CHAPTER 9 – NELLIE
The coordinates didn’t match, and it was driving Nellie absolutely crazy. She pressed her finger to the county map, then to her field notebook, then back to the map, and huffed “no!” in the quiet of the cottage kitchen like it would change anything.
She’d been sitting with this dilemma since four-thirty, ankle propped on the second chair, three pages of the county survey pinned flat under her coffee mug and a rock from the porch.
The coffee was exceptional. A fact which likely had something to do with the very fancy and very expensive beans she’d bought, just in case she ever felt like offering a certain haughty CEO a hot drink.
The last fifteen minutes of yesterday’s hike were not, for the record, being thought about.
The fact that Nellie had woken at four a.m. with a very accurate memory of Sawyer Alburn’s hand against her back was fully attributable to the kind of random neural noise that produced vivid recall of minor events and had nothing whatsoever to do with the cedar-and-something-clean smell of that impractical quarter-zip. Nothing at all.
Maps had her full attention right now. Maps and nothing but maps.
She returned to the coordinate discrepancy and held the focus for approximately forty seconds before her brain, unbidden and apparently uninterested in cooperating, supplied the specific angle at which Sawyer had tipped her head to check Nellie’s footing on the last switchback.
Nellie wrote “second drainage bearing: 047° NE” in her notebook in letters slightly larger than necessary and underlined it twice, which helped a little to convince herself that she was actually being productive.
The coordinates she’d recorded at the second drainage point on Wednesday put water running northeast from Eleanor’s root system in a direction the county had never documented.
Not the main stream—she had that, it was logged and arguing with Gina’s access restrictions quite productively—but a second channel.
Secondary drainage, upslope origin, running into territory she hadn’t fully surveyed yet.
Territory that was, by an uncomfortable margin, inside the northern sector.
She charted the bearing in her notebook until the light through the window went from gray to gold, filled two more pages of annotations, then stood—carefully, testing her ankle—and made toast and an egg. All the while, she was haunted by the distinct sense that she was circling something important.
A knock came at ten past seven.
Not Sawyer Alburn, much to Nellie Fuller’s dismay, B ut at least it wasn’t Gina either.
This was a delivery driver in a branded uniform, holding a parcel roughly the size of a shoebox, scanner extended for her signature.
“Courtesy of Alburn Systems,” she said.
Nellie squinted at the return label as she retreated inside, wondering if Gina Marsh had come up with some other nefarious way to try and ruin her day. Alas, she had no hazmat suit to hand in case he had decided to resort to biological warfare.
She sat back down at the table and gingerly opened the box.
What greeted her instead was far more unexpected: a pharmaceutical-grade ice pack—the reusable flexible-gel kind that actually conformed to the joint rather than the flimsy disposable sort that went lukewarm in eleven minutes—a bottle of ibuprofen, and, wrapped in white tissue paper so neatly folded it looked like Christmas had come early, a cookbook.
La Cucina Italiana. Hardback, illustrated, heavy.
There was no note.
Nellie sat with it in both hands and then did something she was faintly embarrassed about. She hastily flicked to the inside cover, searching for some sort of heartfelt inscription, but there was nothing, just the clean white page and the faint smell of new binding.
She put it back down with a sigh.
Then she called Paloma.
“I think she just sent me a cookbook,” she said, without preamble.
For a long moment there was nothing but the sound of slow chewing coming through the phone. “Who sent you a cookbook?”
“Who do you think?”
Then came an even longer pause, and Nellie could hear, very clearly, the quality of Paloma’s silence that meant she was making a face. “Sawyer Alburn sent you a cookbook?”
“And an ice pack. And ibuprofen.”
“Hm.” Paloma took another bite of something that sounded like very chewy toast, probably sourdough. “Okay, the ice pack and the ibuprofen are reasonable. That’s someone responding to an injury. Liability, you could argue.”
“You could.”
“The cookbook is not a liability thing.”
“No,” Nellie agreed. “It is not.”
“Nellie.” This was Paloma’s having-considered-from-multiple-angles voice. “What if she’s like… pursuing you?”
“She’s not—”
“She drove forty-five minutes to deliver diesel. She canceled meetings to walk with you through the forest. And now she’s sending weird gifts—”
“I don’t think we should read that deep into it.” Nellie cut her friend off before she started making too much sense.
“I’m not saying she has feelings. I’m saying she’s behaving like someone who has feelings, and for someone like Sawyer Alburn that may be more alarming.
” Nellie heard another crunch and more chewing, and she knew that her best friend was digesting more than just bread.
“I think—and I’m saying this out of genuine love for you—you need to be careful.
She could be trying to get close to you just so she can sabotage your progress.
Her head of development is already trying to wall off your survey. ”
“I know that.”
“Do you? Because you said it in the voice you use when you know a thing intellectually and you’re choosing to feel something else about it anyway.”
Nellie didn’t answer immediately. The cookbook sat on the table beside her coordinate annotations, looking unreasonably at home there, which was its own problem.
“I’ll be careful,” she sighed.
“Uh-huh.” Paloma grunted around a mouthful of food. “Ice the ankle.”
“I have a pharmaceutical-grade ice pack.”
“Of course you do.” She slurped at whatever breakfast beverage was accompanying her toast. “Have there been any other hints she might be trying to flirt with you or something?”
“Nope,” Nellie said, immediately.
“Okay,” Paloma said, in a tone that communicated she did not believe this and was choosing, as a mercy, not to push it. “I have to head to work. Don’t let yourself be seduced while I’m not there to slap some sense into you.”
“Mhm. Bye.”
Don’t let yourself be seduced.
Nellie repeated this mantra to herself twenty times before her conscience gave in.
She emailed Sawyer’s office—a professional email, written in five minutes, read back fifty times to confirm it contained no hint of swooning
Nellie Fuller: Thank you for the package. The ice pack is very useful. I appreciate the thought.
She hit send and went back to her maps.
A reply arrived in under four minutes.
Sawyer Alburn: The cookbook was Martha’s idea. She’s convinced that your penchant for van-life means you only eat food from a packet.
Nellie read it three times but detected no seduction. She was certain by this point that Paloma had been barking up entirely the wrong tree. The realization was inexplicably disappointing.
So the ice pack was yours? she typed. The email was sent before her brain caught up with what she’d just done.
“Ah, fuck!” She pushed her chair away from the table and began to pace across the kitchen, raking her fingers through her already disheveled hair. “Don’t beg her to flirt with you, you sad little loser!”
The ping of a reply had her diving back into the chair with such enthusiasm she almost toppled it.
Sawyer Alburn: Don’t read into it. You sprained your ankle on company property. Basic liability.
Nellie Fuller: Sure. Very sensible. I promise not to sue.
Sawyer Albun: I appreciate it. The press would have a field day if they caught word you’d suffered a mysterious injury after I’d followed you into the woods.
Nellie Fuller: Can’t have that now, can we? Alright, no more injuries and I promise not to starve to death on your property either. Tell Martha thank you for the book.
Sawyer Alburn: Tell her yourself. Her email is on the Alburn Systems website.
Nellie Fuller: I prefer this channel. Better response time.
The reply took slightly longer this time—long enough that Nellie refilled her coffee, came back, and it still hadn’t arrived, and then it did.
Sawyer Alburn: I wouldn’t count on it. I’m a very busy person.
Nellie Fuller: Of course. Very busy doing billionaire stuff. Are you off to the golf course or the health spa this afternoon?
Sawyer Alburn: I’m going to stop responding now.
Nellie Fuller: Okay.
She chuckled to herself and took a long sip of cold coffee. Barely a minute passed before another response popped up on her screen.
Sawyer Alburn: How’s the ankle? Are you in need of a health spa?
Nellie dropped her head back and cackled at the ceiling.
She typed back: Better. The ibuprofen is earning its keep.
Sawyer’s response did not come in for a long while. More than likely she was on the phone or in a meeting or doing some other important thing that CEOs have to do to grow their billions into more billions.
Still, Nellie couldn’t shake the hope that Sawyer was also staring at her screen and laughing to herself. Perhaps she was trying to find the perfect words that could be read as flirting while maintaining the plausible deniability of being deadpan.
Because that’s what this was, right? They were flirting? Nellie was sure of it.
Except, the more time that passed, the less sure she was.
Until she had read and re-read the thread ten times over and convinced herself that she had sunk entirely into the pits of delusion.
Sawyer Alburn was not flirting with her.
Sawyer Alburn was always deadpan and emotionless and said as few words as possible because she likely didn’t consider the conversation worth the effort.