Chapter 6 #2
Coming from an auditor, that was practically a hug. “Call me if anything else turns up or if you have more questions,” Wren said, meaning it, then took the elevator back upstairs.
She sent two quick emails from her desk—one to Voss, one to Kepling—to say the query was handled and put to rest for now.
Kepling answered within a minute, a simple “good.” Now to tell Cordelia in person to properly debrief her.
Wren crossed to the inner office. Cordelia was still at her desk, and she had clearly worked straight through the day.
A stack of signed pages was in the tray, and a call log was pulled up on her screen.
The debacle Wren had been dealing with clearly hadn’t interfered with Cordelia’s day, but Cordelia looked up the second Wren crossed the threshold before she was fully in the room.
“It’s handled,” Wren said. “I gave the auditors what they needed to close the query. Legal is monitoring to intercept calls to two people who were in the meeting, and the vendor is out of the country, so nobody is reaching her by accident.”
“It’ll stay buried until the books close for the quarter?”
“It should.”
Cordelia nodded. “Thank you. That was good work.”
Wren felt the compliment land somewhere behind her ribs and settle warmly. She nodded back and whispered a quick, “Thank you,” before turning toward the door.
“Wren.”
She stopped and turned back. Cordelia waited until Wren had turned all the way back around. When she spoke, it was in the same calm, even voice she’d had all morning, like she was reading off a script that she didn’t feel the need to dress up.
“Two things,” she said. “First, I’m going to give you more access. Effective today, legal will add you to three additional files.” Cordelia gave her the reference numbers. “Handle them the same as you handed the one from this morning.”
Wren did the math before she could stop herself, the reference numbers dropping into the map of the firm she’d been building in her head since the first week.
Three more matters to solve. On top of what she already had on her plate, it nearly doubled what she was cleared to access.
These weren’t the small, safe things either.
Cordelia just handed her, a new assistant, a set of keys most people would work nearly their entire career for and still not get.
Warmth spread through her chest—being trusted with something important always did that to her—and right behind the warmth came the familiar wariness, quiet but there.
This was how it started, every time. Someone saw how much she could carry and gave her more, and of course she took it because she could.
And then she took the next thing and the thing after that until she had poured so much of herself into the work that there was nothing left over for a life.
That was how she had ended up at thirty-one with empty hands, walking out of a job she had been brilliant at.
And here it was, starting again, and the worst part was that some part of her had already said yes before the rest of her caught up.
“Okay,” she said.
Cordelia held eye contact a beat longer than expected but then moved on.
“Second.” She nudged the two manila folders in front of her a half-inch toward Wren.
“I need the data room built. All the documents, in order, ready to be reviewed once the restructuring is far enough along. It can’t happen here, though.
Too many people come by. And it needs to be done in one stretch, not between interruptions.
” She paused, short but enough for Wren to catch it, the smallest hitch before she continued.
“The coastal house is the only place outside this building with the same security we’ve got here.
I’d like you to be up there this weekend to draft it.
I’ll drive up Friday afternoon, and you can come Friday evening, work on Saturday, and finish up by Sunday to be home on Sunday evening.
” She paused again. “There’s a guest wing, of course. ”
Wren caught the pause. Moving sensitive work out of a secure building came with hundreds of small risks they couldn’t entirely account for.
She internalized the rest of it. A private house, two hours from anyone, and a weekend under the roof of a woman she had only known in the context of the office.
People who hadn’t done this work before would have raised an eyebrow, but Wren heard there would be a secure location and a tight deadline.
“Yes, that works.”
Cordelia nodded, already reaching for her pen. Wren let herself out of the office and walked back to her desk where she booked an Uber for Friday afternoon to take her to the coastal house before she pulled up the calendar consolidation to get on with her day.
The rest of the afternoon passed quietly, and Wren let herself fall into the work, which was easy on the days she let it.
The calendar came together while the light in the antechamber turned from white to gold and stretched long across the floor.
Cordelia stayed behind her door, and twice, Wren passed it on her way to the kitchen.
Once, she caught Cordelia standing at the window with the phone against her ear, not talking, only listening, with one hand pressed flat to the small of her back as if it ached.
Wren looked away quickly before she could be caught looking.
A little before five o’clock, Veronica Kepling stopped at her desk on her way out, her coat already slung over her arm.
“That was handled really well this morning,” she said.
“The Halvorsen business, that is. Thank you.” She waited long enough for Wren to say, “Of course,” and then she was gone, walking toward the elevators.
Wren knew Veronica meant it, too, which got under her skin a little.
It was a good thank you, but when the interaction was done, Veronica continued on home to live her life and Wren was left with…
this. People were kind to her, but they were always on their way somewhere else.
She had set up her life this way on purpose—new town, new sublet, nothing to hold her down—and it suited her fine.
Most of the time, at least. But on the long days when the work floor emptied around her and the lights winked out one by one and she had no particular reason to be anywhere or with anyone, it suited her less.