She parked in front of the house and sat in the car longer than she intended. She had prepared on the drive over what she was going to say. A version of herself that was controlled and strategic had drafted the opening. She would acknowledge the error. She would reference the report.
She would offer to reinstate him at a higher grade with a salary adjustment. It was clean. It was professional. It was the way she handled problems. She got out of the car.
The truck was in the driveway, the same one she'd registered in his employee file under vehicle information for parking permits. She could hear faintly something metallic. She walked up the driveway and around to where the truck's hood was raised, and Caleb Rowan was underneath it with a socket wrench and a work light clamped to the engine compartment. At the edge of the driveway, on an overturned plastic crate that served as a makeshift chair, a small girl was doing homework. She had her father's dark coloring and a pair of braids that sat slightly uneven on either side of her head.
She looked up at Sloan with the frank curiosity of a child who hasn't yet learned to disguise it. "Hi," the girl said. "Hi," Sloan said. Caleb heard the voice and came out from under the hood. He looked at Sloan for a moment without speaking.
He had changed out of his workclo. There was still a line of grease along the back of one hand that soap hadn't gotten completely. Miss Whitmore," he said. He didn't seem surprised exactly. He didn't seem pleased either.
He looked at her the way a person looks at something they were expecting eventually, but had hoped would take longer to arrive. "I read the report," Sloan said. "Okay, the full report and your employment file." She looked at him. "All 18 years of it, something passed through his expression. Not satisfaction, not vindication, more like tiredness, like a man who'd known what was in that file for a very long time and hadn't needed anyone else to read it to understand what it meant.
Okay, he said again. I want to offer you your position back, Sloan said. Full reinstatement with a great adjustment. And no, Caleb said the word came out before she finished the sentence. Not with heat, just flat and certain.
Sloan stopped. This was not how it went when she offered things. "Mr. Rowan, Caleb," she blinked. "Caleb, I understand you're angry. I'm not angry about the firing," he said.