Chapter One
Grace
When I walked out of the front door of my apartment building, I realized that this morning was one of those perfect, Chicago summer mornings. The temperature was warm, the humidity was low, and the whole city was awash in the lush greenery that made slogging through the cold, wet winters totally worth it. I smiled as I smoothed my new, red sheath dress and bent to wipe a bit of dirt off of the matching pumps I'd bought on my last trip to my favorite boutiques on Michigan Avenue. I dug into my bag, looking for my sunglasses, and quickly found them, then checked to make sure I had the presentation I was drafting for next month's meeting. When I was certain that everything was where it was supposed to be, I turned and headed toward the L, breathing deeply and feeling cheerfully optimistic.
A half an hour later, I stepped inside the large, glass and steel office building where I worked as a CPA for a large tech company. I stopped for a moment and thought about how far I'd come and how different my life was from my rural upbringing in northern Indiana. When I was a child, I couldn't have imagined living in this city or working at a job like the one I had now. The only thing that I had known back then was scripture and dutiful service to the community.
I shook my head, trying to let go of the memories that hovered in the recesses of my mind as I waved at Gertie, the security guard who sat watching the front desk, and headed for the bank of elevators that would take me up to the 37th floor.
I punched the up button and thought about how I loved my family and missed them all terribly, but from the time I was a young child, I knew that following the traditions of the Amish had never felt right to me. Thankfully my parents had been accepting of my differences and had supported me when I announced that, after my rumpspringa, I'd chosen not to be baptized, but instead would be applying to the University of Chicago so that I could pursue a degree in finance.
The car arrived and I stepped into it, holding the door for a man who was consulting a piece of paper before choosing a floor. I smiled and recalled how the next spring, against all odds, I'd received a letter of acceptance from UC and an award from the Amish Descendant Scholarship Fund covering the cost of tuition and room and board for all four years. That summer, my sister Faith got engaged to Samuel Yoder and I spent the entire time before I left for college helping plant celery and get the house ready for the October nuptials. I felt sad that I'd be missing out on such a happy celebration, but Mamm reassured me that there would be others and that I would always be welcome in our family home.
We stopped on the 25th floor and the man got out. I recalled how tensions rose in the community when word got back to the bishop of our district who also happened to be my father's older brother. He'd warned Dat and Mamm that if I left, I'd not be welcome back in the church unless I agreed to be baptized. Dat had stood firm against the edict and told his brother that all of his children, baptized or not, were welcome in their own home at any time. My uncle didn't take the news well and it made things tense when I'd return home for a visit.
The elevator dinged as I reached the 27th floor, and when the doors opened, I found myself standing face to face with my boss, Mike Killian.
"Good morning, Mike!" I said as I waved and headed toward my office.
"Morning, kid," Mike grunted as he sipped from a Styrofoam coffee cup and scanned the screen of his phone. "Oh, hey, Grace, I need to talk to you about the New York presentation. Come by around ten, will you?"
"Sure thing, Mike," I said as I pushed open the glass doors that led to the front lobby of Riser Tech. "I'll drop my things off and come down to your office." Mike simply nodded before disappearing into the elevator.
I said good morning to the front desk staff and then headed back to my own office, tucked away in the back of the accounting department. The year before I had been promoted and made assistant to the director of auditing. Our department examined potential new client accounts and reconciled the books before Riser Tech did any business with them, and then advised them on what technology they'd need to adopt in order to complete a seamless transition with the Riser Tech team who would manage their IT needs. Riser Tech had suffered a major blow the year before when it took on a client who was not entirely solvent. The company then went bankrupt after we'd signed all the contracts. Now tha
t Riser was poised to merge with Mija-Walco, the CEO and executives who all worked on the 28th floor had made it a priority to avoid repetition of the mistake and had spent time formulating a plan to prevent it from ever happening again. I was now part of a six-member team whose sole focus was vetting clients and laying out their options.
I spent the better part of the morning reading and responding to email as well as dealing with questions from the accounting staff that ran reports for our team. I had just finished putting together a presentation that I was scheduled to make later in the week when the alarm on my computer went off letting me know it was time to get down to Mike's office. I saved the file I was working on and grabbed the file on the Mija Oil account and headed out.
"Mike?" I said tapping lightly on his door as I peered into his office. He was on the phone and waved me in pointing toward one of the chairs across from his long desk. I crossed the room and took a seat facing the floor to ceiling glass windows that overlooked the Chicago River. No matter how many meetings I attended in Mike's office, I never lost the sense of awe and wonder I felt the first time I looked out those windows and saw the sunlight sparkling on the water. Mike joked about how they'd put him in this office because it was out of hearing range of anyone who mattered, but the reality was that he worked harder than anyone else at the company and spent more time at the office than he did at home. This office, and every piece of uniquely crafted furniture and artwork in it, was Mike's reward for a job well done.
"Yeah, yeah, I get it," he said nodding impatiently as he looked at me and rolled his eyes dramatically. "I will. New York will be the shit, I promise, Big Guy. Okay, gotta run! Yeah, you, too. Bye!"
He sighed heavily as he slammed the phone down then raised his hands over his head declaring, "Touchdown!"
"What was that about?" I laughed as I watched him pull a can of lime seltzer water out from the small refrigerator he kept under his desk and then pop the top.
"The boss is riding my ass about the Mija-WalCo merger," he said before taking a long drink from the can. "He's worried that Mija and company are going to walk away from the deal unless we come up with something to knock their socks off with. I keep telling him that we are solid, but he's been listening to those useless wankers on the board again."
"That must be frustrating," I said as I tossed the file of papers toward him. The folder made a satisfying thwack on the desk as it landed. "Here are the numbers for Mija Oil. Jess and I stayed late, running them twice. They look good on paper, and their investment portfolio is impeccable, but when we look at their current technology, there's a problem."
"Oh, and what's that?" Mike asked as he grabbed the file and began thumbing through it. His cell phone went off and he pulled it out of his pocket, glanced at it, and tucked it away again before looking up at me expectantly.
"We're not sure yet, but there's something off," I said shaking my head. "We're going to pull it apart today and check everything before we make any recommendations. I don't want to draw the wrong conclusions based on sketchy evidence, but I don't want us okaying them if there's something wrong."
"Good thinking," he nodded as he continued reading the report. "Will you be ready by the time we meet with them?"
"Next month? Yes, we should have had more than enough time to track it all down and figure out what's going on," I nodded. "Jess is going to head out on the road this week and interview a few of their subsidiaries. I think that will give is a well-rounded picture of what we're looking at."
"Great job, Grace!" Mike said as he looked up from the file and smiled at me. At fifty, he was an attractive man with a thick head of black hair, a tendency to stylize his facial hair so that it looked like he had a perpetual five o'clock shadow, and a penchant for wearing wild colored shirts under his Brooks Brothers suits. He was tough, but kind and had looked out for me since I joined the company six years before. I considered him my mentor, but if I was honest, I also had a bit of a crush on him, too. "By the way, nice dress! You've developed good taste, kiddo!"
"Thanks, Mike," I said blushing slightly as I looked down at my watch and saw that I was late for my meeting with Jess and the director. "Oh shoot! I have to go!"
"Okie dokie!" he said as he winked at me and motioned to the door. "Go get 'em, champ! Check in with me later; I might have some feedback about this report."
I nodded and rushed out the door. Back in my office, I grabbed a second copy of the Mija file and headed down to the director's office for my second meeting of the morning. We spent an hour hashing out how to divide up the research and by the time we were done, both Jess and I had been assigned a list of tasks ranging from important to urgent. I passed on Jess's invitation to have lunch together and headed back to my office where I ate my sandwich at my desk while I organized the tasks on my list and prioritized my plan of attack.
By the time I looked up again, the sun was beginning to sink as the last rays of light hit the windows of the buildings on Wacker Drive. I thought about how much I loved living in the city, and how alive I felt every time I walked down the city streets and mingled with the thousands of people who inhabited the offices and apartments here.