“Whoever’s With You Is a Lucky Guy,” I Joked to the Quiet Woman at the Company Party — She Said “I Was Hoping That Would Be You,” and Then the Board Walked Up and Called Her by a Name That Made My Stomach Drop

Part 2

Ms.

Ellsworth.

I stood there with the word echoing in my head, trying to make it mean something other than what it obviously meant.

Then one of the board members turned to me, polite and a little careful, and said, “Good evening, Grant.”

And my stomach dropped straight through the dock.

There was only one Ms.

Ellsworth in the company.

Camille Ellsworth.

The CEO. The owner of the entire organization.

The woman I had been chatting with like an old friend, the woman I had just told that whoever was lucky enough to be with her, was the name printed on every newsletter, every announcement, every major decision the company had ever made.

I felt my face go hot.

“Oh,” I said quietly.

“Wow.

I had no idea.”

Camille just laughed, soft and unbothered.

“Most people start acting differently the moment they find out who I am.”

I shook my head.

“Honestly, I’m just embarrassed.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve been talking to you like we’re old friends.”

Her smile widened.

“That,” she said, “is exactly why I enjoyed it.”

The board members drew her away, but she came back.

For the next hour, with the party winding down around us, we kept right on talking.

She asked more about Lucy.

I told her stories about being a father.

We laughed, actually laughed, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt like someone was seeing me.

Not the maintenance worker.

Not the employee.

Not the widower everyone tiptoed around.

Just me.

I drove home certain it was a one-time thing.

A nice fluke.

A story I’d tell Dale at the warehouse and we’d both shake our heads at.

Then, a week later, an invitation to lunch landed on my phone.

From Camille.

At first I assumed it had to be company business, some HR thing, some mistake.

It wasn’t.

She just wanted to see me again.

So we had lunch.

And then we had another.

And somewhere in there it stopped being a strange fluke and started being the steadiest, warmest thing in my life.

We never rushed any of it.

She admired, she said, that I’d kept my head down and raised my girl and never once asked anyone for anything.

I admired that a woman with everything still treated the man who fixed her cranes exactly the same as she treated her investors.

Months went by before I let her meet Lucy, because Lucy was the one part of my life I couldn’t risk.

I worried my daughter might be shy, or worse, that she might not warm to her.

I needn’t have worried.

The two of them spent a whole afternoon painting pictures at my kitchen table, laughing so hard they could barely hold the brushes.

That night, after Camille left, Lucy looked up at me with paint still on her cheek.

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“I think Camille is really nice.”

“I think so too, sweetheart,” I said.

And that should have been the happy ending.

But lying awake that night, I felt the old fear creep in, the one that asked the question I couldn’t shake: what could the most powerful woman in my entire world possibly want, in the long run, with a man who came home smelling of motor oil — and was I about to break my own heart, and worse, my daughter’s, by letting myself believe otherwise?