Page 89 of Uncoachable

“She wouldn’t tell you,” I say evenly. “She never does. She was running a fever so high she couldn’t see straight.”

William exhales through his nose, turning back to the window. “She’s stubborn. She always has been. It’s a trait that serves her well in this industry.”

“She’s conditioned,” I reply. “There’s a massive difference.”

His eyes snap back to mine, sharp and cold. “Be careful, Moore.”

“I’ve seen it my whole life,” I say, stepping further into the room until only the desk separates us. “I know the difference between a person who is strong and a person who is afraid to be anything else. You’ve built a machine here. You’ve taught her that her value is tied entirely to her output, to her win-loss record, to how many hours of tape she can watch before her eyes start to bleed.”

I think of my own mother in that moment. I remember how she worked three jobs and never complained, not once, until the day her body literally gave out in the middle of a shift.

I remember the “strength” everyone praised at her funeral.

They called it a virtue; I called it a tragedy that didn’t have to happen.

“Strength is being able to say when you’re hurting,” I continue. “What Iveline is doing isn’t strength. It’s a slow-motion suicide by work. And she’s doing it because she thinks it’s the only way you’ll ever see her as an equal. But she’s a part of this team, William—not just an employee. We take care of our own. On the ice, we don’t let a teammate skate on a broken leg just to prove they’re tough, and I’m not going to let her do it in here.”

That earns me real irritation. The mask of the executive slips, revealing the defensive father underneath. “You’re crossing a line, Moore.”

“No,” I say. “I’m stepping into a space that no one else in this building seems willing to occupy. Everyone is so afraid of her, or so afraid of you, that they just watch her burn out.”

“You’re her player,” he snaps, his voice rising. “Not her parent. And certainly not her partner.”

“I know exactly what I am,” I say quietly. “And that’s why I can see it clearly.”

“See what?”

“The pressure,” I say. “The way she thinks that taking a single hour for herself equals failure. She shows up early, she leaves last, she takes every hit from the press and never complains. Do you have any idea what that does to a person over time?”

“She chose this career,” William snaps back, pacing the length of his rug. His fingers twitch at his side, curling once before he forces them flat against his thigh. “She wanted to work here. She fought for this position.”

“And you let her,” I reply. “Knowing exactly what it would cost her. You let her believe that she has to earn the right to exist in every room she walks into.”

“You think I wanted this to be hard for her?” He stops and looks at me, and for the first time, I see the age in his face.

“No,” I say. “I think you wanted it to make sense. You wanted to justify the way you live your own life by making sure she lived hers the same way.”

That lands.

I can see the hit register in the way his shoulders sag just a fraction. He studies me for a long time, the silence in the office becoming heavy and suffocating.

“You lost someone,” he says quietly.

“Yes.”

“Your mother.”

“She was exactly like Iveline,” I say, and for a second, I’m not in a high-rise office in Boston. I’m back in a cramped kitchen in the middle of winter, watching my mom try to hide a racking cough behind a dish towel so I wouldn’t worry.

“She thought that if she stopped moving, the world would stop spinning. She thought she was the only thing holding the roof up. By the time she finally sat down, it was too late. There was nothing left of her but the work she’d done.”

I look William dead in the eye. I want him to feel the weight of my mother’s ghost in this room.

“I watched a woman burn herself alive for the sake of ‘keeping it together.’ I’m not going to watch your daughter do the same thing just because you’re too proud to tell her she’s allowed to be human.”

“And you think that gives you the right to barge in here and tell me—”

“To tell you you’re failing her? Yeah, I think it does,” I interrupt.