Yet Ethan, who had lost control of his life in ways Victoria feared more than failure, did not seem bitter about the road he had not taken.
He was tired.
Often worried.
Sometimes lonely.
But not bitter.
Victoria began noticing things about herself she had spent years ignoring.
She checked email during meals even when nothing urgent was happening.
She scheduled exercise.
Scheduled calls with her father.
Scheduled vacations she often canceled.
Her apartment in the city was beautiful and almost completely impersonal.
She owned art selected by a consultant.
Wine chosen by someone else.
Furniture she rarely sat on.
The refrigerator contained sparkling water, yogurt, and food delivered by a service that knew her preferences better than most people knew her.
She had built a life optimized for efficiency.
There was very little inside it that needed her emotionally.
That became obvious the afternoon Lily asked about her photographs.
Victoria had come to the farm after a difficult board meeting.
A labor negotiation had gone poorly.
One of the company divisions had missed quarterly targets.
She had spent three hours listening to executives explain why problems belonged to other departments.
By the time she reached Cedar Ridge, she had a headache.
Lily was sitting at the kitchen table coloring.
Victoria placed her phone face down.
That had become an unspoken rule.
If she came to the farm socially, the phone stayed mostly away.
Lily looked at her.
“Can I ask something?”
“You usually do.”
“I saw your picture at the library.”
Victoria frowned.
“My picture?”
“In a magazine.”
“Oh.”
“You looked mad.”
Ethan glanced up from the stove.
Victoria said:
“I probably wasn’t.”
“You didn’t smile.”
“I don’t always smile for photographs.”
“There were three pictures.”
Ethan started chopping onions more slowly.
Lily continued.
“You didn’t smile in any.”
Victoria had negotiated hostile acquisitions with less discomfort.
“Maybe they chose serious photographs.”
“Why?”
“Because business magazines sometimes want people to look serious.”
Lily frowned.
“That’s weird.”
“It might be.”
“Daddy looks serious in pictures too.”
Ethan pointed the knife toward her.
“Thank you.”
“But he smiles when I make him.”
“That is because you are terrifying.”
Lily grinned.
Then looked at Victoria.
“You look prettier when you smile.”
Victoria went still.
The compliment was so direct, so free of strategy, that she did not know where to put it.
“Thank you.”
Lily returned to coloring.
The conversation ended.
Victoria thought about it for days.
Not the word prettier.
The fact that a seven-year-old had noticed how rarely she appeared happy.
Ethan noticed other things too.
Victoria never talked about her mother.
Eventually he asked.
They were repairing a section of irrigation hose behind the greenhouse.
“My mother died when I was twenty-three.”
Ethan stopped.
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“That doesn’t make it nothing.”
Victoria looked at him.
Most people responded to grief with either pity or silence.
Ethan did neither.
“What was she like?”
he asked.
Victoria smiled faintly.
“Completely unimpressed by my father.”