Chapter 5 #2
Later, it was Wren who found the first real problem, a little after eight.
She had gone quiet, moving back and forth between two pages, the space between her brows slightly furrowed more and more each time she flipped the pages.
She looked at the laptop, like she was trying to confirm something, then turned it toward Cordelia by a few degrees.
“The value you’ve put on the firm.” She set her finger on the number.
“You got to this by comparing yourself to a handful of companies like yours and seeing what each of them was valued at. But most of these numbers are old, from back when borrowing money was cheap and everything got priced high. That world is gone, which means the other side gets to say your comparisons don’t count anymore and that by today’s math the firm is worth less than this.
As it stands, you’ve handed them the evidence to win that argument. ”
“The number is defensible,” Cordelia said. She had defended it herself more than once.
“It’s defensible if nobody pushes. They’ll push.
” Wren didn’t budge or give any ground. “Right now, you’ve got three or four examples holding up your entire argument.
I’d want twenty if I were you. So many that when they lowball you, you don’t need to argue.
You just bury their number under twenty, or more, that say otherwise, all recent, all real, and you let the numbers do the talking for you. ”
Cordelia leaned in and read where Wren was pointing. She ran the scenario forward in her head the way the other side would run it. Wren was right. The number was sound and the ground beneath it was thin. Thin ground was where a projection like this came apart.
“Get me more,” she said. “Twenty or thirty recent numbers. I’m meeting with them on Monday afternoon, and I’d rather walk in with that information than be defenseless.”
“You’ll have it tomorrow.” Wren was already writing down a note in a notepad.
Something in Cordelia eased that she hadn’t planned on.
She had forgotten what it was like to work beside someone who kept up with her, someone who got there first half the time and didn’t make her feel slow for the extra few seconds it took for her to catch up.
She didn’t say this aloud, though. She just reached back for the bottle of wine and poured them both some.
Wren had drunk two glasses of water and was starting a third.
When Cordelia set the wine glass next to her, Wren capped the pen and picked up the glass and swirled it.
For a moment, neither of them did anything but drink and watch the dark water and lights standing out in it.
The building was quiet around them. It was the kind of quiet that Cordelia was most comfortable spending her evenings in alone, and she didn’t question herself why tonight, when there was someone else here, it still felt easy.
“Can I be blunt for a minute?” Wren asked.
Cordelia looked at her. “Of course.”
“Whoever built this was good. Fast and good, which is a rare combination. They just stopped a draft too early. They got it most of the way there but then ran out of time before the last stretch.” She turned her wine glass slowly by its stem.
“I spent six years cleaning up after people who were careless and sure of themselves. This is the opposite of that. This is someone who is careful and meticulous but just ran out of runway to finish it properly.”
“That would be me,” Cordelia said.
Wren looked at her then, a beat longer than the moment warranted. “I figured,” she said. There was no edge in her voice. If anything, it was kind, and her kindness was harder to sit with than an edge would have been. Cordelia picked her pen back up to give her hands something to do.
Cordelia’s gaze flicked down. The watch on Wren’s wrist was too large for her and too vintage to be a fashion statement. The band was a size too loose so it rode down near the heel of her hand, yet Cordelia had noticed that, despite this, Wren had worn it every day.
“That isn’t yours,” Cordelia said before she had fully committed to saying anything at all. “The watch, I mean.”
Wren glanced down at it as if she had forgotten it was there. “It was my grandmother’s.” She caressed the watch face. “She raised me.” She didn’t elaborate, but she turned the watch a half-turn around her wrist with one finger.
“It suits you.”
They went back to the file, and Wren found the second problem in the part that dealt with timing.
“There’s a sign-off here you need before this can move to the next stage.
Someone official has to sign it.” She found the row.
“It’s set to come through the same week you close your books for the quarter.
That’s already your worst week of the year.
Everything is due all at once, everyone’s stretched thin, and now on top of it, you’re waiting on information from people who don’t care about your calendar.
” She looked up. “And these come late. They always come late. So picture it landing three days behind, right in the middle of your worst week, while you’re signing your name to papers that aren’t finalized yet because its dependencies haven’t been finalized yet. ”
Cordelia looked at the dates. “It’s tight,” she conceded. “But it isn’t an emergency.”
“It never is. Until it is. Moving it costs you nothing.” Wren lifted a shoulder. “Ask for the sign-off early and get it in your hands three weeks ahead of schedule to just sit on it. Then your bad week is only a bad week without a gaping hole in it.”
Cordelia turned it over, debating silently. “Early,” she confirmed. “We’ll ask early.”
Wren made the note. By half past nine, they had worked down through most of the document.
The plates had already been pushed back, and their wine was low.
Far away, Cordelia could just make out the slow sweep of the lighthouse beam.
Wren had stopped writing. She was reading the last of it with her chin propped on one hand, the lamplight warm down the side of her face.
She had the loose, unguarded look of someone who had long since stopped performing and was only thinking.
Then, she said, half to herself, “You know, you could be out from under all of this a lot sooner than you’ve got it planned.”
“Could I?”