“What face?”
“The face where there’s another thing.”
“That’s not a face.”
“It’s absolutely a face.”
She tried not to smile.
Failed.
Then she pulled her hand away and turned another page.
Carisi watched her.
“There is another thing.”
“There is a smaller thing.”
“That sentence has never ended well.”
Amanda slid the page toward him.
This one contained a proposed schedule.
Several sections had been crossed out.
Others had been changed.
Carisi studied the annotations.
“You asked them to change all this?”
“I asked them what was actually necessary and what was just the way somebody had always done it.”
A slow smile appeared on his face.
“How’d that go?”
“They stopped enjoying the meeting around minute nine.”
He laughed again.
That sounded like her.
Not the frightened Amanda who had waited outside the door with the folder pressed against her chest.
The Amanda who noticed weak points, asked the question everybody else avoided, and refused to be intimidated by a rule just because somebody had typed it on official paper.
“And they agreed?” he asked.
“To most of it.”
“Most?”
She pointed at two remaining sections.
“These are the pieces we’d have to figure out.
Together.”
Together.
Carisi let the word settle.
Three days earlier, Amanda had been offered something that could affect both of them.
Her first instinct had been to protect their relationship by solving the problem herself.
But somewhere between the first meeting and the final version of the paperwork, she had stopped trying to create a perfect answer.
She had created a question they could answer together.
That was the real decision.
Not accepting.
Not refusing.
Coming home with the truth.
Late, perhaps.
Messy, certainly.
But home.
Carisi closed the folder.
Amanda’s expression immediately sharpened.
“Why are you closing it?”
“Because we’re not finishing this conversation at the table.”
“Why?”
“Because we’ve been standing and sitting around that folder like it’s going to arrest somebody.”
“You were the one glaring at it.”
“I thought it was destroying my life.”
Amanda stood.
“You really are dramatic.”
He pointed at her.
“Still not dramatic.”
