Gold Digger – Story 5 – THE RESEARCH

Tomorrow is dinner with Richard.

Which means tonight is research.

And before anybody starts judging me, I would like the record to show that researching a man before agreeing to dinner is called being responsible.

Researching his late wife at 1:14 in the morning while eating crackers over your laptop is called something else.

Unfortunately that’s the version of responsible I was practicing.

Let me back up.

The legitimate research took forty minutes and it was fine. Excellent, actually. Richard Ashworth, 51, two boards, one foundation, a profile in something financial from 2019 where he said maybe six sentences and somehow still managed to sound like the most considered person in the room.

I added three columns to the spreadsheet.

I felt very professional.

Then I found a photo.

Not of Richard. Well – Richard was in it. But it was the kind of photo where your eye goes somewhere else first.

His wife.

Eleanor. I found her name in a charity gala listing from four years ago. Eleanor Ashworth, patron. There was one photo – the kind taken at events like that, slightly overexposed, everyone slightly mid-laugh. She was standing next to Richard with her hand on his arm and she was not looking at the camera.

She was looking at him.

Like she found him privately funny.

Like she knew something about him that the room didn’t.

I ate a cracker.

I looked at that photo for longer than was strictly necessary for research purposes.

Here’s the thing about Richard that I had not fully accounted for in the spreadsheet.

He was someone’s person.

Not in the vague, everyone-has-a-person way. In the specific way – the way where you can see it in a slightly overexposed photo from four years ago. The way where a woman who is clearly remarkable is looking at him like he’s the most interesting thing in the room and he probably doesn’t know she’s doing it.

I closed that tab.

Opened it again.

Closed it.

Ate another cracker.

The 2019 profile had one quote I kept coming back to. Someone had asked him what he looked for in a board candidate and he’d said –

Someone who is paying attention when they think nobody is watching.

I read that four times.

Then I opened a new column in the spreadsheet and typed: paying attention. to what specifically. find out.

Then I sat there at 1:14am in my kitchen with cracker crumbs on my laptop and I thought about a man who notices things and a woman in a photo who looked at him like she knew exactly what she had.

I closed the laptop.

Turned off the kitchen light.

Looked at the dress hanging on the wardrobe.

Thought about Richard.

Thought about Eleanor.

Thought about the fact that some people get chosen once and spend the rest of their life being that kind of person.

Then, completely unrelated to any of that, I thought about the key hook by D’s door.

Which was annoying.

I went to bed.

Spreadsheet status: Richard → dinner: tomorrow. research: complete. unexpected finding: he was loved and he knew how to be. filed under: did not budget for this.

Noah → pending.

D → [row does not exist]

Research objective: Richard. actual research subject: apparently his dead wife. not ideal. – Mila