She'd remembered it without trying. Camille did not answer immediately. She looked at the folder in his hands. She looked at the lobby around them, the people moving through it, the building she had walked into 6 days a week for 4 years, the company her father had handed her in the worst possible circumstances, and that she had refused to let fail. No, she said finally.
I don't think I do. She said it the way she said most things directly without softening. But it cost something, and she didn't try to hide that it did. Nolan nodded once. "Then I have to decline the offer," he said.
She looked at him. "Not because I don't want the role," he said. "The role is right. The company is interesting. The work is exactly what I'm good at.
He set the folder down on the window ledge beside him. But if I take a VP position at a company run by someone I'm thinking about the way I'm thinking about you, we'll both spend the next year managing a dynamic that isn't about operations at all. And you don't need that and neither do I. Camille stared at him. You're turning down the position.
I'm turning down the position because of because I'd rather figure out the other thing first, he said without a reporting structure in the way. She looked at him for a long moment. He expected her to push back. She was, in his experience, someone who pushed back. She was also someone who, beneath the precision and the careful control, was exceptionally good at recognizing when an argument was sound.
You realize, she said, that this is the second time you've said exactly the wrong thing to me in the least convenient possible way. I know. And the second time, I can't actually argue with it. I know that, too. Something in her expression moved.
Not the almost smile this time, but something closer to it. Something she let happen rather than suppressed. What will you do instead? She asked. There's independent consulting work in Colorado, he said.
I've had two inquiries in the last month. It'll build slower than a VP salary. But he picked up the folder and held it out to her. I'm not interested in fast anymore. She took the folder, held it.
Portland? She asked. I'm not going to Portland, he said. She looked at him for one more moment. Then she tucked the folder under her arm and walked toward the door, and he thought that was the end of it, a clean conclusion to the strangest professional encounter of his career.
And then they would both go on with their respective lives and occasionally run into each other on Juniper Crest Lane and be perfectly polite about everything. She stopped at the door. Nolan, he looked up. You should know, she said, that I removed myself from your hiring process before the photograph, before Victor, before any of it. She said it without drama, just information.
Not because I thought you'd done something wrong, because you hadn't. She pushed the door open. I thought you should know that. She left. Nolan stood in the lobby for a moment.
Then he picked up his jacket from the chair beside him and walked out into the January cold and decided that he would buy a couch this week, something he intended keep. 6 weeks later, on a Thursday morning, his phone rang. He was at his desk working through a logistics analysis for a Denver area distribution company that had hired him on a project basis. His second active client since January. The work was quieter than VP-level operations management.
It was also, he had discovered, genuinely satisfying in a way that had nothing to do with title or compensation, the satisfaction of a problem you've chosen rather than inherited. He answered. "It's Camille. "I know," he said. "I have your number.
A brief pause. "Right. Another pause, shorter than the first, and in it, he could hear something unfamiliar in her voice. Not uncertainty exactly, but the careful approach of someone navigating terrain they don't usually cover. "I wanted to ask you something.
"Okay. Would you want to get coffee with me? He leaned back in his chair. Is this a second interview? He asked.
The pause this time was different. Warmer almost. No, she said. This time I'm the one who's worried about being turned down. He looked out his window at the January street which had finally decided to snow.
It was coming down steadily, the soft kind that made the neighborhood quiet. There's a place on Colfax, he said. They open at 8. I can be there at 8:15. That's tomorrow.
Yes, that works, she said. And then before she hung up, Nolan, yeah, thank you for not using Judith's messages. A beat. I know you had them. I know what they would have proven, he said.
She made me pecan cookies. I know. She makes them for people she likes. Another pause. She doesn't like very many people.
I got that impression, he said. She hung up. He sat at his desk for a moment, looking at the snow, and then he turned back to his work. Christmas came back around the way it always does, faster than expected, quieter than it should be at first, and then suddenly everywhere once. The table at 1847 Juniper Crest Lane was longer this year.
Judith had added a leaf to the middle, which she said she'd been meaning to do for 2 years, and had simply required sufficient motivation. There were 10 place settings this time. She had invited a young woman from the Vantage Harbor accounting team who had moved to Denver from Phoenix in September and had no family within a reasonable drive. She had invited the couple who'd moved into the corner house in October, who turned out to be exactly the kind of people Judith approved of, which meant they were useful and didn't talk too much about themselves. Graham and Paige arrived with Laya, who was now 10, and had strong opinions about the trivia game format, and had prepared a revised question set she intended to deploy after dinner.