“Yes,” she said. “Which is why I’m telling you directly what I want in exchange for it.”
“Tell me.”
“Everything I said above,” she said. “And honesty. When things are happening that I should know about, you tell me. Not the complete operational picture — I understand there are things I don’t need to know. But the things that affect my ability to do this work, or that create risks I should be aware of, you tell me.”
“That’s a reasonable condition,” he said.
“It’s not a negotiating position,” she said. “It’s a requirement.”
“I understand the difference,” he said.
She looked at the window.
The lake was visible today — a blue line beyond the buildings, calm in the June afternoon.
“There’s one more thing,” she said.
“Tell me.”
“I’m not going to make myself small in this building,” she said. “I did that for four years. It was a strategy. It was the right strategy for the situation I was in. It’s not the right strategy now.”
“No,” he said. “It isn’t.”
“Which means people will have opinions.”
“People have opinions about everything,” he said. “That’s not something I can stop.”
“I’m not asking you to stop it,” she said. “I’m telling you that I won’t accommodate it.”
“Good,” he said.
She stood.
“I’m going back to work,” she said. “I have a meeting with the access control team at three.”
He stood too.
“Nora,” he said.
She stopped.
He came around the desk.
He stopped close enough that the conversation became something slightly different from what it had been.
“I want to say something,” he said.
“Say it.”
“I’m glad you found the discrepancy,” he said. “Not because of the money. Because it brought you to this floor.”
She looked at him.
“That’s a strange way to be grateful,” she said.
“It’s honest,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “That’s why I’m not arguing with it.”
He looked at her carefully.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Ask.”
“The morning you left,” he said. “At the conference. Before I woke up.”
“Yes.”
“Were you afraid?”
She thought about this honestly.
“I was afraid of what it meant if I stayed,” she said. “And I didn’t know how to calculate the risk accurately. So I removed myself from the calculation.”
“You’ve been doing that for seven months,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Is that still the plan?”
She looked at him.
“No,” she said.
He put out his hand.
Not reaching for her. Just available.
She looked at it.
Then she put her hand in his.
“The meeting is at three,” she said.
“I’ll walk you back,” he said.