Chapter 20 #2
My dad drove in silence past North Bend.
I rested my head against the glass. Every seam in the asphalt jolted my shoulder; the painkiller left my mouth tasting of chalk.
On the radio, a sports host ran through the semifinal recap and announced that Callahan was questionable for the championship match.
Gene reached out and snapped the radio off.
“They already put out the release saying I’m out,” I said.
“Fella didn't get the memo.”
“His job depends on talking without getting the memo.”
My father made a low sound in his throat that might have been a laugh. That was all we said until Yakima.
The orchard was in the middle of summer pruning.
Small green apples weighed down the branches; irrigation tapped against the dry dirt, and the air smelled of hot pine.
Joanne came out of the farmhouse before the truck had fully stopped, cupped my face in both her hands, and declared that I looked entirely too thin. I didn't argue with any of it.
Gene took me out to the work shed after lunch. On the workbench sat a stack of wooden nursery tags, a spool of thin floral wire, and a jar of white marking paint.
“You can write,” he said.
“With my right hand.”
“That’s why I put your chair on the right side.”
He handed me a marker. The tags were for new grafts: variety, row, date. Simple work that didn't require strength and could have been printed out in an hour. Gene pulled the stool across from mine and started cutting lengths of wire with pliers.
We worked without speaking. The overhead fan clicked every time the blades rotated. Outside, a ladder clattered against the side of a trailer.
I inked twenty tags before I asked:
“Did Mom tell you about Kate?”
Gene kept his eyes on the wire.
“She said she wasn't in Seattle with you anymore.”
Joanne didn't know whether Kate lived in Seattle; she just knew she wasn't with me. It was a distinction only my mother would draw.
“We broke up,” I said.
“She end it?”
“She asked for space.”
I laid the marker on the workbench.
“I said things I shouldn't have. So did she. Then she asked for space, and I let her go.”
Gene snipped another length of wire.
“You’re good at that.”
“Letting people go?”
“Doing what you think they expect and calling it care.”
The words stiffened my spine.
“I don't need another performance review, Dad.”
“No.” My father set the pliers on the wood. “You need me to finish one I started thirty years ago.”
The fan clicked overhead. Gene took off his cap and ran a hand through his flattened gray hair.
“I taught you that as long as you were useful, you had a place,” he said. “Lifting crates. Playing through pain. Keeping everyone calm. When you did something right, I handed you more work. When you got hurt, I asked when you’d be back on the field.”
My throat closed tight around a reply that refused to come.
Gene looked at the neat row of completed tags.
“I was proud of you,” he said. “Always was. I should've said it before you ever won anything.”
The marker rolled an inch toward my wrist, and I stopped it with two fingers.
My dad pulled his cap back on. The movement was uncharacteristically awkward; the brim ended up tilted slightly too high.
“I don't know what to do with that right now,” I said.
“Nothing. It’s not an assignment.”
A short laugh broke out of me, and I had to turn my head toward the open shed door. The afternoon sun beat down on the nearest row. An irrigation hose vibrated with every pulse of the pump.
“Kate said I need to be indispensable to feel loved,” I said.
Gene looked down at his own hands.
“I taught you to speak that language.”
“I kept speaking it.”
“Yeah.”
He didn't offer me absolution. I was grateful he didn't try.
“When she asked for space, I thought respecting her meant disappearing,” I said. “I packed up her things. Stacked them together so they’d be easy to carry out.”
“Did you tell her you didn't want her to go?”
“No.”
“Did you tell her what you wanted?”
“I offered to turn down a contract. I mapped out flights. Built calendar schedules.”
Gene picked up a blank wooden tag and turned it between his fingers.
“That’s not saying what you want. That’s taking inventory.”
The line stung worse than the doctor probing my shoulder.
“I can respect that she needs to leave and still tell her I want her to stay,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“I can be there without turning myself into the solution.”
My father took a long time to answer.
“If she lets you.”
There was no comforting guarantee tucked inside those words. Kate could choose New York, she could choose distance, or she could choose a life that didn't include me. Understanding my own defect didn't automatically earn me a second chance.
I picked up the marker and inked another variety into the wood.
“I’m not going to call her yet.”
“Didn't tell you to.”
“I know.”
Gene nudged the jar of paint closer so I wouldn't have to reach across the table with my bad shoulder.
For the first time, I didn't mistake it for an order.
* * *
The selection committee approved my proposal at eleven forty-six on Tuesday morning.
Diane delivered the news in a conference room with a table entirely too long for two people.
She had laid out a copy of my plan in front of each empty chair: eight initial hires, three clinics opened in phase one, and no referral pathway announced before testing a complete referral.
The glass threw back a reflection of clear sky over downtown Seattle.
“The assignment is yours if you want it,” she said.
My fingertips remained resting on the cardstock cover.
“And Sasha?”
“She’ll continue leading Integrations. The committee requested her seat on the transition advisory council, and she accepted.”
“Is she okay?”
Diane tilted her head slightly.
“She’s disappointed. She’s also a competent adult who knows how to lose a selection without turning into a threat.”
I looked up at her.
“Did you just attempt a joke?”
“Do not document it in the minutes.”
Joy hit as a sudden, physical heat beneath my breastbone. I’d won. My proposal. My structure. For a few seconds, no city existed beyond the one I’d built across those pages.
Diane slid a single printed memo across the wood.
“You have until Wednesday the fifteenth to accept. I want you to use the time.”
The date sat in the center of the page.
“I don't need nine days,” I said.
“I didn't ask how long it takes you to sign your name. I told you how much time you have to decide.”
I closed the folder before my fingers could start squaring the edges of the paperwork.
“Noted.”
Priya tracked me down twenty minutes later in the communal break room. She’d bought a bottle of nonalcoholic sparkling wine and two paper cups. The cork came out with significantly less dignity than noise.
“To the future tyrant of six clinics,” she said.
“Three in phase one.”
“What a relief. Tyranny on a phased rollout.”
We toasted. The drink was lukewarm and aggressively sweet. Sasha appeared in the break room doorway holding her tea. For half a second, neither of us seemed certain who should speak first.
“Congratulations,” Sasha said.
“Thank you.”
“Your plan was better.”
“By a very thin margin.”
Sasha took a sip from her mug.
“Don't ruin it by performing humility. It’s deeply unsettling.”
She extended her right hand. I took it. Her grip was firm, but her eyes looked bruised with exhaustion.
“I’m going to need you on the transition council,” I said.
“I know. I’ve already asked to be paid for every time I have to tell you a deadline is absurd.”
“The budget wouldn't survive.”
The corner of her mouth ticked up just enough to count. Then she turned and walked back toward the elevators.
Priya waited until the sound of Sasha's heels faded down the corridor.
“Now you can tell me why you look like you’re about to get a ticket.”
I watched the carbonation cling to the wax lining of my paper cup.
“Cole and I split up.”
Priya set her cup flat on the quartz counter.
“When?”
“The night before the final proposals were due.”
“And you presented as if you weren't being held together with duct tape.”
“I wasn't going to forfeit this role,” I said.
“I didn't say you should've forfeited it.”
The hiss of the espresso machine filled the quiet between us. I gave her the condensed version: the dates, the flights, the fight. I didn't repeat every sentence. Only the two that still lived under my skin: indispensable; closing the door before anyone could walk away.
Priya folded her arms over her chest.
“Did you want to end it?”
“I wanted space.”
“That doesn't answer the question either.”
“I don't know.”
The admission tasted of dry paper. Priya didn't rush to soften it.
“You asked for indefinite space and walked out the door before he could choose anything other than letting you go.”
“He could have stopped me,” I said.
“After you told him he turns care into control?”
The paper cup buckled under my thumb.
“Then what was I supposed to do?”
“I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about you. Protecting your authorship doesn't require leaving first, Kate. You can ask for terms. You can say ‘I don't want this’ or ‘I want you to fight for me’ without turning every possible answer into a trap.”
“I don't want him fighting against my career.”
“I know that. Does he have any idea what you actually want him to fight for?”
I didn't answer.
Priya picked up the bottle of cider and slid it into the communal refrigerator.
“Celebrate the win today,” she said softly. “Decide on the contract later. But don't use getting picked as proof you were right to run.”
I walked back to my office with the selection letter tucked beneath my arm. The late afternoon sun had warmed the glass. On my desk, my phone showed dozens of congratulatory messages.
Not a single message from Cole.
Back at my apartment on Capitol Hill, his toothbrush still rested in the ceramic cup beside mine.
I didn't put it away.