Page 5 of Shifting Gears

Chapter 2

“That’s the last of it,MissCromwell.”

The sweaty man in charge of the moving crew closes the truck, gesturing for his co-workers to climb into the cab, and Eleanor relaxes incrementally. The morning has been loud and a little overwhelming with the loading and unloading of boxes and the long drive from the city. She’s looking forward to a bit of solitude.

“Thank you,” Eleanor says, politely ignoring the dampness of the hand he extends. The handshake is brief, at least, and Eleanor resists the urge to wipe her palm afterward. “I appreciate all of your hard work.”

What Eleanor wishes more than anything is for this conversation to be over. She’s paid them and the job is done, and now he’s trying to make small talk when all Eleanor wants is to go inside, lock the door, and not interact with another human for as long as possible. It’s a great relief when he finally climbs into the truck and trundles back down her long gravel driveway.

Once the smell of truck exhaust has eased, Eleanor takes a deep lungful of clean air. The May warmth around her is nice without being too hot, there are birds chirping, and she can hear the soft sound of the nearby water lapping at the shore behind the house. Besides that, no other sounds permeate the woods—no car horns, no wailing sirens, no loud voices.

It’s quiet.

This whole endeavour feels a little hare-brained. Kayla and Ash theorized that the only way to force Eleanor to take a vacation would be to give her a project to do while she’s away,and the need for someone to do a feasibility study presented the perfect opportunity. Eleanor had agreed not because she intends on vacationing but because it’s as good a way as any to make sure this gets doneright. If she’s going to succeed in her goal of pushing her environmental projects through, she’d rather oversee every step of the process than leave it up to someone who might screw it up.

The house she’s decided to rent is rustic and simple, a reddish-wood-cabin exterior with a bright and lofty open-concept design on the inside. The large windows at the back face a gorgeous bay fed by a wide river. The property is mostly engulfed by woods, and the back porch has a long set of rickety stairs leading down to a small private dock and an empty boathouse. It’s also stunningly isolated. The closest neighbouring house is several kilometres down the road in either direction.

Eleanor toured dozens of similar cottages while she prepared this trip. For some reason, this is the one that stuck. There’s nothing particularly special about it, or about Riverwalk, the closest piece of civilization to the house she’s renting. In fact, the town is completely, totally unremarkable. It looks like it never quite left 1998 and probably saw its peak in the ’80s. Around the time, in fact, that CromTech still operated in the area. It has potential, though. Before she’s even started her study, Eleanor can imagine a dozen improvements that could make life better here.

It’s small and anonymous and perfect. An ideal place to disappear.

* * *

Eleanor’s transition into her newfound isolation is bumpy at first.

At Kayla and Ash’s prompting, and despite what she’d told herself about using this trip for work, she gives herself some time to relax before she plans to start her survey, but by the end of the first day, she comes to the realization that she might have forgottenhow. She sits in the fresh air, tinkers with old research and designs she hasn’t had time to look at in years, and cooks for herself rather than living on takeout, but by the third day, the guilt of such prolonged unproductivity is eating her alive.

Since this trip is supposed to be a vacation with a small project to keep her busy, there are no meetings for Eleanor to attend. No day planner, no phone ringing off the hook, nobody knocking on her office door. She doesn’t even need to leave the house for a few days, and yet she still calls Kayla or Ash every few hours to check up. She insists on being kept in the loop, now filling her usual working hours with research on local construction or pricing labour and materials.

Even so, it feels good to have a routine that doesn’t involve sleeping at the office. Every day, Eleanor wakes up to the warm, yellow-painted walls of her new bedroom, makes coffee, and has breakfast on the porch overlooking the sunrise on the water. She works until her body protests as per usual, but she falls asleep with a book in her hand instead of at her laptop.

It’s a comforting little cycle. It’s significantly healthier than her routine back home, at least, with much less human interaction, and that’s enough of an improvement.

As much as Eleanor enjoys her solitude, it’s only so long before she needs to leave it. She’s running low on food by the start of the third week, and so, armed with a credit card and a grocery list, she ventures into Riverwalk.

The supermarket is tiny, all fluorescent lights and linoleum flooring that looks like it’s been there for generations. Eleanor explores it aisle by narrow aisle, lamenting the limited produce selection, and once she’s filled her cart, she checks out with theonly available cashier—a bored-looking teenager chewing gum with gusto as she expertly zips Eleanor’s groceries across the scanner.

The girl is only halfway through the cart when, out of nowhere, she points at Eleanor’s hands, her tone startlingly accusatory.

“You a fan of CromTech?”

Eleanor’s stomach drops.

“What?” Eleanor glances down at where the girl is pointing—where she has her wallet in one hand and her keys in the other. She’s infinitely grateful that nobody else is in the store on a Monday morning. The last thing she needs is to fumble this impromptu interrogation in front of an audience.

She’s already regretting leaving the house.

“Your key chain says CromTech,” the girl says, glowering at her as she types in the code for Eleanor’s tragically unripe bananas. “That company’s a sore subject in Riverwalk.”

“Oh,” Eleanor says, swallowing past the tumult happening in her stomach. She tucks her keys into her purse, branded key chain and all. “No. I…got it for free. They give them out at conferences.”

It’s not a total lie—it is the same key chain CromTech uses at tech fairs, and Eleanor put it on her keys so long ago that she’d completely forgotten it was there. She could kick herself for forgetting to remove it.

“Yeah, well, half the town lost their jobs because of them,” the cashier says, shoving Eleanor’s groceries toward her. “Lost their homes, lost everything. Piece of advice—if you don’t want people to assume you support ’em, take the key chain off.”

“Right,” Eleanor says. She takes her bags quickly after tapping her card, giving the girl a polite nod as she prepares to bolt. She’d known that the company might be less than belovedhere, but this level of dislike, even so many years later, is unexpected. “I will. Thanks.”

Eleanor rips the key chain free as soon as she’s in the car. She shoves it into the glove compartment under a pile of napkins, making a mental note to add a line to her report—PR intervention needed.

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