CHAPTER 67: Amara

POV: Selene Castellano

Amara Osei arrived twenty minutes before everyone else.

Selene noticed because she and Avalon arrived fifteen minutes early themselves which was Avalon’s standard operating procedure for anything board related and she’d stopped fighting it. She’d learned to bring a book.

She didn’t need the book tonight because Amara was already there at the bar with a glass of water not wine, reading something on her phone with the focused attention of someone who was actually using the time.

Selene liked her immediately.

She told herself to slow down on that.

Thomas had recommended her, he had helped them and used them simultaneously and whose motives she still held at a slight arm’s length even now. Liking someone Thomas recommended on sight felt careless.

She watched Amara for a moment before they crossed the room.

Forty three years old. The photos online hadn’t quite captured the specific quality of her stillness. The stillness of someone who was entirely comfortable taking up exactly the amount of space she occupied and no more and no less.

Avalon introduced them.

Amara shook hands with the directness of someone who had decided long ago that a handshake was just a handshake and not a performance requiring preparation.

“I’ve read your paper,” Selene said. “The governance frameworks one.”

Amara looked at her properly for the first time. “Which part interested you most?”

“The section on accountability gaps between board intention and executive action,” Selene said. “Specifically the part about how boards often approve the right principles and then create structures that make those principles practically impossible to implement.”

Amara nodded slowly. “That’s the section most people skip.”

“I know because I almost did.”

“What stopped you?”

“It had a footnote that annoyed me and I followed it.”

Something shifted in Amara’s expression.

“I write footnotes specifically to be followed,” she said.

Avalon had been standing slightly back during this exchange with the expression he wore when he was watching something he hadn’t anticipated and was deciding how he felt about it. Selene knew that expression. It usually meant he was quietly pleased about something.

The dinner was twelve people around a long table in a private room that Robert Chen had chosen with his usual combination of good taste and slight excess.

Selene sat beside Amara.

Not by accident. She’d looked at the placement when they were shown to their seats and moved her card without asking anyone’s permission because she’d decided she wanted to continue the conversation from the bar and she was done asking permission for things that were simply reasonable.

Avalon caught her doing it and said nothing.

Progress.

Over the first course Amara talked about the nonprofits she’d been advising.

“The issue with most governance structures,” she said, breaking a piece of bread “is that they’re designed to prevent the last disaster. Nobody designs for the disaster that hasn’t happened yet.”

“Pierce Holdings has had several last disasters recently,” Selene said.

“I know. I read everything before I agreed to the conversation with Thomas.” She looked at Selene directly. “I almost didn’t take the meeting.”

“Why did you?”

“Because of you specifically.”

Selene hadn’t expected that.

“The depositions,” Amara said. “I read the transcripts of both of you but you particularly.” She paused. “Most people in that position would have performed but didn’t. You said things that were inconvenient and true and you said them anyway.” She picked up her water glass. “I find that interesting in a person.”

Selene didn’t know what to do with that so she said nothing for a moment.

“Thomas didn’t mention that,” she said finally.

“Thomas doesn’t know. I didn’t tell him why I agreed.” A pause. “Thomas Reeves is a man who is very good at seeing what serves his interests. He saw this serving his interests and he was right but, my reasons were my own.”

Under the table Selene felt Avalon’s hand find hers briefly.

He’d heard.

She squeezed back.

Later on the way home Avalon drove and Selene sat with her shoes off the way she did when she was processing something.

“Well,” he said.

“Well,” she agreed.

“Thomas’s recommendation.”

“Was correct for the wrong reasons.”

“Does it matter if the outcome is right?”

Selene thought about it. “No. But I want her to know we see the difference.”

“She already knows,” Avalon said. “That’s why she told you.”

He was right.

She looked out the window at the city going past.

“She said I was interesting,” Selene said.

“You are interesting.”

“You’re required to say that.”

“I said it before I was required to,” he said. “Under oath, in front of a lawyer. So.”

She looked at him.

He was watching the road but the corner of his mouth was doing the thing.

“That’s a terrible joke,” she said.

“It’s an accurate reference.”

“Same thing sometimes.”

He laughed.

She put her feet up on the dashboard which he hated and he didn’t say anything about it which meant he was in a good mood which meant the evening had been good for him too, not just professionally but actually good.

She looked at the city and thought about Amara Osei and footnotes designed to be followed.

Thought about people who built things for disasters that hadn’t happened yet.

Thought about what it meant to design for the future rather than protect against the past.

Something was forming at the edges of her thinking that wasn’t ready yet.

She left it there.

Let it form on its own time.

Her phone lit the seat beside her.

Maya.

A photo.

No caption.

Just Maya at what looked like a construction site in work boots and a hard hat, grinning at the camera with the grin of someone who was not where they expected to be and had discovered they liked it there.

Selene showed Avalon at a red light.

He looked at it for a moment.

“She’s wearing a hard hat,” he said.

“She is.”

“Maya owns a hard hat.”

“Apparently she does now.”

The light changed.

Avalon drove while Selene held the phone with Maya’s grinning face on the screen and felt the joy of watching someone you love discover something new about themselves in real time.