10. Ellie
Ten
Ellie
Three years earlier
The meeting that changed my life was about blue.
Not grief.
Not death.
Not the fact that I had stopped sleeping properly and had worn the same black trousers three days in a row because choosing clothes required a level of commitment I no longer possessed.
Blue.
Specifically, whether a new insurance company should use Ocean Confidence, Reliable Horizon, or Modern Trust in its advertising campaign.
All three colors looked exactly the same.
I had been staring at them for seventeen minutes.
“The research group responded most positively to Modern Trust,” Martin said.
Martin was our creative director, which meant he wore expensive sneakers, used the word storytelling as a threat, and occasionally removed his glasses before saying something he hoped would be remembered.
He removed them now.
“But Ocean Confidence feels more human.”
Across the conference table, six people nodded.
I looked at the presentation screen.
Three identical blue rectangles floated above a slogan that read:
INSURANCE FOR THE LIFE YOU’RE BUILDING.
“What does Reliable Horizon feel like?” I asked.
Martin considered it.
“Stable.”
“As opposed to Modern Trust?”
“Modern Trust is optimistic.”
“They’re the same color.”
The room went quiet.
Beside me, my assistant, Nora, became intensely interested in her laptop.
Martin put his glasses back on.
“They’re not.”
I leaned forward.
“Ocean Confidence is number 2874C.”
“Yes.”
“Reliable Horizon is also number 2874C.”
A pause.
Martin clicked his remote.
The slide changed.
Reliable Horizon became slightly darker.
“Now it’s different,” he said.
Something escaped me.
A laugh.
Not a normal one.
Too sharp.
Too loud.
Every face around the table turned toward me.
I pressed my lips together.
“Sorry.”
Nora looked worried.
Martin looked offended on behalf of blue.
I tried again.
“I’m sorry. Please continue.”
He did.
That was the problem.
He continued explaining the emotional intentions of color while the laugh climbed higher in my throat.
I thought of Molly.
Not the hospital.
Not the phone call from my mother.
Not the black dress hanging at the back of my closet because I could not decide whether keeping it was practical or deeply strange.
I thought of the last text she had sent me.
Rude. I was going to offer you free food. Tomorrow, then.
Tomorrow, then.
I had read it so many times that the words no longer looked like language.
On the screen, Martin returned to Ocean Confidence.
“This one feels more inviting.”
I laughed again.
Nora touched my arm beneath the table.
“Ellie?”
“I’m fine.”
The laugh became a second laugh.
Then a third.
I covered my mouth.
Martin stopped speaking.
Everyone looked at me.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
I was not sure whether I was apologizing to the room, Martin, Molly, or the entire concept of tomorrow.
“I need a minute.”
I stood.
My chair caught on the carpet and nearly tipped backward.
Nora reached for it.
“I’ve got it.”
I did not have it.
That was becoming clear.
I left the conference room while the three blues waited patiently for a decision.
Until six weeks earlier, I had been very good at my job.
Senior account director at Johnson & Calder, one of Chicago’s largest advertising agencies.
Twelve major clients.
Three junior account managers.
Two phones.
A calendar so tightly packed that lunch appeared as a recurring fifteen-minute appointment titled FOOD / POSSIBLE.
I liked the work.
Mostly.
I liked solving problems. I liked taking a room full of anxious people and convincing them that everything could be fixed with a plan, a deadline, and occasionally a revised budget.
I was calm in meetings.
Good with difficult clients.
Excellent at saying, “That’s an interesting perspective,” when what I meant was, “That idea should be buried somewhere no archaeologist will ever find it.”
I had been promoted twice in three years.
I had a corner office.
Technically, it was a corner because two glass walls met there. The view was mostly another building and a man on the twenty-second floor who ate yogurt every day at eleven-fifteen.
Still.
Success.
Molly called it my aquarium.
“You sit in a glass box and people tap on it when they want something,” she had said.
“That’s not how offices work.”
“That’s exactly how aquariums work.”
Molly was three years younger than me and professionally unimpressed by everything.
She taught third grade in Evanston, owned twelve houseplants with human names, and believed no adult should be trusted if they claimed not to like breakfast food.
She called me most days.
I answered when I could.
Which was less often than I told myself.
The afternoon before she died, I was preparing a presentation for a sportswear company whose new campaign had become “an emergency” because someone in regional marketing disliked the word movement.
Molly called at six-twenty.
Her name appeared on my screen while twelve people argued through a video conference.
I declined the call and typed:
Can I call you tomorrow? This week is trying to kill me.
Her reply came less than a minute later.
Rude. I was going to offer you free food. Tomorrow, then.
I added a heart.
Then I put the phone facedown and spent another two hours discussing whether movement sounded political.
At nine the next morning, my father called.
I ignored him because I was in a taxi and he never called before breakfast unless he needed help resetting a password.
He called again.
Then my mother.
Then my father.
By the fourth call, I knew something had happened.
I answered.
The rest of that morning existed only in pieces.
My mother saying Molly’s name.
A hospital corridor.
My father wearing two different socks.
A doctor with kind eyes explaining an aneurysm none of us had known existed.
The word sudden repeated by several people, as if repetition might make it easier to understand.
It did not.
Molly had been twenty-six.
Healthy.
Annoyingly energetic before coffee.
There was nothing I could have done.
Everyone told me that.
The doctor.
My parents.
The grief counselor.
Nora.
Martin, while standing three feet inside my office and looking terrified of touching anything.
I knew it was true.
Knowing and believing were apparently managed by different departments.
Now I stood in the women’s bathroom on the thirty-first floor of Johnson & Calder, gripping the edge of a marble sink while laughter escaped me in small, broken bursts.
The door opened.
Nora came in.
She locked it behind her.
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
It was the first time I had answered the question honestly in weeks.
She approached slowly.
Nora was twenty-six too.
I tried not to think about that.
She was relentlessly competent, capable of locating any document in under thirty seconds, and kept emergency granola bars in her desk. She had quietly cancelled three meetings the day I returned from bereavement leave without asking anyone’s permission.
She leaned against the sink beside me.
“I can reschedule the presentation.”
“I don’t think Modern Trust can wait.”
“Modern Trust has waited this long.”
I laughed again.
This one sounded almost normal.
Then I started crying.
Nora opened her arms.
I shook my head.
“I can’t.”
“You don’t have to.”
“No, I mean I physically can’t do this.”
“The meeting?”
I looked at our reflections in the mirror.
Mine wore concealer badly and had slept four hours.
Nora’s looked prepared to fight an insurance company.
“Any of it.”
She waited.
“I told Molly I’d call tomorrow.”
Nora’s face softened.
“I know.”
“I didn’t even know what she wanted.”
“Free food, apparently.”
A laugh broke through the crying.
Nora took that as permission and hugged me.
I stood stiffly for half a second before giving up and holding on.
“She probably wanted tacos,” I said against her shoulder.
“Probably.”
“There was a place near her apartment that did two-for-one on Tuesdays.”
“Then definitely tacos.”
“I missed my sister’s final offer of discounted tacos because twelve people couldn’t agree on the emotional implications of the word movement.”
Nora rubbed one hand between my shoulders.
“You didn’t know it was the last time.”
“I know.”
“You thought you had tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“Everybody does.”
That was not comforting.
It was true, though.
I stayed in the bathroom until the crying stopped.
Then I washed my face, removed what remained of my mascara, and returned to the conference room.
Martin had paused the presentation.
The clients looked uncomfortable.
Nobody liked grief in an office. It had no clear deliverables.
I sat down.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Personal issue.”
The insurance company’s chief marketing officer nodded sympathetically.
“Take all the time you need.”
Then he pointed at the screen.
“We do need a decision on blue by end of day.”
I stared at him.
Nora made a small warning sound beside me.
Something inside my head became very quiet.
“Of course,” I said.
I closed my laptop.
Then I stood.
Martin frowned.
“Ellie?”
“Ocean Confidence.”
The client blinked.
“You prefer that one?”
“No.”
I looked at the three rectangles.
“I genuinely do not care.”
That was the moment.
Not the hospital.
Not the funeral.
Not the six weeks of waking up and remembering all over again.
Three blue squares and a man asking for a decision by end of day.
“I’m leaving,” I said.
Martin looked at the clock.
“We’re scheduled until eleven-thirty.”
“No. I mean Johnson & Calder.”
The room went silent.
Nora looked at me.
The client looked at Martin.
Martin removed his glasses.
“You’re resigning?”
“Yes.”
“Right now?”
“Yes.”
“During a client presentation?”
I considered it.
“It does feel slightly unprofessional.”
Nora covered a cough with one hand.
Martin stood.
“Ellie, perhaps we should discuss this privately.”
“I’ve discussed enough things privately.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. It sounded good.”
The insurance executive raised one hand.
“For what it’s worth, I also prefer Ocean Confidence.”
“Congratulations,” I told him. “I hope it changes lives.”
Then I left.
I did not walk directly into a new and meaningful existence.
That would have been efficient.