“Come back to the city,” Paloma urged.
“No.”
“Just for a week. Stay with me.”
“I’ll come back eventually. I just—” Nellie tilted her head back. The sky above the mountains was the blue that only happened at this altitude, too saturated to be real, like someone had turned the contrast up. “I need this to be where I am right now. If I look at a skyscraper, I’ll scream. That’s not hyperbole, Pal, I’ll genuinely?—”
She almost jumped out of her seat when her phone rang. Paloma fell back into the dirt.
Nellie had turned it back on this morning, which was either progress or a mistake; the jury was still out. She looked at the screen.
Martha Chen.
Nellie’s first reaction was a small, involuntary yelp. Her second was curiosity, because she had seen dozens of missed calls from Sawyer, but not once had the CEO asked her assistant to reach out.
“It’s Sawyer’s assistant.”
Nellie and Paloma simply stared at the phone. It kept ringing.
The thing was, Martha wasn’t Sawyer. Martha calling wasn’t Sawyer calling, which meant it also wasn’t the kind of minefield that picking up Sawyer’s calls had seemed, that Nellie had been avoiding, that she was not ready for, not yet, maybe not for a long time. But Martha was different. She felt safer, more neutral maybe.
Nellie answered the call. “Hi, Martha.”
“Nellie. I’m sorry to call out of the blue. I thought you should know what’s happening at the company.”
Nellie sat forward in the camp chair. Beside her, Paloma took a seat on the rock and leaned in to eavesdrop.
“What could possibly be happening that has anything to do with me?”
“Sawyer called a board meeting this morning and announced that Alburn Systems is changing its entire development strategy.” Martha rattled off the details in quick succession, as if she was nervous she might not have much time to talk undisturbed. “Renewable energy focused. A full environmental audit of the company’s existing footprint. She’s pulling projects that don’t align with the new vision.”
Nellie said nothing. She was not sure she was capable of saying anything. She simply gaped.
“Nellie?”
“I’m here. I just… I didn’t… She didn’t tell me she was even thinking any of this.”
“No.” Martha sighed. “None of us knew what she was planning. She’s been absent from the office.”
Nellie raised her eyebrows at that but decided it wasn’t the time to dwell on it.
“Gina Marsh disagreed with the direction. Strongly. She called for a vote of no confidence in her leadership.”
“She what?”
“The vote hasn’t happened yet. It can’t proceed until the other board members agree to it even going to the floor. That’s where things stand right now, as of this afternoon.”
Scrubbing her free hand over her face, Nellie tried to practice some meditative breathing. “Martha, why are you telling me this?”
“Because I’ve worked for Sawyer for almost eleven years, and I have never once seen her walk into a board meeting without knowing exactly what she was going to say and exactly how the room was going to receive it. She knew this morning what she was walking into. I thought you should know that she did it anyway, and I’m sure both of us have an idea as to why.”
They wrapped up the call, and. Nellie lowered the phone slowly to her knee.
“What did she say?” Paloma had her chin in both hands, having been watching one side of the entire exchange with rapt attention.
“Sawyer is transitioning Alburn Systems toward entirely renewable energies.”
“Well, that’s?—”
