"Every day, in some way. Not always painfully. Sometimes I see a chair she'd like or hear a joke she'd tell, and missing her feels almost like having her beside me for a minute." He looked toward the photograph again.
"For a long time, I was afraid that being happy would mean leaving her behind. Eventually I realized she would have hated that. She spent her whole life trying to make ordinary days beautiful. She wouldn't want me to spend the rest of mine refusing them."
Victoria told him about Eleanor then. She described her mother's yellow table, the long evenings spent painting furniture in a cramped kitchen, and the pride Eleanor took in the first pieces Victoria sold. She admitted that she had been so determined to build a secure future that she had often mistaken being busy for being useful. Daniel did not tell her to slow down or condemn the company she had built. He simply listened, and when she finished, he asked what Eleanor had enjoyed doing when nobody needed anything from her.
The question took Victoria by surprise. She knew the answer to every appointment Eleanor had attended in her final year, could recite the dates of important medical decisions, and remembered the names of almost every specialist. But the first memory that came was not medical or practical at all. "She danced in the kitchen," Victoria said.
"When an old song came on the radio, she'd turn it up and dance while the potatoes boiled. She looked ridiculous, and she didn't care." Daniel smiled. "She sounds wonderful."
"She was." Victoria looked down at her hands. "I wish I had danced with her more."
The following week, Victoria found herself at a distribution facility on the edge of the city, attending a meeting about packaging errors. A young warehouse supervisor named Monique Harper demonstrated that damaged furniture had increased after management changed the packing material to meet a quarterly savings target. One of the executives dismissed the concern as isolated and urged the team to focus on the cost reduction. Victoria asked Monique to finish her explanation. Within minutes it became clear that the savings had generated far greater replacement expenses and unnecessary work for the staff.
Victoria changed the purchase directive, apologized for the oversight, and stayed long enough to ask the loading crew what would make their jobs safer. None of it was revolutionary management, and she knew that. It simply required the kind of attention she had begun practicing in Daniel's workshop. She could not stop thinking about how many times the people closest to a problem must have gone unheard because the people above them were in too much of a hurry to listen. On the ride home, she asked Ethan to arrange visits to two more facilities without requiring formal presentations.
Ethan looked at her over his tablet. "Is this connected to your new friend?" Victoria gave him a measuring glance. "Possibly. Does that concern you?"