She was lonely and I was alone, and somewhere between the chicken soup and the courtroom we simply stopped being an old widow and her housekeeper and became two people who belonged to each other. She comes to Clearwater's offices now, seventy-six and sharp as a blade, and she "consults," which mostly means she audits my new hires' expense reports for fun and terrifies everyone.
And here is the thing I built that I'm proudest of.
Clearwater hires people with records. Ex-convicts. The ones every other interview ends the second the background check comes back. I put a line in our hiring policy, and I made Cora read it before anyone else.
It says: We ask if you know how to work. Not whether your life has been perfect.
Because a seventy-four-year-old widow looked at a woman everyone else had thrown away, and saw a set of numbers that didn't add up, and decided to bother.
