Chapter Thirty-Five — Wade
March came to the valley and the orchards started again.
Not the full color thing, that was October.
This was earlier, the first stage, the blossoms coming out on the bare branches before the leaves, the specific white and pale pink of the almond and the cherry and the peach trees along the agricultural roads.
Nora ran in it every morning and came back with the quality she had after a run that had given her something, which was different from the quality after a run that had just been miles.
On a Tuesday she came in at seven twenty and sat at the kitchen table and said to me and Garrett simultaneously: The blossoms are out on the road south of here.
Garrett said: Three weeks early this year. He didn't look up from the stove.
She said: Is that normal. The variation.
He said: Some years early, some years late. The trees do what they do.
She looked at me. I missed last year's blossoms.
I said: You weren't here last year.
She said: I know. I'm noting that I'm here for this one.
Garrett looked up from the stove then. Just briefly, just long enough to look at her and then back at the stove. His version of marking a thing.
She saw it. She held her coffee and didn't say anything about it, which was correct, because Garrett's marking didn't require acknowledgment, it just required being seen.
She'd learned the compound's language.
Not the surface language, the actual one.
The way Garrett's silences meant things and Darren's few words meant more than they seemed and Cole's nod was a complete statement and Devlin's acknowledgments landed differently than anyone else's because Devlin only acknowledged things he'd decided were worth the energy.
She understood all of it now. Not perfectly, nobody understood all of it perfectly including people who'd been here for years, but she understood it the way you understood a place you'd decided was yours.
The San Francisco engagement closed in the first week of March.
Chen called on a Thursday and said: Final report accepted. The firm is initiating internal proceedings on all three current flags. The historical matter is with counsel for statute analysis.
Nora said: The fourth company.
He said: Clean on review. Your preliminary flag was correct to raise and correct to clear. That's the right outcome.
She said: Yes.
He said: I want to talk about a retainer.
She looked at me across the meeting room table. She said: I'm listening.
He said: The firm has eight portfolio companies and ongoing compliance needs. What would a quarterly forensic monitoring retainer look like.
She said: Give me a week to put together a proposal.
She ended the call and looked at the table.
I said: Retainer.
She said: Ongoing quarterly work. San Francisco every quarter for the in-person review. Remote monitoring in between.
I said: Same structure as the compound protocol.
She said: Essentially. She looked at the table. That's a real practice. The compound protocol, the Chen retainer, the Sacramento work, the other clients.
I said: That's what you've been building.
She said: Yes. She looked at me. I've been building it here. That's intentional.
I said: I know.
She said: I want to say it explicitly. I've been building a professional practice that's based here because here is where I want to be based. Not because it's convenient. Because it's the choice.
I held her eyes.
She said: I know you know that. I'm saying it anyway.
I said: I heard you.
She said: Good. She opened the laptop. I'm going to draft the retainer proposal.
She worked. I read. The afternoon moved through its hours and Garrett started at five thirty and we ate at the table with everyone and Rook was under her feet and the compound was what it always was.
After dinner on the south step she said: I want to talk about something.
I said: Go ahead.
She said: The secondary building room.
I waited.
She said: I've been in the secondary building room for five months. It's the right room. It has the window I wanted and the desk position Carlee helped me set up and the view of the valley and the stars are visible at night without any obstruction.
I said: Yes.
She said: I've been thinking about whether it's the right room long-term.
I said: What are you thinking.
She was quiet for a moment. She said: I'm thinking that I've been careful about certain things for reasons that made sense when I arrived and make less sense now.
I said: What things specifically.
She said: The room specifically. Being in the secondary building specifically.
I held her eyes.
She said: I'm not making a specific statement tonight. I'm saying I've been thinking about it and you should know I've been thinking about it.
I said: Okay.
She said: Okay?
I said: You've been thinking about it. I've been thinking about it. We're both thinking about the same thing and we're not ready to say it yet and that's fine.
She held my eyes. That's a lot to get right without saying very much.
I said: I had a good teacher.
She looked at me for a moment. Then she almost smiled. Then she did smile, fully, the way she smiled now without anything in front of it.
I said: When you're ready.
She said: I know. She looked at the valley. Thank you for knowing.
I said: Yeah.
We sat on the south step in the March evening with the blossoms starting on the valley roads and the specific smell of them coming in on the night air, and I thought about rooms and readiness and the specific patience of wanting something correctly and waiting for it to arrive in its own time.
It was close.
I could feel it the way you could feel the weather shifting in the valley, not seeing it yet, but knowing from the air that it was coming.