By the time Nina reached her desk, someone had put a box of pastries on it with a note saying not to take the chocolate ones. The chocolate ones were all gone.
She moved the box to the filing cabinet and sat down without taking off her coat. Her screen came to life. Yesterday's unfinished note opened where she'd left it, a sentence stopping at the word because.
She couldn't remember the rest.
Across the aisle a junior reviewer was trying to explain something to a client over the phone. He had one hand pressed against his free ear and the other held out, asking the room for patience. Nina took off her coat as quietly as she could.
“No, I understand,” he said. “I'm looking at the same result.”
Nina opened her calendar. Three meetings. One could be moved; one was hers; the third had been moved so many times that the subject line began with apologies. She clicked away from it.
“Nina?” the reviewer mouthed.
She looked up. He held out a piece of paper, pointed to two lines. She read them while he kept the caller talking. An address abbreviated differently on two records. He had circled the second line hard enough to cut the paper.
She put her finger on the source dates. One had been collected years earlier. He looked from the dates to her, and she saw him understand.
“I'll call you back,” he told the caller, then muted himself before the call had fully ended. “Sorry. I knew that.”
“It's fine, Ethan.”
“He kept saying they were both current.”
“People do.”
She returned the page. He put it down, picked it up again and wrote a note in the margin. Nina watched him for a moment longer than necessary, then opened a blank message to Vivian.
She began with the hospital. Deleted it. Began with the complaint reference. That looked worse, as though she had already decided the person was nothing but a case.
She sent: Do you have ten minutes this morning? In person.
The reply came almost at once. Come up.
Nina took the folded note from her sweater pocket and put it in her bag. She didn't know whether she would show it to Vivian. Leaving it on her desk felt worse.
At the elevator she encountered a woman from sales carrying three flat boxes. The top one was sliding. Nina took it before it fell.
“Thank you. I said I could manage.”
“Which floor?”
“Yours, apparently. For lunch.”
The boxes contained framed certificates, the sort of gift the company gave itself when a client renewed. Nina held hers against her chest while the elevator rose. Inside, the frame was moving in its packaging.
“Is Vivian already in?” she asked.
“Isn't she always?”
On Vivian's floor the hall smelled of coffee and the sharp cleaner used before visitors arrived. Nina carried the box as far as the meeting room. Through the open door she could see people moving chairs, making a space along the wall for the lunch tables. The woman thanked her again and pointed toward Vivian's office.
Vivian was at the doorway, holding a phone away from her ear.
“Yes, I heard,” she said into it. “And I said it was my decision. Put it on mine.”
She ended the call and smiled at Nina. “What have you been volunteered for?”
“Nothing yet. I brought a certificate.”
“Then flee while you can.”
She held the office door open.
Nina had spent enough time in this room to know which chair was most comfortable. One corner of the visitor couch had a spring she disliked, so she took the chair by the window. Vivian sat on the couch instead of going behind her desk.
“Tell me.”
Nina began with the call. By the time she'd reached the hospital, she had taken her scarf off and folded it in her lap. Vivian listened without trying to hurry her, which was one of the things that had made Nina trust her in the first place. Other people asked a question and began preparing the next one while she answered. Vivian stayed with the answer.
“Martin Reed,” she said when Nina finished.
“Do you know him?”
“I know the name. A client connection. I didn't know he was in the hospital.”
“He had an old complaint reference. He said it concerned his family.”
“Did he say what he wanted?”
Nina smoothed the scarf. “He told me to ask Adam where we met.”
Vivian's eyebrows moved slightly. “Your Adam.”
“Yes.”
“That must have been unpleasant.”
It was so mild a word for the night she'd had that Nina nearly objected. Then she found she was grateful for it. She didn't want to sit in Vivian's office at nine in the morning while somebody described her marriage as frightening.
“I asked him,” she said.
“Adam?”
Nina nodded. “He said he knew Martin through work. He'd met him around some of the houses.”
“Then ask him about that.”
“I did.”
Vivian waited.
Nina looked at the plant beside the window. It had been in a smaller pot the last time she'd noticed. Now its leaves reached past the glass shelf and lay against the blind.
“It wasn't much of an answer.”
“Men can be remarkably thorough about the wrong things.”
Nina smiled because Vivian expected her to. The smile didn't last.
“I don't want to turn this into something it isn't,” she said.
“You don't know what it is yet.”
“I know.”
“How much did you sleep?”
Nina pulled one end of the scarf through her hand. “Some.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Eggs. Adam made eggs.”
The detail sat between them, absurdly intimate. Nina wished she hadn't supplied it.
Vivian leaned back. “What do you need from me?”
That was better. Nina put the scarf down.
“Permission to go back over my closure. I don't want somebody looking at the access history later and asking why I was in an old case at midnight.”
“Were you?”
“No. I thought about it.”
“Then thank you for asking first.”
She meant it kindly. Nina felt herself become younger in the chair.
“I signed the recommendation,” Nina said. “I'd like to know what he thinks I missed.”
“All right. Start with what you actually handled. If it takes you beyond that, come back to me.”
“I will.”
Vivian stood to get her phone, then hesitated, looking at Nina.
“Is there something you're not telling me?”
Nina felt the folded paper through the thin side of her bag. The address was only an address. She wasn't required to give Vivian every scrap a patient had handed her.
“He knew things about us,” she said.
“People find things out.”
“Not like this.”
Vivian sat down again. “Did he threaten you?”
“No. Not exactly.”
“If he does, this stops being a work matter.”
“I know.”
“Promise me.”
Nina looked at her. “Yes.”
Vivian put her hand over Nina's, briefly, then let go. Her own fingers were cool. On the inside of her wrist there was a small ink mark, a note she'd apparently started to write on herself and thought better of.
Nina had seen her do that in a hospital once. Different hospital, different night. Vivian had arrived after work with a phone charger, a bag of things Nina hadn't asked for and a clean shirt because Nina had been wearing the same one since morning. She had asked which of the two sisters wanted to go home first. Nina had started explaining why neither could, and Vivian had looked past her at Iris and asked again. Iris had gone home. Her father had not become worse because someone left the room.
Afterward Nina had been angry at Iris for sleeping. She was ashamed of it now, but the shame hadn't made the anger disappear when it might have helped.
“How's your father?” Vivian asked.
“Complaining about everything.”
“Good.”
“He says the neighbors put their trash cans in front of his hedge deliberately.”
“Do they?”
“Probably.”
Vivian laughed. “Tell him I'm on his side.”
Nina felt her shoulders lower.
There was a knock. A young woman opened the door a few inches, saw Nina and stopped.
“Sorry. Just the table numbers.”
“On my desk,” Vivian said. “Use the handwritten ones, not the first printout. And make sure the people setting up get lunch before everybody descends on it.”
The woman nodded and withdrew.
“You coming down?” Vivian asked Nina.
“I thought I might work through.”
“Come for ten minutes. Let someone feed you. Then go back to saving us from ourselves.”
Nina stood. “I'm not sure that's in my job description.”
“We'll amend it.”
She was smiling when she left the room.
Back at her desk, the pastry box was empty except for flakes and half a plain croissant. The junior reviewer held up his marked page.
“Sorted. Thank you.”
“Good.”
“I owe you one of the chocolate ones.”
“You owe me two. Interest.”
He grinned and turned back to his screen. Nina hung her scarf over the back of the chair.
Her phone lit. Adam had sent a message asking if she'd got there all right. She typed Yes. Busy and stopped before sending. Then she erased the second word and sent only Yes.
A few minutes later Vivian appeared in the aisle, carrying a plate from the meeting room: half a bagel and two strawberries, one with its green top still on. She set it down beside Nina's keyboard without looking at the screen.
“Eat something before you frighten him to death.”
“Who?”
“Whoever you're composing that face for.”
Nina smiled despite herself. She pulled the plate closer. Vivian put a hand on the back of her chair.
“And eat the bagel this time.”
Nina waited until Vivian had gone. She opened the case history and entered the reference from the hospital message.
The woman's name appeared first.
Beth Rowan.
Nina remembered her before she remembered why.