Chapter 2 Atlas
two
Atlas
Willa Frost with her clipboard is somehow more unsettling than any of that.
I'm working the residential claims today.
Five of them are my clients, people I've been serving for years, and I need to know what she's going to do with each file before I know how hard I'll have to fight.
That's the thing about adjusters: they write the shape of what's possible.
I've fixed too many houses out of my own pocket to be sentimental about it.
She's already at the first property when I pull up.
The Hancocks — retired couple, been on Ridgeline Drive since before I moved to Silver Ridge, I've done their roof twice.
The storm took a four-metre section off their north slope and Mrs. Hancock is on the porch with the face of someone steeling herself for bad news.
Willa doesn't look at me when I get out. She's photographing the north slope, then the southwest corner where the gutter's been pulled from the fascia.
"That fascia damage is separate from the storm claim," she says, apparently to her file. "Pre-existing rot. I'll flag it for supplemental review but it won't reduce the primary."
That's not what I expected her to say.
A carrier-interested adjuster would have used the pre-existing rot to pull down the whole claim value. She's separating it out in the Hancocks' favor without being asked.
I revise something I'd decided about her.
We move through four properties. I catch myself watching her work the way I watch good tradespeople work: looking for the methodology.
The methodology is solid. The person executing it is…
The person executing it keeps doing things like tucking a strand of hair back with her pen without noticing, and turning to face me to ask a question and being slightly closer than either of us planned, and having hazel eyes that shift colour depending on whether we're in shadow or light.
At the fourth site she crouches to look at a low-slope junction and her jacket pulls up and there's a strip of skin at her lower back. I look away, feeling heat suddenly burst in me. Now that’s something that hasn’t happened in a while.
Her phone goes. She reads something, types back fast, doesn't break her pace. I find myself wondering who she's texting, even though I shouldn’t be.
We wrap the last site at five and I save Margaret Okafor for the end on purpose.
She's seventy-three, widowed, on pension, the house her everything, and the storm took a quarter of her roof and collapsed her porch overhang.
Her carrier has underpaid her twice in two years. I've been the one making up the gap.
I got there before Willa to walk Margaret through what to expect. I said: “This one's independent. I think she might be different.” I wasn't sure I believed it, but I want to.
Willa spends forty-five minutes at Margaret's property.
At the end of it: "Mrs. Okafor, I'm flagging your claim for supplemental review alongside the primary. There's soffit damage that appears to have been missed in a previous inspection — I can't guarantee the outcome, but I'm documenting everything and letting the full review team assess scope."
Margaret looks at her for a long moment. "Thank you," she says. Small voice. Big word.
Willa nods, businesslike, turns back to her notes. She lets out a tiny sound of relief.
On the sidewalk she says: "I'm not your enemy."
"Jury's out," I say.
She looks at me with her beautiful hazel eyes. "Fine. I'll send the assessments as I finalize them."
"I'll tell you if you miss something."
"I know you will." Not annoyed. Something else. "Eight tomorrow?"
"I'm on-site at six."
She picks up her bag. Pauses. "Six is fine."
I don't say anything.
She gets in her car and I stand on the sidewalk and watch it go.
I believe her. That's the uncomfortable part.
I've believed adjusters before and been wrong and the distance between Margaret Okafor and a reduced claim is the quality of Willa Frost's judgment and the goodwill of her company.
I'm standing on a sidewalk in the flat grey end of afternoon, thinking about hazel eyes and wishing those were better odds.