Chapter Twenty-Five — Wade
A month after the formal findings, Nora ran the compound's first quarterly financial review.
She did it in the meeting room over two days, working through Darren's records with the same focused methodology she'd brought to everything, and at the end of it she sat across from me and said: Your books are cleaner than any compound operation I've seen documented in any federal case file.
I said: That's because Darren doesn't cut corners.
She said: It's because the compound operates with the understanding that what you do should be what you're willing to show. She paused. Not everyone operates that way.
I know.
She wrote something on the legal pad. The reconciliation gap is closed, she said.
The proposal I gave Darren is implemented and the quarterly process is now complete.
She looked at the notes. There are two places where the documentation could be more explicit about the basis for certain operational decisions.
Not problems. Just places where the record could be fuller.
I'll tell Kale, I said.
She nodded. She set the pen down. That's my report.
I looked at her across the table, this woman who had been sitting across from me in this room for two months now, first as an investigator and then as a consultant and now as the compound's forensic financial reviewer and also as the person who had told me the numbers came out clean and meant it in every direction the statement could possibly mean.
Good report, I said.
She almost smiled. Thank you.
She closed the legal pad.
At the kitchen table that evening Kale listened to my summary of the review findings, made notes on his legal pad, and said: The reconciliation gap.
Closed, I said. Nora's proposal addressed it completely.
He wrote something. Then: She does good work.
Yes.
He looked at his legal pad. She's building a practice out of here, he said. The Sacramento client, the compound, the other remote work. It's a real professional structure.
It is.
He said: That's a choice she's made. Not a temporary arrangement. A structure.
I know.
He set the pen down and looked at me with the expression he used when he was going to say something he'd been thinking about for a while.
He said: You've been patient. For a long time and in multiple directions simultaneously. I want to acknowledge that.
I received it without performing anything around it.
He said: It's paying out correctly.
I know, I said.
He picked up the pen. He went back to his notes.
That was Kale on the subject of the thing between Nora and me. Complete and sufficient. The compound president's version of saying he saw it and thought it was right.
The following Saturday morning I found her on the south step when I came back from the early perimeter check.
She was sitting with coffee and her running clothes still on, back from her morning run, looking at the valley with the quality she had when she'd been thinking about something on the run and hadn't finished thinking it yet.
I got coffee and sat down beside her.
She said: I talked to my mother last night.
I waited.
She said: She wanted to know where I was living. I've been vague about it for the past month. I told her the Central Valley and she asked where specifically and I told her I was staying at a compound and she was quiet for a moment and then she said: are you safe.
I looked at her.
She said: I told her yes. I told her I was safer here than I'd been in three years. She was quiet again and then she said: is there someone there. And I said yes.
She held her coffee.
I didn't tell her specifics, she said. I didn't try to explain the compound or the case or any of it. I just told her I was somewhere real and there was someone real and I was alright. More than alright.
I said: How did she take that.
She said: She cried a little. She's been worried about me since Marcus. She knew something had closed down after that even though I never explained it. She just knew. She paused. She said she wanted to meet you eventually.
I looked at the valley. Eventually is a real timeline, I said.
She looked at me. Yes. It is.
I held that. The specific weight of a word like eventually when it came from a woman who had been precise about everything she said for the entire time I'd known her. Eventually meant she was thinking in terms of continuing from here, not in terms of where she was right now.
I said: I'd like to meet her.
She looked at me.
When it's right, I said. When eventually arrives. I'd like to meet her.
She held my eyes for a long moment.
Then she said: She's going to ask you what you do.
I said: I'll tell her. Gate security and eastern approach rotation and compound operations. No softening.
She nodded. She might not know what that means.
She'll figure it out, I said.
Nora almost smiled. She will, she said. She's like me. She follows things until they make sense.
I looked at her. She raised you well then.
Nora was quiet for a moment. She tried to, she said. I was difficult to raise. I needed everything to be accurate or I didn't trust it.
I said: That sounds familiar.
She looked at me. It was difficult at twelve, she said. It's more useful at thirty.
I laughed. It came out genuine and she looked at me with the expression she had when she was surprised by something and then decided to be pleased by it instead.
You don't laugh easily, she said.
No, I said.
She looked at the valley. Neither do I.
We sat on the south step in the morning with our coffee and the valley doing what it always did at this hour and I thought about mothers who asked if their daughters were safe and daughters who told them yes, more than alright, and I thought about eventually as a timeline and what it contained.
It contained a lot.
I was glad of every bit of it.