."
He put his phone in his pocket.
He texted Olivia.
Sixty-eight point six percent. It’s done.
She replied in thirty seconds.
I knew it. I’ve been sitting with my phone since nine thirty. A pause. How do you feel.
He thought about that.
Like something that was supposed to happen happened, he said.
That’s exactly how it feels when you do things right, said Olivia. Come see me this weekend. Regular evening number two. I’ve been planning it.
Saturday, he said.
Saturday, she confirmed. Go have your conversation. Call me after.
He put his phone in his pocket.
He looked at the conference suite one more time.
The chairs were at angles. The water glasses were half empty. The tally sheet was on the recording secretary’s table.
Sixty-eight point six percent.
He walked out.
—-----
He walked out of the conference suite and the corridor was quieter than the room he’d just left.
The specific quiet of somewhere that had been holding its breath and had just exhaled.
He stood for a moment.
Then the suite door opened behind him and Rachel came out first, which was always going to be Rachel, and she looked at him and her expression had the quality of someone who had been holding something tightly for three weeks and had just been allowed to put it down.
She didn’t say anything.
She just hugged him.
Not briefly. The real version, the kind that communicated something too large for words and had decided not to try.
He held on.
When she stepped back her eyes were bright and she was smiling the specific smile of someone who had built something and had just watched someone try to take it and fail.
"Sixty-eight point six," she said.
"Sixty-eight point six," he said.
David came out next, shook Sean’s hand with the focused precision that was his version of everything, held it for a moment longer than a standard handshake, and then nodded once and stepped back.
Thomas came last.
He stood in the corridor and looked at Sean with the steady quality he’d carried through all of it, the quality that had been there in the first phone call and on the document read and in the board meeting and hadn’t changed in any of those rooms.
"I want to say something," said Thomas.
"Okay," said Sean.
"I called you after I read the analysis," said Thomas. "Three weeks ago. I didn’t know what I was calling toward. I just knew the math needed to be seen by someone and Clara had described a shareholder who was asking the right questions." He paused. "That call changed what was possible in this situation."