She's in the side room, on the phone, and I hear her register before I hear her words — professional, careful, managing something. I wait in the lobby.
"Calgary," she says when she sees me.
"Business?"
"Offer." She sits in one of Maple's wingback chairs. "Regional director position. Prairie and interior BC files. Staff, budget, stability."
I absorb this.
The lobby is warm. Maple runs the sconces on warm whenever it's grey outside, and today it's grey, the tail end of the storm system still sitting over the valley. I've been in this lobby a dozen times, and I've never stood in the doorway thinking about what I was about to say before I said it.
I know what the careful version looks like. I've given it before —this is your decision, I support whatever you choose— and I've meant it, and it was right, and it protected everyone, including me. The careful version is not dishonest. It's just incomplete.
"I'm not going to pretend I want you to go," I say.
She looks up.
"You can factor it in or not. That's yours." I stay in the doorway. "But I'm not giving you the careful version."
She looks at me for a long time. The light in here is doing something to her eyes — somewhere between green and gold, the hazel shifting the way it does when she's working something out.
"I haven't decided," she says.
"Okay," I say and leave it at that.
It takes all my strength to get through the rest of the day. I wasn’t looking for love, but now that I’ve found her, there is no way I’m letting her go.
six
Willa
IturndowntheCalgary offer.
I call Ian at nine and tell him I've thought carefully and I'm declining. He asks if anything could change my mind — location, scope, title. I tell him the location is the primary factor.
I sit with the phone for a minute after.
Then I open my laptop and file the incorporation documents for Frost Independent Adjusting, Silver Ridge, British Columbia. The rural claims market in interior BC is underserved in ways that kept me awake at the Calgary firm for two years before I left. I have more than enough work. I have the right work.
I call Atlas.
"I didn't take the Calgary job," I say.
"Okay," he says, unreadable.
"I thought you'd want to know."
"I wanted to know," he says. "Can you be at the McDougall property at three?"
I blink. "The McDougall property?”
"Last job from the storm cleanup. I'm putting the ridge cap on today. I want you there."
Three weeks of Atlas McKay have taught me that when he saysI want you therewithout explanation, something is happening that he's decided to show rather than tell. "I'll be there at three," I say.
The McDougall bungalow is small and tidy, the garden beds covered in burlap, the damaged porch overhang still doing its job of holding up a set of wind chimes. The breeze moves them when I pull up — faint and bright. George can hear them from his chair.
Atlas is on the roof.
