Achebe, who had been managing Reuben’s care for 2 years and who had the manner of someone with no patience for unnecessary conversation and infinite patience for the work itself, came out at noon and told Imani and their mother that he was in recovery, that it had gone as well as it could go and that if everything continued on its current trajectory, he would be a strong candidate for the transplant list review in 18 months.
Her mother cried. Imani held her and didn’t. She cried later in the hospital bathroom by herself with the water running so no one would hear.
A brief, fierce, thing that lasted about 90 seconds and left her feeling wrung out and clean like weather after a storm.
She washed her face. She looked in the mirror. She thought, “You paid attention.” That was what she’d done.
That was the whole of it. She had paid attention when no one expected her to and she had done something with what she saw and things had moved as a result.
Not perfectly. Celestine’s legal proceedings would take months, possibly years and Fletcher Voss would have lawyers making his life complicated but survivable for the foreseeable future.
The world did not resolve cleanly. People with resources rarely faced consequences that felt fully proportionate.
She knew this. She had known it her whole life. But Reuben would get his surgery and Callaway Briggs would not spend the night of his own engagement party unconscious on the floor of his estate and 12 forged transfer authorizations were now in the hands of the FBI and a 9-month-old photograph was on the front page of the Tribune and a plan that had been built patiently over 8 months had collapsed in 72 hours because a woman in a blue uniform and yellow cleaning gloves had decided to pay attention.
She dried her face. She went back to her family. 3 weeks later on a Friday evening in early July, DeMarco called her.
“Mr.” “Briggs would like to know if you’re available to return to the estate.” He said.
“Same position, same terms, though he mentioned he’d be open to discussing a different role if you were interested.”
“What kind of different role?” “He didn’t specify.” “He said he’d rather discuss it in person.”
Imani looked out her kitchen window. The July evening was doing what July evenings do in Chicago when they decide to be generous.
Warm and golden and long, the sky staying light past 8:00. The South Side street outside looking almost like a photograph of itself at this hour, the way places sometimes look when the light is exactly right.
“Tell him I’ll come Monday.” She said. “7:00 a.m.” “I’ll let him know.” She hung up.
She stood at the window for a while. She thought about the estate and the garden and the fountain and the East Wing, which was empty now.
The folding tables gone, the documents seized, the room returned to its original furniture and its original silence.
