“So did you.” She set down the last folder. “Thank you.”
“You don't have to thank me for stating facts.”
“I know.” She looked at him steadily. “That's why it mattered.”
He wanted to say more. She seemed to know it, and for a moment they looked at one another across the empty table. Then Claire took the documents to the office, and Ethan stood alone with his copy of the agreement. A quarter-million-dollar contract had just been signed in his break room. He should have been thinking only about the work it would bring, but he was thinking about a woman whose response to being dismissed was to do the job better than anyone expected.
Two mornings later, while Ethan was working alone beneath a pickup, Claire called his personal phone. He recognized her name and smiled before answering, a reaction that made him stop smiling out of self-consciousness. “Hey. Everything okay?”
“I need to talk about Thursday,” she said. “I don't want to carry it into Monday without saying something.”
He put down the wrench. “Go ahead.”
“What you said to Gerald mattered. It mattered more than I expected, because most people would have ignored the remark rather than risk a contract.” She paused. “But you also decided how I would handle it. You closed the folder and made the decision on my behalf, and I need you to understand why that isn't quite the same as standing beside me.”
Ethan sat on the edge of the workbench, listening. His first impulse was to explain that he had been protecting her. He recognized the impulse in time and kept quiet long enough for her to finish. Claire spoke carefully, not accusing him of bad intentions, but refusing to pretend the effect of a choice didn't matter because the intention had been kind.
She had given up a career to care for her father by her own decision. She had come to Clover Creek by her own decision. She would decide how to handle a dismissive client as well.
“I've sat in rooms where men talked past me for years,” she said. “I know how to deal with it. What I need from you is trust that I can, and a chance to choose when you step in.”
“You're right,” Ethan said after a moment.
She waited, as though uncertain she had heard him correctly.
“I wanted to protect you,” he continued. “I wasn't wrong to insist that your work be recognized. I was wrong to make the decision without checking with you. Next time, I'll ask what you want to do.”
“That's what I needed.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Okay,” she said softly. “I'll see you Monday.”
The call ended. Ethan sat with the phone in his hand, surprised by the quiet after an argument that hadn't actually become an argument. Claire had corrected him without humiliating him, and he'd managed to hear the correction without turning it into a referendum on his character. That might have been the most adult conversation he'd had in years.