There was that word again: happy. But Shannon couldn’t give me happiness any more than she could trap lightning in a jar.
She grabbed the framed snapshot from my desk, the one from the Boston Marathon finish line two years ago. She was in the middle, her red hair tucked under a Walsh Associates baseball cap, with Patrick and Matt on one side, and Riley and me on the other. Arms linked over shoulders, we leaned together, smiling. We looked completely typical, and from that image alone, no one would know we were tainted by neglect, abuse, and loss.
But . . . maybe it was possible to feel as lighthearted as we looked.
“Am I supposed to guess, or are you planning to say something?” I asked.
“It’s a good thing you’re cute, Sam. Otherwise I’d slap you upside the head for this shitty attitude.” She shook her head, replaced the frame, and flipped open her tablet. “I renewed your driver’s license for you. It will show up in a week or two. Oh, and I adjusted the automatic order for your replacement parts. When I went through the supplies at your place last week, it seemed like you were running low on infusion sets and insulin cartridges, but had enough skin preps and test strips for an eternity. Just let me know if you want more or less, or something different.”
I brushed the pistachio shells into my waste basket and stared at her. “Where were you this weekend?”
“I went away with friends.” Shannon could negotiate the spots off a Dalmatian but she couldn’t tell bold-faced lies, and the red tint creeping across her cheeks gave it all away.
“Where?” I asked.
She threaded a lock of hair between her fingers and studied it, avoiding my eyes. “Nantucket. I took the ferry from Woods Hole on Friday.”
“Who did you go with? What did you do?”
She shrugged and continued inspecting her hair. “Simone and Danielle, and it was a regular girls’ weekend. Beach, brunch, booze. What else would we do?”
I waited, watching while a hot blush consumed her cheeks and neck. She didn’t do girls’ weekends with her law school friends, and she hated listening to Simone humble-bragging about the high-profile divorces she handled. “Why aren’t you sunburned?”
“Sunscreen,” she answered simply, but it was a bullshit answer. Shannon’s skin was incredibly fair, and she couldn’t go to the beach or pool without collecting a thick patch of freckles and some painful burns.
“Why don’t you cut the shit,” I said. “What is the purpose of this exercise, Shan? Does it not seem ridiculous that you’re keeping something from me? From all of us? And you do notice that you’re making a bigger deal out of it by lying about going to Nantucket, right?”
“Since you have a busy afternoon, I’d rather get down to the reason I came in here,” she said. “We were approached last month by a real estate agent who was representing a very private client. Since the agent was absurdly vague about her client’s interests, Patrick and I decided not to engage.”
“Okay,” I said, annoyed that she was deflecting again. I went to the small refrigerator behind my desk to refill my water glass, and offered some to Shannon.
“No, thanks. The agent came back, saying the client really, really wanted to work with us. It seems the client saw theBoston Globespread on the future of green restoration.” She gestured to where the freshly framed newspaper feature showcasing one of my projects leaned against the wall, waiting to be hung. “And the client insisted on working with you.”
“I don’t have much free time, Shannon,” I said. I slid my four-page call sheet filled with requests for consultation across the desk. “And no offense, but I don’t have a lot of patience for dealing with agents.”
Shannon wore a lot of hats around here, and licensed real estate agent was one of them. She was also our legal counsel and chief financial officer, and while she spoke the language fluently, she was the only non-architect in the bunch. She seemed to like that form of schizophrenia.
“Well, it gets better.” She toggled through a few screens on her tablet, then turned it toward me. “Turns out the client is Eddie Turlan, from The Vials.” She pointed to a picture of the punk band popular in the eighties. “He and his wife are huge environmentalists now, and they want a complete green rehab and restore, and they want a big publicity splash, too. They purchased this brownstone in the South End.” She swiped through another screen and zoomed in on the location. “It was built in 1899, and until the Turlans bought it, the property had been owned by thesame family.It was renovated in the twenties, and then again in the sixties, but it hasn’t been touched since then. In fact, it’s been vacant since the late eighties.”
She switched the map to street view, and I stared at the red brick house. This property saw three centuries with a common lineage, and everything about it screamed virgin canvas. There’d be shag carpets and vinyl wallpaper to remove, and probably some room-flow dynamics to resolve, but it didn’t bear the weight of changing hands, and that was a rare delight.
“They want you to design it, and they offered to go well beyond your standard fees.” She toggled to another screen, and handed the tablet to me. “Here’s the most recent communication from the agent.”
I skimmed the email, noting the budget the Turlans were comfortable with—it was astronomical—and some of their design preferences, and handed it back to Shannon. “I still don’t have time.”
Shannon nodded, and the devious grin on her face told me she already cooked up a plan. “You could make time if Riley moved off Matt’s projects and started working with you.” I began to protest, and she held up her hand. “I think you’ve argued with me enough today. Just listen. He’s come a long, long way in the past eight months, and you have to admit that.”
I sighed, knowing she was right.
He still couldn’t zip his pants with any regularity, but he could be trusted to manage a couple of projects.
“I was also thinking this could be a phenomenal opportunity to partner with the roof garden girl,” she said. “If there’s ever been a property that needs a roof garden, it’s this one.”
I reached for the tablet, and paged back to the aerial map. Again, Shannon was right. Even with a quick glance, it was obvious this property would be perfect for all my favorite green features and my favorite sustainable landscape architect.
“What’s the timeline with all this?” I asked.
Shannon nodded, her fingers drumming against the arms of the chair. It reminded me of Tiel and her non-stop fidgeting. Somehow, Tiel’s noise was nothing like the noise my siblings created.
