Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
ANDI
Three days after the kidnapping attempt, I go back to the center.
Not because it's safe—it isn't, not entirely, not yet.
Because staying away is a version of being silenced, and I've done enough of that for one lifetime.
Luke drives me. He parks across the street and doesn't pretend he's doing anything other than what he's doing, and I don't ask him to.
We've stopped performing normalcy for each other.
That's one of the things this year gave us.
Mrs. Alvarez is at her desk when I walk in. She looks at my leg brace, my crutch, and the set of my jaw, then stands up and holds the door to the main corridor open without saying anything. Which is exactly right.
I spend the morning in meetings. The board has questions about the audit's final phase.
Two program staff need my decisions about the fall schedule.
Marcus has emailed from Georgia State—his first week, a professor who already knows his name, and a study group he joined on the second day. I read it twice.
By early afternoon, the building has settled into its after-school rhythm.
Programs are underway in the main room. Mrs. Alvarez is negotiating with a supply vendor on the phone.
The particular hum of a place that is still here, still running, still doing what it was built to do despite everything that has been aimed at it.
I'm at my desk with the laptop open and the fall grant applications arranged by deadline when I hear the front door.
I don't look up immediately—the front door opens and closes dozens of times on an afternoon like this. I'm reading a paragraph about program outcome metrics when Mrs. Alvarez appears in my doorway.
Her expression is the one she uses when something requires my attention, and she hasn't decided yet how much.
"There's a woman asking for you," she says. "She doesn't have an appointment."
"Did she say what it's about?"
"Institutional support." A pause. "She has a business card."
I close the laptop. "Send her in."
The woman who walks through my office door is in her late fifties or early sixties—it's difficult to place precisely, which tells me she's the kind of person who has spent time ensuring it is difficult.
Composed the way money and practice produce composure.
She's wearing something simple and dark that costs more than it looks like it costs.
She walks into my office the way people walk into rooms they've already assessed from outside.
She offers her hand.
"Andi Morgan," she says. "I'm sorry to come without an appointment. I was in the neighborhood, and I've been meaning to make this visit for some time."
Her voice is warm. Not excessively—precisely. Warm at the right temperature for the moment.
"Please sit down," I say.
She sits. She looks around my office, the way people do when gathering information, while appearing to admire the space.
Her gaze moves to the program photographs on the wall, to the grant documentation stacked on the credenza, to the window that looks out over the activity room where the after-school kids are currently arranged in three groups doing homework.
"Remarkable work," she says. And means it—I believe she means it, which is the most unsettling thing about sitting across from her.
"Thank you." I keep my voice level. "What can I do for you?"
She reaches into her bag and places a business card on the desk between us.
"I serve on the board of the Southeastern Governance Initiative," she says.
"We've been following your advocacy work—the legislative testimony in particular.
There are funding mechanisms available to organizations doing the kind of structural reform work you're doing that aren't widely publicized.
I'd like to discuss whether some of those resources might be applicable here. "
I look at the card.
The name on it is printed in clean, understated type.
Evelyn Carrington.
Governance Consulting and Advisory Services.
The room doesn't move. My hands don't move. Outside my window, the kids are doing homework in three groups, Mrs. Alvarez is somewhere down the hall, and Luke is parked across the street in a truck with a clear line of sight to the front entrance.
I look at Evelyn Carrington.
She glances back at me with the straightforward confidence of a woman who has spent years in rooms like this, excelling at her craft, and has no reason to doubt that the person opposite her is exactly what they seem.
The director of a youth center who has had a difficult year.
A woman who could use some institutional support.
A target who doesn't know she's a target.
"I appreciate your coming," I say.
My voice is warm. Not excessively. Precisely.
"I'd love to hear more about what the Initiative has available." I set the business card on my desk—not in a drawer, not face-down—exactly where she had placed it. "Can I offer you coffee?"
She smiles.
"That would be lovely," she says.
I stand and move toward the door to find Mrs. Alvarez, and my hand goes briefly into my pocket where my phone is, and I press Luke's contact without looking at the screen, and I walk into the hallway, and I say, clearly and quietly:
"Mrs. Alvarez. Could you bring some coffee to my office? I have a guest."
And then into the phone, quieter:
"She's here."
A deafening silence on the other end.
Then, "I'm coming in."
"No." My voice is steady. "Stay where you are. We're fine." A pause. "She doesn't know I know."
Another silence.
"Andi."
"I know," I say. "Trust me."
I put the phone back in my pocket.
I stand in the hallway for exactly three seconds—long enough to put everything I know about Evelyn Carrington behind my eyes and everything she knows about me behind a smile—and then I walk back into my office.
She's looking at the photographs on the wall. The kids in the mural. The slightly crooked letters. The girl who found the door herself, caught in a candid shot while helping a younger kid with her backpack.
She turns when I come in.
"Your work speaks for itself," she says.
"Thank you," I say. I sit back down across from her.
I look at the woman who wrote a memo about a fifteen-year-old girl who was too loud in a system built for silence.
I look at the woman who trained the person who walked through my front door in December and spent six months dismantling everything I'd built.
I look at the woman who tried to have me killed on a desert highway and failed, who sent someone to my house to confirm what I knew, who put Luke's brother in a hospital and kept Delia Rhoades in a facility for eighteen months under paperwork that said voluntary.
I look at the woman who is sitting in my office right now because she thinks I don't know her name.
She is good.
She is extraordinary.
She is exactly what I've been preparing for.
"Tell me about the Initiative," I say.
She does.
I listen.
And I remember everything.
Split Decision ends here.
Main Event begins.