Simply careful. He was strategic in a way that had patience built into it so that the strategy only revealed itself when the timing required it. She'd mistaken the patience for passivity. It wasn't. It was more like reserve.
He kept things until they needed to be spent. Okay, she said. Talk to Priya. He nodded. That was that.
What she didn't say walking back toward their desks was that the Q1 issue had been bothering her for reasons beyond professional concern. She'd been at Mercer and Holt for 18 months. She'd built a reputation she was careful about. She was good at her job and she knew it. And she also knew that in places like this, being good at your job wasn't sufficient insulation against being the person who'd made the wrong call about when to push and when to wait.
She'd flagged the discrepancy. She'd been careful. And now she was waiting to see what the partner level did, which was the same as waiting to see whether the ground held. That night she was washing dishes when her phone bust. Marcus, you okay?
She looked at it. She thought about three different answers and then typed, thinking about Weston. Marcus, same. Marcus, you made the right call, flagging it. Nora, I know, Marcus, do you?
She put the phone down and looked at the window over the sink for a second. Then she picked it back up. Nora, working on it. Three dots. Then Lily says, "Hi." She also wants you to know she sank four shots in a row tonight at my mom's kitchen table with a broom handle and a marble.
Norah stared at this for a moment. Nora, that's not pool. Marcus, I have been informed it absolutely is. She laughed, standing at the sink. It wasn't a polite laugh or a forced one.
It was the kind that surprised her. She put the phone down and finished the dishes, and the Weston thing was still there, but it was sitting differently. The talk with Priya happened Thursday. In the corner of the third floor that had bad Wi-Fi and good sight lines, you could see both the elevator bank and the main staircase, which was the office equivalent of a corner table with your back to the wall. And Norah suspected Priya had chosen it deliberately.
Priya Sharma was 31, had been at Mercer and Halt for 4 years, and had the kind of face that defaulted to neutral in a way that made it hard to know what she was thinking until she decided to tell you. She told you in complete sentences without filler and she did not appear to need to be liked. Norah respected this extremely. Marcus laid out the situation. He did it the way he always laid things out clean, logical.
No editorializing. The Q1 figure, the flag, the three weeks, the monitoring email. When he finished, Pria was quiet for a moment, looking at the space between them. She said, "I pulled that same thread in August. I was told it was under review." Marcus said, "Who told you?" Grant's deputy, Melissa Chin.
She paused. Different chin. She added, looking at Nora. I get that a lot. Norah said, "The review was supposed to be completed before the final modeling phase." Priya said, "We're in the final modeling phase." Yes.
And the figures we're presenting are based on the uncorrected numbers. Yes. Priya sat back. Something moved in her expression. Not quite frustration, more like the specific feeling of having known something and being forced to stop politely pretending otherwise.
Grant's not going to fix it before the presentation. She said it wasn't a question. Marcus said, "I don't think he thinks it needs fixing." And you do. I think the client should know before they sign the next phase. Priya looked at him for a second.
Then she looked at Nora. What's your read? Priya asked her. Norah said, "I think Grant brought this account in and he's got a reason to want it clean. I think if we push through the right channel and he's the one who decides what the right channel is, we're going to get the same email we got 3 weeks ago.
She paused and I think when the numbers surface and they will, the client has their own people will have been the team that presented them. Pria was quiet. Then she said there's a compliance review scheduled for next month. Standard procedure rotates through accounts. I may have mentioned Weston to the compliance lead in passing.
Marcus said in passing in the context of asking whether the review timeline had any flexibility. Norah understood and does it. Priya looked at her with the expression of someone who had not done a thing and had also very specifically arranged for a thing to be possible. I was told it was being looked at. The three of them sat with this for a moment.
Marcus said, "So there's a track. There's a track." Priya confirmed. And if the figures were to be flagged formally and specifically in writing before the presentation, that would be documented. And if Grant sees the flag, then Grant sees the flag. She paused.
But Grant has also never been great at reading his own email during crunch weeks. Norah looked at Marcus. Marcus looked at Priya. Okay, he said. It was a plan that was not quite a plan, which was the only kind that worked at places like this.
That evening, Norah wrote the formal flag. She'd written it twice before, softer versions, careful once. This one was still careful, still professional, still correctly calibrated, but the numbers were specific and the concern was named and the documentation was clean. She CCed Marcus. She CCed Priya.
She addressed it to Melissa Chin, Grant's deputy, because that was the correct channel, and she sent it at 6:52 on Thursday evening, which was late enough that it wouldn't land in the middle of the day, but early enough that it was still a Thursday. Still this week, still documented as having happened. Then she closed her laptop and sat in her apartment and felt the particular quality of having done the correct thing and not yet knowing whether the ground was going to hold. Her phone buzzed. Marcus, good.