The weeks between the nine o'clock meeting and the November board meeting had a different quality to them than anything that had come before.
Not easier exactly. The work was still demanding and Harlan was still there and the oversight proposal was still sitting on the calendar like a thing that needed to be dealt with. But underneath all of that something had settled.
Something that had been held in tension for ten weeks had been released and the air in the building felt different to her now, not lighter, just cleaner. Like a room after a window has been opened.
She noticed it in small ways first.
The way she walked through the lobby in the mornings had changed. She had always walked through it with her shoulders back and her pace deliberate, professional armor that she wore so consi
