Chapter 7: The Offer
Dr.
Okafor came in first.
The division head followed and sat back down in his chair.
He picked up his pen, looked at it, then set it down again.
"We've discussed it," he said, "and we're not going to make you wait for a formal letter."
He looked at Walter.
"Mr.
Ellison.
We'd like to offer you the senior consultant position.
Full terms as discussed.
Start date flexible within the next thirty days."
Walter's hands went still on the folder.
He nodded once.
"Thank you."
The division head turned to Courtney.
"Ms.
Holloway.
Your application for the senior coordinator role was strong.
That position has been open for six weeks.
We'd like to offer it to you — separate from the consultant role, same division, different scope."
Courtney looked at him.
"That wasn't what I applied for."
"No.
But it's what we need, and you're the right fit for it.
The salary is higher than the role you applied for.
The work is more complex." He folded his hands.
"You'd be working closely with the senior consultant."
She looked at Walter.
He was watching her with a neutral expression, giving her nothing, letting her decide without the weight of his opinion in the room.
She looked back at the division head.
"I'd like to see the full terms before I confirm," she said.
"Of course." He slid a folder across the table.
"Take the weekend."
Courtney took the folder.
She didn't open it.
"Can I ask you something?" she said.
"Go ahead."
"The conditional offer Dr.
Okafor gave me — the second interview with Mr.
Ellison conducting it.
Was this always the plan?
Were you testing both of us?"
The division head looked at Dr.
Okafor.
Dr.
Okafor looked at Courtney with the same measured calm she had carried since the lobby on that first day.
"We were testing the situation," she said.
"Not the candidates.
We needed to know whether what happened in that lobby was a pattern of behavior or a moment of poor judgment."
"And?"
"You came back," Dr.
Okafor said simply.
"And you didn't come back with excuses.
Those are two different things."
Courtney set the folder on the table in front of her.
She pressed her palm flat against the cover.
She thought about her father on a job site in a hard hat and work boots, twenty years ago, handing her a set of drawings and telling her to find what was wrong with them before he would tell her what he saw.
She thought about Walter Ellison standing in the lobby with his worn folder and his graying beard and his hand paused above the back of a chair someone had moved away from him.
She thought about four other lobbies she hadn't been in.
Four other chairs.
"I'll take it," she said.
She kept her palm on the folder.
"I don't need the weekend."
The division head looked at her.
Then, for the first time, he smiled.
Not a large smile.
The kind that means something has landed the way it was supposed to.
He extended his hand.
She shook it.
Walter was watching her.
She turned to him.
He extended his hand across the table.
She took it.
His grip was firm and dry and it lasted exactly the right amount of time.
"Ms.
Holloway," he said.
"Mr.
Ellison."
He picked up his folder.
He didn't look entirely like a man who had just won something.
He looked like a man who had just been given permission to go back to work.
May you like
Those are different things too.
The winter light came through the window and lay across the table in a long pale stripe, and for a moment nobody in the room moved, and the building held them all up the way a well-built thing is supposed to.
