For one surreal second, I just stared at him.
I had imagined maybe another interview.
Maybe a referral.
Maybe advice.
Not this.
Not a job offer sitting right there in the middle of the table like a door being kicked open.
“I don’t know what to say,” I whispered.
He leaned back.
“That seems to be a running theme.”
I laughed then.
Actually laughed.
It came out shaky and disbelieving and more emotional than I meant it to.
I looked down, swallowed hard, and blinked fast.
The last twenty-four hours had ripped me up so thoroughly that kindness hit like a blow.
“I want it,” I said finally. “If you mean it, I want it.”
“I mean it.”
“When would you need me to start?”
“How soon can you?”
I almost said immediately.
Then I thought of Emily.
The girls.
The fact that my whole life had already whiplashed once in a single day.
“Tomorrow?”
That made him smile.
“Tomorrow works.”
He stood and extended his hand again.
I rose so fast my chair nearly scraped backward.
When our hands met, it felt less like a greeting and more like a bridge being built in real time.
“Welcome aboard, Sebastian.”
I shook his hand.
And for the first time since the morning before, I felt something stronger than fear.
I felt possibility.
When I got back to the car, I sat there with both hands on the wheel and the official offer papers on the passenger seat.
Then I called Emily.
She answered on the second ring.
“How did it go?”
I couldn’t help it.
I started crying.
Not the broken, humiliated kind from the day before.
The stunned kind.
The relieved kind.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You stopped,” she said. “That was everything.”
We got takeout that night.
Cheap burgers and fries and milkshakes for the girls because even though we had spent years being careful with money, celebration still mattered.
Claire wanted to know if “senior strategist” meant I got to tell other adults what to do.
Maddie asked if my new office had candy.
Emily kept looking at me like she still couldn’t quite believe I was sitting there.
Honestly, neither could I.
Before bed, when the dishes were done and the girls were asleep, Emily and I sat on the porch swing wrapped in one blanket.
The neighborhood was quiet.
A dog barked somewhere far off.
