Chapter 3 Willa
three
Willa
My company's regional director calls while I'm eating a granola bar in my car outside the Timberline Motel.
"The Silver Ridge portfolio is running thirty-two percent above projected claim value," Ian says. "The carrier is querying the McDougall scope."
"The McDougall property has a legitimate full replacement claim on the north slope and I documented it correctly. The preliminary estimate was done from satellite imagery and a two-year-old file. The actual damage is higher because the preliminary was wrong, not because I'm generous."
We fight for both claims. I win the Hancock property, full scope. The McDougall comes back at sixty-five percent.
There's a gap. I know, without calculating it, who will fill it.
I call Atlas.
He picks up on the second ring. "McKay."
"It's Willa. The McDougall claim came back partial. Sixty-five percent of the north slope."
"George and Hilda," he says. "George has MS. They've been on that property forty years."
"I know." I've sat in their kitchen and drunk tea while Hilda walked me through the documents, and George watched from his recliner by the window and didn't say much, and I thought about them for two days after. "I fought for the full scope. The carrier didn't move as far as I needed them to."
"What's the gap?"
I give him the number.
"I'll fix what they need," he says. "I'll bill them what they can pay."
"Atlas. That's not a sustainable business model."
"The McDougalls have lived here forty years." Flat. Certain. The voice of someone who made this decision before I finished the sentence. "I'll run my business how I want."
I should say something practical. I have several practical things available. I don't say any of them.
Outside, a raven lands on the motel fence post and looks at me with the specific suspicion ravens have about parked cars. The mountains are doing something complicated with the morning light.
"Tell me about your crew," I say.
A pause. "Why?"
"I'm trying to understand you."
The pause gets a different quality. I'm aware that I called him for a professional reason and the professional reason has been handled.
But, I am still on the phone. I don’t want this conversation to end.
"Danny's been with me eight years," he says, and his voice has shifted — less flat, something underneath it. "Ken three. Betty's in her second season. Danny's the better estimator. Ken's faster on steep pitches. Betty's going to be the best of all of us in about two years."
"You're building something good."
He doesn't answer right away. When he does, his voice is quieter. "Why did you go independent?"
"My previous firm had a system for rural claims. The system kept arriving at the same number regardless of the damage. My supervisor called it calibration." A pause. "I filed a complaint. They ignored it. I left."
"And now you fight for them yourself."
"I don't always win."
"No," he says. "But you fight." The breeze picks up a bit and I feel it in my bones. "I don't let the forms be the ceiling," he says. "In case that's useful."
"It's useful," I say.
Neither of us hangs up.
"Willa."
"What?"
"Thanks for fighting for them, even if you didn’t win.”
I drive to the McDougall property after I hang up. Small bungalow, well-kept garden, the flower beds covered with burlap, the damaged porch overhang still doing its job of holding up a set of wind chimes. Hilda mentioned George can hear them from his chair.
I leave an envelope in their mailbox. Personal cheque. The gap, covered.
I drive away before I can talk myself out of it.
The hotel side room has become my temporary office, which is Maple's doing — she offered and it was the right offer and I took it. I spend the afternoon in the historical claim records for Silver Ridge, which is standard process for a portfolio this size.
What I find is not standard.
Six properties. Atlas's clients. In the storm event three years ago, the adjuster handling the Silver Ridge portfolio issued settlements between forty and sixty percent of accurate claim value. Across six properties. That's not variance.
I'm still building the comparison spreadsheet when I hear Atlas in the lobby.
I come out and show him. He looks at the screen and then at me, and I watch something move through his face — recognition, and under it the old reflex, the one I've seen before: what does she want from this, what's the angle.
He sees me see it.
"I'm sorry," he says. "That was wrong."
"Yes," I say. "It was."
"I have a reflex," he says. "It's not accurate. It's just practiced."
"I had one too," I say. "About contractors who inflate claims. I knew you hadn't by the second site visit. The reflex was there first anyway." I look at him across the table. "So we're both carrying old damage."
"Apparently." He pulls out the chair across from me and sits down. "Do you want to build this case?"
We spend the afternoon on it with my documentation, his property knowledge. By five o'clock it's raining and we're almost through the sixth file and the lobby has gone that warm amber colour that Maple's sconces produce in bad weather.
"Can I ask you something personal?" I say.
"Depends."
"When you saw me pull up that first day. You'd already decided."
"Yes."
"What exactly had you decided?"
He looks at the rain on the window. "That you were there to find a number that worked for the carrier and call it fair. That your job was to protect the company from my clients." A pause. "I was wrong."
"You looked at me and saw every adjuster who'd ever underpaid someone you cared about," I say.
"I left a firm specifically because my supervisor was doing exactly that.
I rebuilt from nothing so I could do this job correctly.
" I hold his gaze. "I've been working against that assumption my entire career. "
"I know," he says. "That was wrong." He looks at me steadily. "I see you clearly. I've seen you clearly since the Hancock property. The reflex wasn't fair."
Something in his face is open in a way it hasn't been before. A door that has been shut since the moment he came off that roof and decided what category I belonged in, and now it isn't shut anymore.
"Okay," I say.
He reaches out and puts his hand on the back of my chair. Close enough to feel the warmth of it.
Neither of us moves. Then he leans in and kisses me.
I make a sound and then I'm kissing him back and my hand comes up and grabs his jacket lapel He puts his hand in my hair. It's not careful. Nothing about this has been careful from the first day. We've both been pretending otherwise.
We stay like that for a long moment with the rain on the windows and the sconces doing their work.
Then I pull back. My hand is still on his lapel. I don't let go of it.
"I don't do things that aren't real," I say.
"Neither do I." He stays close. "So we'll figure out what's real."
My phone goes off.
We both look at it on the table. Ian's name on the screen.
I let go of his lapel. Pick it up. "I have to take this."
"Yeah," he says. He leans back.
The spell is broken, but my hands are still shaking.