“Yes.”
“And you expect everyone here to change a system while you are still deciding what you want.”
The room went quiet.
It was the first thing he had said that I could not dismiss.
“I am still deciding,” I said.
“Then perhaps you should wait.”
“Waiting is how I got here.”
Richard studied me.
I continued before I could make the answer prettier than it was.
“I spent years letting other people make these choices because I was relieved not to make them myself.”
Sophie looked up.
“I blamed the label, the press, the schedule. Those pressures are real. They were also useful.”
“Useful how?” Richard asked.
“They gave me somewhere else to put my fear.”
He leaned back.
“I am not interested in turning a complicated business into a personal revelation.”
“Neither am I.”
“It sounds remarkably similar.”
“I’m saying I participated. I agreed to the seating plans. I laughed at questions about men because correcting them felt harder. I let people use words like friend and assistant, then acted as though the language had nothing to do with me.”
Sophie’s eyes dropped to the damaged headline.
“I should have pushed back,” she said.
Richard turned toward her.
“Sophie.”
“She’s right.”
“I am not assigning blame.”
“I am,” Sophie said. “Some of it belongs to me.”
“This is not productive.”
“It could become productive,” Rachel said, “if we stop pretending the current arrangement works.”
Brent looked as though he regretted arriving before the coffee had gone cold.
Richard tapped the page once.
