And Sawyer thanked her for saying it clearly, and told her no. She did not argue. She asked him what he wanted. In a way that made clear the question was not tactical. And he told her he wanted the designation completed and recorded in the public file so it could not be reversed in a future planning cycle.
He wanted Warren Tate's name restored on the public record for every structure in the district that Brielle's survey confirmed his involvement in. He wanted the families who had sold on the basis of the suppressed assessment to receive an independent review of their transactions, and where the documentation supported it, a compensatory process managed by someone other than Mercer Development's legal team. Celeste said she could commit to the first three on behalf of the company with conditions her legal team would draft in good faith. And the fourth, she said, was not hers to give. That one was already done.
It was not a negotiation in any sense she had been trained to recognize, because Sawyer was not bargaining for advantage. He was describing a shape of outcome that had nothing to do with what the house would sell for, and everything to do with what it would mean when all of this was over. Piper appeared at the end of the hallway, brought by a neighbor who had watched her that morning, and asked her father whether they had to move, and Sawyer told her no. Not yet. Possibly not ever, because the house needed someone to stay in it and care for it the way it had been cared for once and forgotten, and now remembered again.