The steward’s office overlooked cranes and rails and men who were over coffee and into wages. He had printed the memo from the examiner and pinned it above his desk like a saint’s card. “It keeps the foremen from inventing their own rules,” he said. “Sometimes pride needs a piece of paper.”
Emilia sat in the extra chair, hair pinned, jacket open, pen working. She asked him for times and checked them against a schedule Nora had color-coded within an inch of its life. This is a thing about watching her: the power isn’t just what she says—it’s how she makes other people hear their own dignity out loud.
“You’re doing this,” she told him. “Not me.”
He reddened in a way that suited a good man. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that so I can keep thanking you.”
On the way out, a crane oper
