Her desk was neat and orderly with just a few personal touches. She had a white ceramic mug with a hairline crack in the handle—Summit-branded swag with an old version of the logo she refused to toss and used as a pencil holder. Beside it, a single framed photo of a lake at dusk, and a small, crocheted mouse toy resting near the stapler. The last one only because her cat, Cleo, had dropped it in her tote last week and she hadn’t hadthe heart to evict it. Or the brain space to remember to take it back home.
She tugged a Post-It free and jotted a note to order new toys for Cleo in her precise block handwriting.
A thick stack of files sat to her left, each stamped NorthBridge Energy Portfolio. She’d been combing through the accounts for weeks, reconciling projections against actual earnings, cash flow against liabilities, the pretty slide deck claims against what lived in the raw ledgers. It was a run-of-the-mill due diligence analysis for their venture capital division. Most analysts would skim the summaries, see nothing alarming, and call it a day.
But Norah didn’t skim.
A cleaning crew rattled a cart somewhere down the corridor, the faint smell of lemon polish threading under her door. Norah’s office was near the corner, with a view that caught a sliver of the Potomac and the glow of the Washington Monument. When she’d first moved into this office, she’d stood at the window for a long time, not looking at the monuments but her reflection—searching for a trace of the girl who’d left for college determined to outrun small town expectations.
Her phone buzzed across the desk, shattering her rhythm. She glanced at the screen, lips tightening.
With reluctance, she swiped to answer. “Hi, Mom.”
“Finally.” Her mother’s voice carried the same weary exasperation it always did. “I wasn’t sure you were ever going to pick up.”
“I’ve been busy. It’s closing week for an acquisition.”
“You’re always busy.” A pause. Then, with that pointed sweetness that made Norah brace, “I ran into someone at the club on Saturday.”
Norah froze, pen hovering above the margin of her worksheet. Her pulse tapped out of rhythm, an old reflex she despised. “Did you?”
“Mrs. Kelley. She said she talked to you last month. Such a lovely woman, always so gracious.”
Norah pressed her lips together. “I called to RSVP to Julie’s wedding, Mom. She asked how I was doing. That’s all.”
Her mother gave a hum of disbelief. “She said you didn’t even ask about Marshall. Honestly, Norah, after everything?—”
“Mom.” Norah pinched the bridge of her nose, cutting her off. “I’m not talking about this. Not now.”
“Not ever, you mean.” The sigh came heavy, disapproving.
Her throat tightened, but she swallowed it down the way she always did. “I have to go.”
“Of course you do. I assume you are coming to the wedding, then?”
“Yes, I’ll be there.” Julie Kelley was her best friend from high school. And of course, the younger sister of her ex-boyfriend. “I’ll talk to you later, Mom.”
The wedding would be the first time she had seen Marshall in fifteen years. Ever since he’d left her to join the Army, and she’d insisted he take his promise ring with him.
Norah ended the call before the guilt could dig deeper. She set the phone face-down, resisting the urge to shove it in a drawer. Her gaze drifted to the glass wall opposite her desk. The reflection that stared back was all straight dark hair, pinned back neatly, blazer fitted just so, posture taut. The picture of predictability. She clung to it like armor.
She looked past her reflection, watching headlights thread along the bridge like patient fireflies. DC after dark always felt a little unreal—buildings lit like stacked aquariums, people moving purposefully with takeout bags and briefcases,everything humming with the assumption that if you worked just a little harder, you could make something permanent.
If she left now, she could stop at the Thai place two blocks from her apartment—green curry, extra spicy, enough for leftovers. Or she could be sensible, cook the salmon she’d bought last night and pretend she didn’t resent cooking for one. Either way, Cleo would be waiting. Her long-haired tortie, with more attitude than affection, sprawled across the couch like she paid the rent herself.
Her apartment was the opposite of her office. The space was flooded with warm lamplight and decorated with linen curtains and a vintage rug she’d haggled for at an estate sale. There were a ridiculous number of cookbooks on the shelf—aspirational evidence of nights she swore she’d start inviting people over again. Mostly-unread novels were stacked on the end table like a to-be-lived life.
She absently touched the crocheted mouse near her stapler, then pulled her attention back to the screen. Back to the numbers. Just a little more to do.
She ran her analysis, feeding the NorthBridge Energy accounts into a macro she’d built years ago, more habit than anything else. The macro—Winslow_QC_v7.xlsm—was boringly named and obsessively maintained, a suite of sanity checks that had saved her embarrassment more than once. It cross-checked period-over-period variances, flagged odd rounding behaviors, ran supplemental ratio tests she’d coded on a bored Sunday afternoon while flipping through her college textbooks for a refresher.
She waited, tapping her pen against the desk. The cleaning crew’s cart rattled closer. A vacuum whined. Someone laughed softly in Spanish and then fell silent again.
She clicked through the screens as the analyses were presented one after the other.
Her pen stilled between taps.
This curve was wrong.
