She exploded from the table, flinging her arms wide. “He hasn’t done anything to anyone. There have been no accusations of domestic violence. He didn’t... As far as anyone knows, he never did anything to her. She disappeared and he was accused of all manner of things with no solid evidence at all. And I think there was bias against him because he comes from...modest beginnings.”
“It’s about the optics, Faith,” Joshua pointed out. “You’re a role model. And associating with him could damage that.”
Optics.That word made her feel like a creature in a zoo instead of a human. It made her feel like someone who was being made to perform, no matter her feelings.
“I don’t care aboutoptics, Joshua. I’m twenty-five years old and I have many more years left in this career. If all I ever do is worry about optics and I don’t take projects that interest me—if I don’t follow my passion even a little bit—then I don’t see the point of it.”
“The point is that you are going to be doing this for a long time and when you’re more well-established you can take risks. Until then, you need to be more cautious.”
She looked around the room at her family, all of them gazing at her like she had grown a second head. Suddenly she did feel what Levi had described earlier.
This was, in its way, a prison.
This success had grown bigger than she was.
“I’m not a child,” she said. “If I’m old enough to be at the center of all this success, don’t you think I should follow my instincts? If I...burn out because I feel trapped then I won’t be able to do my best work. If I burn out, I won’t be able to give you all those years of labor, Joshua.”
“Nobody wants that,” her mother said. “Nobody expects you to work blindly, Faith. No one wants you to go until you grind yourself into the ground.” She directed those words at Joshua and Isaiah.
“You think it’s a good idea for her to work with an ex-con?” Joshua directedthatquestion at their father.
“I think Faith’s instincts have gotten all of you this far and you shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss them just because it doesn’t make immediate sense to you,” her father responded.
Right. This was why she had confessed in front of her parents. Because, while she wanted to please them, wanted all their sacrifices to feel worth it, she also knew they supported her no matter what. They were so good at that. So good at making her feel like her happiness mattered.
A lot of the pressure she felt was pressure she had put on herself.
But every year when there was stress about the scholarship money coming through for boarding school, every year when the cost of uniforms was an issue, when a school trip came up and her parents had to pay for part of it, and scraped and saved so Faith could have every opportunity... All of those things lived inside her.
She couldn’t forget it.
They had done so much for her. They had set her out on a paved road to the future, rather than a dirt one, and it hadn’t been a simple thing for them.
And she couldn’t discount the ways her brothers had helped her passion for architecture and design become a moneymaking venture, too.
But at the end of the day, she was still owed something that washers.
She still deserved to be treated like an adult.
It was that simple.
She just wanted them to recognize that she was a grown woman who was responsible for her own time, for her own decisions.
“I took the project,” she said again. “It’s nonnegotiable. He’s going to publicize it whether you do or not, Joshua. Because it’s part of his plan for...reestablishing himself. He’s a businessman, and he was quite a famous one, for good reasons, prior to being wrongfully accused.”
“Faith...” Joshua clearly sounded defeated now, but he seemed to be clinging to a last hope that he could redirect her.
“You don’t know him,” Faith said. “You just decided he was guilty. Which is what the public did to him. What the justice system did to him. And if he’s innocent, then he’s a man who lost everything over snap judgments and bias. You’re in PR, maybe you can work with that when the news stories start coming out—”
“Dinner will be ready soon,” her mother interrupted, her tone gentle but firm. “Why don’t we table talk of business until after?”
They did that as best they could all through the meal, and afterward Faith was recruited to help put away dishes. She would complain, or perhaps grumble about the sexism of it, but her mother had only asked for her, and Faith had a feeling it was because her mother wanted a private word with her.
“How well do you know Levi Tucker?” her mother asked gently, taking a clean plate from the drying rack and stacking it in the cupboard.
“Well enough,” Faith answered, feeling a twist of conviction in her chest as she plunged her hands into the warm dishwater.
“You have very strong feelings about his innocence.”
