Page 43 of ClickBack

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.”

“I liked not feeling I had to finish being myself quickly.”

I hadn’t planned to say that. She doesn’t rush to answer, and I am glad. I want to hear it myself without a lesson attached.

Then somebody calls her from the stage. Mr. Lewis has arrived with tools and opinions.

“I want the rest of this story,” she tells me.

“I want to hear whether the father got new shoes.”

“He got directions to the costume rack. Call me later.”

After we hang up, I add the opening dates to my calendar. I don’t promise myself a trip before checking what else is there, but I leave the dates visible. Then I go downstairs, open the windows, and let the afternoon be an afternoon until it is time to collect Zion.

While I am looking for my bag, I notice Rae tagged me in yesterday’s pictures. The first shows Zion holding his sneakers. In the next, the three of us stand beside the cake. My daughter’s arm is around my waist. I look happy in a way I remember having to work at in the beginning and then forgetting to arrange.

Rae has tagged Maison T beneath the photograph. I open the boutique’s page and find the picture there, too, under Client style. Giselle in our Featured Edit.

I stare at it, startled by the distance between putting on an outfit in my bedroom and finding myself on a store’s page. There is a comment from Ariya Harper.

She wore it better.

I read it again. The woman whose clothes I bought has seen me wearing them. I had imagined borrowing something from her, some visible permission to be looked at. In the photograph, though, I am plainly myself, standing with my child and my grandson, holding the serving knife Rae would not let me use until she finished taking pictures.

I save the photograph. Then I leave to get my grandson before his mother has reason to reopen the investigation.

Monday morning, Bradley has a new name for the leadership retreat.

He calls it a strategic development investment. The invoice still says what it said on Friday, and twelve people still spent part of the afternoon lying on mats while a man played a gong.

I sit at my dining table, open the expense detail, and call him.

“I’m not objecting to the retreat,” I tell him. “I need the costs separated so we can report them correctly.”

“Couldn’t it stay under miscellaneous?”

“Not with a quarter million dollars already keeping it company.”

He goes quiet. I scroll through the entries while he finds the file on his end.

This is the part people miss when they ask whether I like working with numbers. The numbers sit where someone puts them. It is the person who has to explain why they are there. Bradley is not hiding a grand conspiracy. He has been postponing several ordinary decisions until they have become one very expensive thing he no longer wants to open.

We work through the largest items. When he apologizes for how long it is taking, I tell him it will take longer if he keeps apologizing. He laughs, relieved, and finds the next invoice.

By the time we finish, my coffee is cold and I have missed a message from Jarrett.

Jarrett: Made it. How’s your morning?

I answer before opening anything else.

Me: I’ve spent it rescuing a quarter million dollars from miscellaneous.

Jarrett: Should I congratulate you or call somebody?

Me: Congratulations will do. We found the paperwork.