Page 71 of Picture Perfect

He gives us apologetic eyes. “Sorry, sometimes she wanders off. I hope she wasn’t bothering you.”

“No, not at all,” I tell him. “In fact, she may have really helped me out.”

He smiles, confused. Then takes her arm and escorts her to some other part of the civic center, presumably a bar mitzvah.

“That poor lady,” Delia says.

I take a breath. “Yeah.”

“She was obviously very confused.”

“About her location, sure, but about everything else…?”

Delia glances sharply at me. “You can’t be thinking of taking her advice, right?”

“Was it really so bad?”

“In the grand scheme, no, but in your situation,” she sighs and shrugs, “I don’t know.”

I stare at the door where the little old lady vanished through, feeling a bit like her myself. Have I wandered away from where I am supposed to be?

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25

Rowan

“You’re late,” Sawyer says as soon as I walk into conference room four of the home office. He is leaving on his honeymoon in a few hours and clearly is in no mood to deal with this last-minute business crap.

“Nice to know marriage has made you nicer,” I say with a smile as I sit.

“Sorry,” he says, surprising me.

“An apology? Marriagehaschanged you.”

He huffs, his eyes on the conference room doors. “Just tense.”

“So, why call me down here, anyway? I would have thought our offices at the club were sufficient.”

“Because Dixon—

Speak of the Devil. He barges into the room in the middle of Sawyer’s explanation. “Good to see you on time, Rowan. I wasn’t sure you could be bothered to make it.” He sits across from me.

I glance at Sawyer. “The Garrison settlement?”

“The Garrison settlement,” he says with a nod. “Dixon says there was no reason to pay out. I’d like to hear your reasons you approved it.”

“You read the affidavits?”

“I did.”

“Did you see the footage of where our signage was?”

“It doesn’t matter where the signage was,” Dixon jumps in. “Garrison has worked in construction for five years. He knows his way around a site, which means this was all just a scam because he knows the Cargill name. And even if it’s not a scam, he should have been more careful. Period.”

Sawyer cuts him with a look. “So, you’re saying the signage was not where it should have been?”

To his credit, Dixon does not back down from his withering glare. “I’m saying Garrison should have known better, and the placement of our signage, while not ideal, was not the reason for his fall. It would be easy enough to convince a judge of the same thing, and that is why we should not have paid out. Rowan was feeling generous for some reason.” He smirks at me. “Finally getting laid again?”

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