Chapter 11 Emma
Chapter Eleven
EMMA
Astrid was in my doorway before I’d set my bag down.
“I need you for three things by lunch.” She had a folder in one hand and a pen she kept clicking in the other. “The GAO audit inquiry draft is due to Legislative Affairs by two. They’ve been holding it since your leave, and Legal won’t sign off without you on two of the provisions.”
“Put it on the stack.”
“The second is the BSA compliance briefing for the interagency working group next Thursday. The numbers are current as of last month, but the OCC revised their examination procedures, and I need to know if you want me to rerun the reporting tables.”
“Rerun them. If the methodology changed, the old tables are useless.”
“I’ll handle it. Third is the enforcement division’s quarterly report. I received it on Wednesday, and it’s in your inbox, marked ‘time-sensitive.’ I read it. The data is clean, but the narrative buries the noncompliance findings, and the subcommittee will ask questions we don’t want to answer.”
“Flag what needs to be rewritten and send it to Brad. He can fix the narrative, and I’ll sign off once he does.”
She’d given me three items needing action, and I still hadn’t removed my coat.
“Anything else?” I asked, wishing I hadn’t phrased it that way. Like Naomi with her glasses, I needed a way to let people who worked under me know they were dismissed. I inwardly rolled my eyes. As if I’d actually ever do that.
“It’s something small, but…”
My shoulders tensed by her tone alone. “Go ahead.”
“It’s about Brad.”
“What about him?”
“Working with him has become a problem.”
I dropped my bag, hung my coat on the back of the door, and crossed to my chair. “Can you be more specific?”
“I asked him for the disbursement variance data on Tuesday, so I could fold it into the BSA package. He told me he’d send it when he was finished with it. I followed up Wednesday. Same answer. I told him I had a deadline, and his response was that his work product goes to you, not to me.”
“He isn’t wrong about the reporting structure.”
“I know that, but he’s also not sharing data that I require to do my job, and when I push, he shuts down. I’ve tried going through Darla. I’ve tried copying him on my requests so there’s a paper trail. He doesn’t respond, or he responds to you directly and leaves me off the thread.”
Ten days ago, someone had scored my brake lines with the intention of killing me. My townhouse was uninhabitable, and Astrid expected me to mediate a turf war.
“I’ll talk to him.”
“Thanks.” She stood. “The GAO draft is on top of the stack Darla left you. I tabbed what needs your attention.”
I shut the door after she left, then went through the folders one by one and created piles to prioritize them.
Personnel packets for two senior policy advisors were first in line.
Both required my signature and a written assessment that I hadn’t started.
A budget revision memo from OMB had to reach the Secretary’s office by Friday.
My sanctions inquiry from two weeks ago—the one I’d requested and then forgotten when my life fell apart—was wedged in the middle, and four interagency coordination memos that got rerouted during my absence couldn’t circulate without my initials.
I rose, rolled my shoulders, and walked over to my office window, where the Washington Monument filled the view.
My father had taken me to see it when I was nine.
He’d worn his dress blues and held my hand and told me that the people who worked in these buildings kept their promises to the ones who served.
I’d believed him. I’d built my career on believing him.
Now, I was sitting in one of those buildings, and someone inside it was stealing from the people my father had bled for, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it because I was buried under personnel packets and budget memos and two staffers who couldn’t get along.
Even if I stayed here all night, I wouldn’t be able to make a dent in the backlog of work.
And there wasn’t a single thing in the pile that I could delegate to someone else.
I opened the GAO document to the first tab and read every paragraph twice.
Legal’s two flagged clauses were liability hedges—vague phrasing designed to give Treasury room to maneuver if the audit findings ended up in front of a subcommittee.
The hedges made sense from Legal’s perspective.
Vague wording also got agencies hauled in for follow-up hearings, and I wasn’t going to approve language that created more problems six months from now.
I spent twenty minutes on margin notes. When I flipped to the cover page to initial it, the summary paragraph no longer aligned with the revisions. One more rewrite I’d need to do myself.
Forty-five minutes had passed, and I’d finished one thing. I put my head in my hands and fought against the threatening tears. I was a grown-up, a professional, a woman who’d worked damn hard to get where I was. Crying was out of the question.
“Can I come in?” The only person whose voice I wanted to hear and face I wanted to see, stood in my doorway.
“Of course.”
Coleman shut the door behind him, walked around the desk, pulled me to my feet, and wrapped his arms around me.
“Do you have any idea how much I needed this?” I asked.
He kissed my forehead. “That’s why I’m here.” He let go and swatted my bottom. “Now, get back to work.”
“Yes, sir.”
He wriggled his eyebrows. “Try that later tonight and see what it gets you.” He winked and walked out, leaving the door open. I wished he hadn’t and it being closed would stop the barrage of people I expected would add to Astrid’s and Darla’s list of things someone needed from me.
Darla knocked less than five minutes after Coleman left.
“The acting secretary would like to see you.”
“Did she say why?”
“Her confirmation.”
My first month working with her had taught me to always bring a legal pad and a pen to our meetings because Naomi never repeated herself. Coleman stood when I passed his open door, then walked with me without asking where we were going.
He stayed a half step below me.
“Doing any better?” he asked as we headed for her office.
“I was until Darla told me I’d been summoned.”
“Go ahead, ma’am. She’s expecting you,” said a woman I didn’t recognize.
Naomi had her reading glasses off and her hands folded when I walked in. Coleman positioned himself in the hallway, and I closed the door.
“Did you get a new admin?” I asked.
“No. Beth took a couple of personal days. I don’t have to tell you that this is the worst possible time for it. Anyway, HR found Marlene in the temp pool, and let me tell you, the only person I’ve seen better at the job is your Darla.”
“Glad to hear it. So, what did you wish to discuss with me?”
“Right. I got word yesterday that my Senate Finance Committee hearing is scheduled a month from today. I expect you to handle prep.”
I jotted the date at the top of my legal pad. “What are you looking for?”
“Briefing materials on each policy question they’re likely to raise—disbursement oversight, sanctions enforcement, the reform initiatives, interagency coordination gaps. That includes a full book I can study and a list of hostile questions from each member of that committee.”
I scribbled as fast as she spoke and started calculating before she finished.
A full briefing book meant hundreds of pages sourced from divisions across Treasury.
Each section would require sign-off from the relevant under secretary.
Legal would have to vet the whole thing.
My office would compile it, which meant me, Brad, Astrid, and Darla at full capacity for the duration while I juggled everything else on my desk.
She needed it with enough time to review it for a hearing in a month.
Under the best of circumstances, a document this complex would take at least sixty days to prepare.
“I also expect practice sessions. You play the committee; I answer. We do that at least three times, more as the hearing gets closer.”
“I’ll put a schedule together and have it to you by the end of the week.”
“You’ll have whatever you need. Staff, overtime, outside consultants—all of it is authorized. This hearing is to determine whether I keep a job I want badly.”
Naomi didn’t ask for favors. She gave orders that sounded like requests and expected them to be done. I’d worked for people who were less direct and wasted my time making me guess what they were after. As much as I hated more work being piled on me, at least I wouldn’t be spinning my wheels.
“I’ll make it happen.”
She put her glasses on, I stood, and let myself out.
Coleman pushed off the wall when I emerged. He waited until we were in the stairwell, between floors, to speak.
“How bad is it?”
“I have less than a month to build a full confirmation briefing book and prep her for questioning on top of everything else.”
“Fuck,” he said under his breath.
“Times one thousand.”
“Your mother called while you were upstairs and said she needs to talk to you as soon as possible.”
Darla and I had developed code words and phrases for my mom.
“Emergency” meant I needed to drop everything and not only return her call but be prepared to leave the office at a moment’s notice.
“It’s urgent” was something Darla considered pressing, but it wasn’t life or death.
“As soon as possible” translated to, “She has something to speak with you about, and if she doesn’t hear from you in an hour, she’ll call again.
” Those three covered every scenario with my mom.
She never called and said she was just checking in. Not once. Ever.
I thanked Darla and went into my office.
“Emma Grace, I’ve been trying to reach you for an hour.”
“I had a meeting with the acting Treasury secretary, Mom. Didn’t Darla mention it?”
“Of course she did, but I didn’t expect it would take an hour.”