Chapter 17
Ruth’s summary had arrived on New Year’s Day. Alexandra read it at the kitchen counter in her plush robe while her coffee went cold, then read it again. She set it face-down on the marble.
Simone’s team had filed it during the holiday week.
Alexandra was operating with half her staff, the school board was out for the holiday season, and there was no city council in session—a window of opportunity that anyone with access to the municipal calendar could have found in twenty minutes.
Simone’s challenge targeted the bond structure underwriting the renovation at Roosevelt Elementary.
If it went through, the project would freeze for a year, possibly longer, while the courts worked through it.
Alexandra hadn’t called Ruth back that day. She had turned the summary over in her mind as she finished her lukewarm coffee at the counter, then went to the study and worked until two in the morning on something else entirely.
That had been ten days ago.
Diane Okafor had been the principal at Roosevelt Elementary for eleven years.
She’d been there when the boiler failed the first February after Alexandra had taken over from Dorothy.
The building went cold and the district said there was no budget to fix it, and Alexandra had called the city manager herself.
When the renovation had kicked off that next spring, Diane had mentioned it in passing.
Your mother called, too, she’d said. The second time she came, she brought donuts.
Alexandra hadn’t known about the donuts.
She thought about them on the drive to the school Thursday morning. The rain had been falling since the night before, the fine, persistent kind that made the city feel muffled and close. She drove without the radio on.
Diane was waiting in the main office with the stillness of someone who had already cried once that morning and had decided against a second time. She shook Alexandra’s hand and said, “Thank you for coming,“ then led her to the hallway.
Diane turned left at the first junction instead of right, and Alexandra followed her to a door near the end of the corridor.
It was a repurposed storage room. There was a shelf unit blocking most of a back wall, cardboard boxes stacked along one side reading copy paper 8.
5x11, and a single round wooden table that could seat four students.
On the table, there were twelve picture books, a plastic basket of early readers, and a laminated checkout sheet with a dry erase marker resting on top of it.
A hand-lettered sign in all caps hung above the door, saying: READING CORNER.
“This was a computer lab until the second year of my term,“ Diane said. “When the grant ran out, the district needed the space.“
She didn’t explain further, but she didn’t need to. Alexandra knew what had happened next. The computers were removed, the room was filled with whatever needed a home, evidently the library now, and no one had ever budgeted to put them back.
Alexandra looked down at the checkout sheet. Forty-three children had borrowed books from this room in the past two weeks. The names were written in small, careful handwriting. She stared at the sheet longer than she needed to.
They walked to the west wing together. The portable classrooms sat visible through the window at the end, two squat structures that were supposed to be temporary but had been there for fourteen years, their exteriors gone permanently gray as they were used long past their lifespans.
Inside the main building, two classrooms had their thermostats taped over with a half-sheet of paper covering them that said DO NOT ADJUST. One room had a space heater in the corner with an extension cord running to a power strip.
Alexandra looked at the extension cord and kept walking.
“The parents are organizing and want to go to the press,“ Diane said as they turned toward the gymnasium, passing bulletin boards thick with students’ work: crayon drawings and handwritten reports on Pacific Northwest wildlife—a wolf, a sea otter, and an orca with BY DAPHNE K.
, 3RD GRADE written carefully underneath.
“I told them to give me a week before anyone goes to the Tribune. That was on Tuesday.“
“It's Thursday,“ Alexandra said.
“I know.“
Alexandra stopped walking. “Ask them to wait,“ she said. “The project is still going forward. By the time anyone talks to the press, I want to give them a resolution.“ She looked at Diane. “The renovation will proceed. I'll make sure of that today.“
Diane held her gaze for a moment then nodded, her shoulders lowering a fraction. “Thank you.“
Alexandra drove to the city manager's office, the windshield wipers losing their ground on the steeper stretches.
She had forty minutes before her meeting with Shannon Everton started, and she spent most of that time thinking about what she had seen at the school and how she had let this project exist only on paper for twenty-two months.
Shannon Everton received her at one o'clock and offered her a mug of coffee.
Alexandra settled in at the conference desk, her notebook ready.
Ruth joined by phone for twenty minutes of the meeting, and by two-thirty, they had a contingency funding plan.
It would require the school board to sign off on it and a council vote on an expedited timeline, but it worked.
“I'll need to talk to the school board chair by the end of the day,“ Shannon said.
“You'll have her.“
Ruth drafted the amended bond structure by three.
Meg called Patricia Osei—the school board chair who had four children in the district, a background in municipal finance, and had been livid since Tuesday—and by four-fifteen Patricia had agreed to call an emergency session at the district office.
Ruth drove over to present the bond structure in person.
The proposal passed at five-fifty with only one abstention.
Alexandra walked out of the building with Meg and Ruth at her heels.
“Thank you.“ Alexandra turned and looked at them. “Both of you.“
Meg was already on her phone, walking toward her car. She raised a hand without turning around, and Ruth smiled and nodded once.
Alexandra sat in her car for a moment before starting it.
The project would continue. She had made sure of that. The thought came without the satisfaction it should have carried, and she let it sit there without trying to inflate it into something it wasn't or analyze it too deeply.
She watched the rain move in diagonal sheets across her windshield for a moment, then started the car and pulled out of the lot.
She knew she had done good work and had been right to come today.
But she also understood, in the specific quiet of having nowhere to be until tomorrow, that she would drive home alone and that there was no one waiting for her, no one who would ask how it went.
What used to be a deliberate life decision now just felt heavy and hollow, and she was so tired.
The estate was dark when she pulled up in the long driveway, and Alexandra moved through the house without turning on anything else.
She changed out of her work clothes into comfortable loungewear, and she walked to her liquor cabinet and poured herself a single malt whiskey. She carried it to the living room.
The room, like the rest of the house, was all her mother’s design.
It had high ceilings, two long sofas facing each across a low coffee table, a room built for evenings with people in it.
Alexandra used it for that purpose approximately never.
She stood at the window with her glass and looked out at the city below, the lights blurred and softening by the rain.
Her mind was numbed from the day, and she thought about nothing in particular, which was its own type of exhaustion.
She heard the car before she saw the headlights approaching her house. She knew the sound of that engine by now, knew it the same way she knew the creak in the upstairs hallway and the howl of wind off the headland before a storm.
Simone knocked rather than rang the bell.
Alexandra set her glass on the windowsill and went to the door, steeling herself with a breath before she opened it.
Simone stood on the step in her coat, raindrops streaked on her shoulders and a folder tucked under her arm.
Alexandra said nothing and stepped back to let her in.
She took Simone’s coat and hung it in the entry. Simone looked around the sitting room with that same unhurried attention she observed everything.
“Whiskey?“ Alexandra offered. “Or there’s wine.“
Alexandra watched as Simone’s eyes flitted to her glass before she said, “Whiskey.“
She walked over to the liquor cabinet, opening it and grabbing another glass slowly to give her time to recenter. She poured the amber liquid and handed it across to Simone. They settled on opposite ends of one of the sofas.
Simone held her glass, and something in her stillness was cautious. Alexandra looked up at her face for a moment and understood: Simone knew about the school, and more than that, it was no longer leverage.
“The proxy timeline,” Simone said, breaking their silence. “Where does Ruth think it lands?”
“Before the fifteenth, if your counsel files on time, which means the vote will be by March.” Alexandra swirled her whiskey once. “Assuming your institutional holders stay committed.”
“They will.”
“NorthPoint might surprise you.”
Simone looked at her over the rim of her glass. “You’ve been talking to NorthPoint?”
“I talk to all my shareholders.”
“They’re not your shareholders yet.”
“They’ve been my shareholders for eleven years,” Alexandra said. “That doesn’t stop being true just because you filed a proxy statement.”
A flicker of a smile ghosted across Simone’s face as she took a sip of her drink, the kind of smile that Alexandra knew she reserved for when she heard something unexpected and liked it.