CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The recruiter called while I was arguing over folding chairs.
Not my folding chairs. I had graduated from those.
The foundation’s summer youth showcase was three weeks away, and the events manager wanted to put two hundred teenagers, parents, donors, artists, board members, and people who had never once followed an arrival time into a room with one hundred and sixty seats.
“Standing creates energy,” she said.
“Standing creates complaints,” I answered. “Rent the extra chairs.”
“They’ll block the installation wall.”
“Then move the wall.”
“The artist approved the placement.”
“The artist is getting paid. The parents are bringing children and wearing shoes. Chairs.”
My office phone flashed with an outside number before she could explain energy again. I held up one finger and answered.
“Nadine Bellamy.”
The woman on the other end introduced herself as an executive recruiter for the National Arts and Neighborhoods Council in Washington.
I almost asked whether this was about the ethics review.
Six months had passed since the committee closed it, but professional embarrassment kept a longer calendar than policy.
Instead, she said, “Your name has come up several times in our search for a chief program officer.” I looked through the glass wall at my deputy, who was pretending not to watch me from the conference table.
“I didn’t apply for that job.”
“No. We’re inviting you to interview.”
The events manager slowly lowered herself into the chair across from my desk.
Apparently, sitting had found value. The recruiter continued.
The council worked across five cities. The role supervised community investment, youth arts, preservation partnerships, and a budget large enough to make my current department look like a pilot program.
The office was in Washington. Three days in person, two flexible.
Travel twice a month. More money than I had ever earned and enough responsibility to make the money feel like an apology.
“Why me?” I asked.
She did not answer with the magazine article, which helped.
She mentioned the youth studio, our neighborhood preservation grants, the donor coalition I had built after a city funding cut, and the report I wrote three years earlier about Black cultural spaces disappearing one converted warehouse at a time.
Then she said, “Your handling of the recent internal review also demonstrated judgment under scrutiny.”
There it was.
“I made a disclosure mistake,” I said.
“You acknowledged it, produced the record, and returned to the work. We’re not looking for somebody who has never been questioned. We’re looking for somebody who can still lead while questions are being asked.”
That answer was better than praise. It did not turn the ugliest month of my career into a motivational quote. She asked whether I would come to Washington the following Friday. I said I needed forty-eight hours.
When the call ended, the events manager leaned forward. “Are we moving the wall?” I stared at her. She stood. “I’ll order the chairs.”
My deputy waited until the door closed.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Work.”
“Nadine.”
I turned back to my computer. “A recruiter.”
“For what?”
“A job in Washington.”
Her face changed before mine had permission to.
“You’re leaving?”
“I got a phone call. Nobody has packed my mug.”
“What job?”
I told her. She sat in the chair the events manager had abandoned. “That’s not a phone call. That’s a door.”
“I have a job.”
“You also have an interview.”
“I said I’d think about the interview.”
“You’re thinking wrong already.”
“Go manage your own career.”
“I am. It currently depends on you not making a decision because Washington has trains and your boyfriend has a truck.”
I pointed toward the door. She left smiling. I did not call Warren.
That was not secrecy. It had been less than fifteen minutes, and a woman was allowed to receive information before turning it into a relationship meeting.
I also did not call him during lunch, after work, or while I sat in my SUV outside the townhouse with the recruiter’s email open on my phone.
That part was avoidance. The position description had thirty-two bullet points and one sentence about relocation assistance.
I read that sentence four times. Relocation was not required.
Regular presence in Washington was. Three days there.
Four nights here, if the trains behaved and the meetings did not grow legs.
Warren’s company was in Philadelphia. His house was in Mount Airy.
His daughter worked two floors below his office and called him when he tried to approve cabinet hardware she had not asked him to see.
My house was mine. My job was mine. The fact that I had finally learned to share my life did not mean every new choice had to be held up against a man like fabric in bad lighting.
Still, I wanted to know what his face would do. I called Portia instead.
She answered over loud music. “Are you bleeding?”
“No.”
“Is Asha bleeding?”
“No.”
“Then text. I’m at a tasting.”
“I got recruited for a job in Washington.”
The music disappeared.
“What job?”
I told her. She screamed loud enough for somebody near her to ask if she needed help.
“I’m fine,” she yelled away from the phone. Then, to me, “You’re taking the interview.”
“I have not decided.”
“You decided to wear gold boots to a grant hearing. You can decide to ride Amtrak.”
“They were camel.”
“They were loud. The point stands.”
“I would be away three days a week.”
“From the city or from Warren?”
“Both.”
“Those are not the same question.”
I hated when Portia found sense beneath all that noise.
“I like my life,” I said.
“Good. A better job is not supposed to prove your current life is trash.”
“That sounded suspiciously mature.”
“I have range.”
“What if the job changes everything?”
“Everything already changes. At least this one comes with benefits.”
I laughed despite myself. Then she said, “Tell Warren before I do.”
“You will not.”
“I won’t. But I will look guilty the next time I see him, and that man notices paperwork nobody else knows exists.”
I called Asha next. She was in the library finishing a presentation and whispered through the entire conversation.
“Take the interview,” she said.
“You did not even ask the salary.”
“You paused before you said Washington. That was the salary.”
“I raised a disrespectful child.”
“You raised an observant one.”
“Three days a week is a lot.”
“So is twenty-two years.”
The sentence was not cruel. Asha had stopped using my marriage as a weapon months earlier. She meant I had already proven I could commit time to something.
“Do not make this about your father,” I warned.
“I’m making it about you. Interviewing is not moving. Moving is not leaving everybody. And loving Warren is not the same as asking him to choose for you.”
“I was not going to ask him to choose.”
“You were going to study his face until it chose for you.”
I ended the call. She texted me a heart and the train schedule.
That evening, Warren cooked at his house because I had worked late two nights in a row and he said my refrigerator contained ingredients instead of food.
He made chicken, rice, and green beans without announcing that any of it was healthy.
That was one of the ways I knew he had been listening.
My drawer upstairs now held four pairs of underwear, two sleep shirts, a scarf, lotion, and one bra that kept migrating beneath his T-shirts.
He had not expanded it. I had not asked.
We ate at his kitchen table. He told me Mercer Row had been invited to submit for a restoration project in Baltimore.
Milan wanted the design division to lead the proposal.
Cedric wanted a second field superintendent before Warren added another city to his problems. I listened, asked questions, and waited for the perfect opening.
It did not come. Perfect openings were another way to avoid saying things.
“I got a call today,” I said.
Warren set down his fork.
“A recruiter wants me to interview for chief program officer at a national council in Washington.”
His face did almost nothing. Almost. The muscle near his temple tightened once.
“When?” he asked.
“Next Friday.”
“Do you want the job?”
“I do not know.”
“Do you want the interview?”
The answer came faster.
“Yes.”
“Then take it.”
I sat back. “That’s all?”
“No.”
He reached for his water, took a drink, and put the glass down exactly where it had been.
“That is first,” he said.
I waited. He did not fill the silence to make either of us comfortable. Neither did I.
Finally, he said, “I want to hear the whole thing. And I need a minute before I pretend I know what it means.” The honesty landed better than enthusiasm would have. I picked up my fork.
“Good,” I said. “Because I do not know what it means either.”