“I never wanted your money,” she said.
She looked at his face and held his gaze for a beat, not to hurt him, but because there was something she needed to finish saying and she wanted to say it looking at him directly.
“And I never needed your pity.”
She turned away. She picked up her bag from the floor. She straightened her sweater.
Alexander fell in beside her as she moved toward the door, and they walked out together—her father and her—through the conference room door and into the wide, carpeted corridor, and the door swung shut behind them on its pneumatic hinge with a soft, decisive click.
In the corridor, they walked side by side toward the elevators, and the building moved around them—the muted conversations of other offices, the chime of an elevator arriving on another floor, the faint rhythm of rain against the outer walls. Emily exhaled once, slowly, feeling the muscles in her shoulders release a tension she had been carrying for so long she had stopped noticing it.
Alexander pressed the elevator call button.