Chapter 6: Medical Leave

I didn't ask him about the envelope.

I told myself it was work, because it was Tuesday morning and I was starting a job.

Also, the man who had made me come twice before midnight did not deserve an interrogation at dawn.

At nine o'clock I sat down at my old desk by the south window and turned on the green lamp.

The studio gave me a library renovation on the north side and three sheets of someone else's drawings.

They also gave me a mug of coffee that said WORLD'S OKAYEST ARCHITECT.

"It's not an insult," said the girl at the next desk. "It's a compliment. Nobody's okayest."

I liked her at once.

My hand remembered the pencil before my head did.

By ten-thirty I had redrawn a stair that had bothered the partners for two weeks.

A man I'd never met walked over, stared at it and said a word I will not repeat.

I was grinning.

Then the front door opened, and I heard heels on the polished concrete.

Lindsey Fairchild stood in the entrance in a navy dress with a leather folder under her arm.

Her face was arranged into worried kindness.

"Mrs. Stanhope," she said, and the whole room went quiet. "I'm so sorry to interrupt. Could I speak to you privately?"

"Here is fine," I said.

"It's a medical matter."

"Then everyone can hear it. They're my coworkers."

She hesitated.

I could see her decide to push on.

"Mrs. Stanhope's family has asked me to deliver this," she said to the room, in a funeral voice.

"It's a letter from her physician."

She held out the folder.

I took it.

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