Ruth came back with the sheet Nina had left on her desk.
“Write what you're changing.”
Nina crossed out the separation she'd proposed by list category. Beneath it she wrote that the underlying received response had to be checked for its source.
Ruth took the page. “Come and say it. They're asking me why.”
The staff members still working that part of the queue had gathered by a low cabinet. One kept looking toward the window, where the man with the string-tied folder had put his coat on. The woman who'd made the first call stood with a notebook pressed against her chest.
Helen told the staff to hold the Fieldspan-dependent cases and keep their received records. The ordinary work would continue.
“We already told people these were independent,” the woman with the notebook said.
Nina said, “I told you to treat them that way.”
The woman looked at her. “Last year.”
“And today I told Ruth how to separate them. That was wrong too.”
“So what am I telling the woman I've just called?”
“Has she given you a way to call back?” Helen asked.
“Yes. She's at work. She went outside to speak to me.”
“Ask if she can speak now. If she can't, we give her a time she chooses. I'll stay for it.”
The woman nodded but didn't move. “Is the new answer that we think her ex is right?”
“No,” Nina said. “Tell her we don't have the answer we said we had. It doesn't make her ex right.”
“Then I need that written so I don't say it wrong.”
Nina wrote it on Ruth's sheet. The woman read it, crossed out a word that no customer would use and handed it back. They used hers.
Helen asked for the affected incoming responses to be identified before further decisions used them. Ruth divided the list. A man holding a handful of envelopes said he could do an hour but someone else would have to finish his callbacks. Another staff member had a bus she couldn't miss. Ruth didn't ask why. She took the end of that woman's list and gave the manager the complaints.
“Who does the ten o'clock calls tomorrow?” someone asked.
“Put them on my list until we know.”
“You've already got—”
“I can see what I've got. Put them there.”
Ruth went to the window. Nina went with her.
The man stood when they approached. “I have to go.”
“We're trying your daughter now,” Ruth said. “If you want us to.”
He stared at her, then looked at the clock. It was after four. “She said after four. Yes.”
Ruth used the desk phone. She introduced herself, apologized for the repeated calls at the wrong time and asked if it was possible to speak. Nina heard a distant voice, low and thick with sleep. The man leaned toward the phone and then checked himself.
“No, Dad's here,” Ruth said. “He's been here this afternoon.”
The daughter said something sharply enough for Nina to hear the tone without the words. Her father turned his face away.
“He didn't need to come again. I told you.”
“I know,” he said.
Ruth asked the household question. The daughter answered it. It took less than a minute. Then she asked whether they had finished.
Ruth looked at Nina. Nina shook her head.
“Not yet,” Ruth said. “There's an older response we have to check here.”
“Then what else do you need me to say?”
“Nothing more today.”
“Then why is he still there?”
Nina sat in the spare chair. “I told them how to separate the cases. I was wrong. This part's ours to finish.”
“Are you his caseworker?”
“No.”
“Then can I speak to the person who is?”
Nina moved back. Ruth took the call off speaker and listened. The man had begun looking through the glass at the people passing outside, his mouth set hard. When Ruth offered him the handset, he took it and said, “Don't get up. I'm going now.”
He listened for a few seconds.
“Because I wanted it done.”
He gave the handset back. Ruth wrote the agreed contact arrangement, read it to the daughter and put it in the place the call list actually used. She offered the man a copy. He said yes.
While the printer ran, he looked at Nina.
“You said today.”
“I said they could keep working it today. I made it sound like I knew it would finish.”
“Same thing to me.”
“Yes.”
“She loses sleep. I lose money. You all get paid.”
Nina held the chair she'd been about to move out of his way. “I can't undo today.”
“No. You can't.”
He took the page from Ruth and put it inside the string. She asked whether he wanted the next answer by phone instead of coming in. He said, “You can try me first. Her after four. It says it there.”
“It does.”
Nina moved the chair. He walked past her with his folder under his arm, leaving a faint damp mark where his coat had been.
Ruth watched until he'd gone through the lobby door. Then she turned to the two received responses the staff had brought.
“This is the difference I'm having trouble seeing. Show me while I'm still here.”
Nina sat beside her and opened the underlying response. Ruth called the staff member taking that part of the list. Together they tried the next one; Nina let the woman keep the mouse. When she reached a source she couldn't establish, she put it aside for review.
“Slower,” Ruth said. “But I can use that.”
Back in the small room, Helen asked whether Nina wanted to be described in the notes as an independent adviser.
Nina wanted it with an intensity that embarrassed her. The phrase gave her a chair on the safe side of the table, outside the old decision she had brought in.
“Not for this,” she said. “I'm a source for what I did and what I received.”
Helen nodded and changed the description.
Helen added Nina and Adam's compared references to the official supplier request. While they waited, Ruth came in to say the customer could take her callback in ten minutes. Helen set an alarm.
Ethan called through the client channel. Helen told him Nina was present. There was a silence long enough for Nina to hear a door close at his end.
“Okay,” he said.
Helen explained the question and what Northreach had retained. Ethan asked her to identify the two received references separately. Nina had been about to answer for her; she waited while Helen did it.
“I've got the request,” Ethan said. “I'll answer Helen. I can't reopen your access, Nina.”
“I need to know if the two submissions came from the same job.”
“So does she.”
A keyboard sounded at his end. “I was taught to call separate submissions independent. I'm going to need the source path to say more than that.”
Nina pictured him in the meeting room, opening a file because she'd told him it was worth opening.
“Don't use my description,” Nina said.
“I wasn't going to.”
Before they ended, Ethan asked her to add one other item: an incoming adverse-profile notice with the same special-case source category. Helen opened the item Ruth had brought in.
Nina's name was on it.
She leaned forward before she could stop herself.
“What is that?”
Helen read the heading and the date. Day two. The afternoon Nina had stood outside Threadline with no badge and then failed Waymark's recovery check.
“Supplier notice,” Helen said. “Distributed to participating recipients.”
Nina read the incident reference. It wasn't the number she'd written on her parking ticket. She made herself keep that distinction while her body wanted the two numbers to be the same answer.
Ethan asked Helen to add its reference to the request. He would check the source of that too.
After he hung up, Nina remained bent toward the page.
For two days her damaged life had seemed to be arriving in separate pieces: an employer's displeasure, a platform's recovery problem, a stranger at a car. Here was something one participant had actually received about her, kept before she knew to ask for it.
Helen's alarm sounded. She sent the final question and went to join Ruth for the callback. Nina almost called her back to ask about her own notice. Instead she pulled Beth's received records toward her.