But in philosophical terms, too, waiting had been an important part of her parents’ ethic. Their projects took a long time; they sometimes took years to get access to important dig sites, or to make a breakthrough on even the smallest, most banal part of a research argument. As a result, they seemed almost preternaturally calm about delays of any kind. They treated waiting like it was opportunity, like it wasn’t really waiting at all. When Nora was eight, she’d gone with her dad to a meeting he had with a colleague at UC Riverside, and on the way back they’d gotten caught in a twelve-mile-long traffic backup. Outside her window, Nora could see drivers on every side getting frustrated—slapping at their steering wheels, rolling their eyes, craning their necks to try to see what was up ahead. But Nora’s dad had barely been bothered. He’d put the old Volvo in park and said, “Well, we’ll get there eventually.” For two hours he’d helped Nora practice her spelling, picking out words he chose at random from the sonorous sentences of whatever NPR program was on.

To this day, Nora was a really good speller.

But her patience?

It was starting to wear thin.

It’d been three days since she’d shaken on their deal and set tonight as the date for Will to come by, and while she’d done fine for the first two—working and reworking the eco-influencer site into something she thought was finally bulletproof, having her regular lunch with Emily, driving Mrs. Salas to an appointment with the eye doctor—today had felt interminable.

Of course part of the problem had been that it started early—golden-hour early, because her body was trained for it. Out on her balcony, she’d watched the sky go from dark to light, already fairly twitching with awareness that the sun had a long way to go before it would set again. In her office, she’d readied herself for the remote presentation she’d be making later that afternoon, frustrated each time she bumped an elbow against something on her desk or accidentally backed her chair into the side of Nonna’s old dresser. When her stomach had growled for lunch, she’d stood and stretched before she realized it was only 9:30 a.m. Second breakfast, then, fine, but she sure would’ve liked things to move faster.