Out of the corner of her eye, the red light flickered on Zanne’s phone. The call with Marty was over—so soon?—and Ted was calling someone else. Zanne’s line rang. It was Ted.

“Reschedule Marty for tomorrow. And can you come in for a minute?” he asked.

Ted was looking at his screen when Zanne entered, her cue to wait quietly until his thought was finished. She put a few things in his inbox and collected the papers in his outbox, Gaby’s résumé among them.

“Go ahead and sit, Zanne.”

Sit? Apart from her interview, Ted had never asked her to sit. She always stood. The butterflies returned to swarm in her stomach. Zanne lowered herself into one of the Barcelona chairs across from Ted’s desk. It was insanely comfortable.

On the shelves behind Ted’s desk were the two Oscars he’d won for directing, all of his scripts, the original galaxyfinder from The Starfighter, and a cardboard replica of a row house that Flynn had made for his second-grade architecture residency. One of Zanne’s first special projects had been cataloguing bins of the Stablers’ personal items and selecting which to archive, which to convert to digital, and which to display. It had been an excruciatingly intimate task. For weeks, she’d pored over report cards, loose photographs, newspaper clippings, knitting needles, candy wrappers, novelty key rings, joke glasses, postcards, sketches, figure studies, various items with the children’s handprints inscribed, onesies, even a pair of Christmas boxers she hoped Ted had never worn. She’d had the scripts bound in leather, the way she used to dream she might do for her own one day, and she’d selected Flynn’s art project for this shelf. For the bookcase by the door—the bragging bookcase, Zanne came to think of it, because there were pictures of Holly and the kids with presidents, Bill Gates, and Muhammad Ali, and several of the other trophies Ted had won—Zanne had rescued a framed photo of Ted squatting beside a river. Over time, that photo had migrated across the room to join the galaxyfinder behind the desk, grouped with the mementos that clearly meant the most to him. In the picture he was laughing, looking happier than she’d ever witnessed herself.

“I liked Gabriela,” Ted said, still drafting whatever it was he was working on. “Friend of yours?”

“Yes.”

“Smart.” He scratched behind his ear and nodded for emphasis, causing Zanne’s heart to swell with pride. She felt the little prickly quills encasing it go pop. “Not sure she wants the job, though.”

“Oh.” Zanne squinted. “Did she say she didn’t want it?”

“It doesn’t make sense.” Ted tapped his touch pad. “Majors in public health, minors in anthropology, opens a tuberculosis clinic in Peru—and then what? Comes here?”