I opened the folder and watched Tegan’s eyes move from the first page to the silver lettering outside my office.
For the first time since she had stepped off the elevator, she had nothing to say.
The plaque beside the glass door carried my full name and the title my family had apparently never bothered to remember: Chief Financial Officer.
The first page in the folder was a request to accelerate a payment connected to work Tegan had done with our company.
It had already passed through the ordinary channels.
The exception she wanted was large enough that it required senior financial approval.
My approval, or the approval of someone acting in my place.
That was why my name was on the routing tab.
Tegan looked at the page again.
Then at me.
“So you’re…”
I waited.
“The CFO?” she finished.
“Yes.”
Behind her, Gage rubbed the back of his neck.
Tegan turned on him.
“You said she worked in finance.”
“I said she had a finance job.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
Gage glanced at me as though I might rescue him from the distinction.
I didn’t.
For most of my life, my family had reduced whatever I did into the smallest possible description.
When I was studying late, I was “doing homework.” When I started working long hours, I “sat behind a desk.” When I was promoted, Dad said, “That’s nice,” and immediately asked whether I could help Gage fix a spreadsheet for something he was doing.
Nobody had asked what the promotion actually meant.
Apparently Gage had carried that same version of me into his marriage.
Tegan recovered enough to pull out the chair across from my desk without being invited.
“Okay,” she said.
“Then this should actually be easier.”
There it was.
Not an apology.
Not embarrassment over what she had said about me.
Relief.
Because I was useful again.
She leaned toward the folder and tapped one fingernail near the top of the page.
“We just need the payment released early.
I was told it was waiting on approval.
Gage said since you work here, you could probably tell us who to talk to.”
Gage gave me a weak smile.
That same old family smile.
The one that meant, Come on.
Make this easy.
I turned the page.
The request itself wasn’t mysterious.
There was a normal payment schedule under the agreement, and Tegan wanted an exception.
Someone on my team had correctly routed the request upward because the amount and timing fell outside what they could authorize on their own.
Nothing on the page required anger.
Nothing required revenge.
That mattered.
Because the easiest thing in the world would have been to let the previous night make the decision for me.
I could have slammed the folder shut.
I could have told them to get out.
I could have enjoyed watching Tegan realize that the woman she didn’t want near her barbecue was the woman whose approval she had come searching for.
Instead, I kept reading.
Tegan mistook my silence for cooperation.
“We need it moved quickly,” she said.
“Ideally today.”
