Chapter 162: The Light In the Room

Saturday arrived and Priya was already at the property when they got there.

She was standing outside the building with a clipboard and a coffee and the expression of someone who had been waiting long enough to form opinions and was ready to share them.

"You are four minutes late," she said.

"We are three minutes early," Ethan said.

"The viewing was at nine," Priya said. "I said nine. I arrived at eight forty-five. That makes you four minutes late relative to when you should have arrived."

"That is not how time works," Jake said.

"It is how I work," Priya said.

Lily looked at the building.

It was a corner property. Two streets from the current east quarter location, exactly as Priya had said. Older than the current garage. The brick was dark from years of weather but solid. The frontage was wider than she had expected from the floor plan and the yard at the back, visible through the locked side gate, was larger still.

She thought: the bones.

"Open it," she said to the estate agent who was standing slightly to the side looking uncertain about whether he was part of this group or observing it.

He opened it.

\---

They went through every room.

Priya led. She moved through the building the way she moved through everything, with a focused, unhurried certainty that made the space feel like it was already hers to assess rather than someone else's to sell.

Jake walked the structural walls and knocked on things and listened and said very little, which meant what he was hearing was acceptable.

Ethan stood in the main workshop space and turned slowly, looking at the ceiling height and the light and the access points and the way the space connected to the yard.

Lily watched all three of them.

She did not need to assess the building the way they did. She trusted their assessments. What she was assessing was something else. Whether this place had the quality she was looking for. Not structural. The other kind.

She found it in the yard.

She walked out through the back and stood in the September morning light and looked at the space. It was open and practical and had a tree in the far corner that nobody had planted deliberately. It had just grown there, the way things grew when a space was left alone long enough to become itself.

She thought about the garden at the house.

She thought about trees that nobody planted on purpose.

She went back inside.

"Well?" she said to Jake.

"Sound," Jake said. "The roof needs attention in the next two years. Everything else is solid."

"Priya?" she said.

"The workshop is fifteen percent larger than the current location," Priya said. "The office space is smaller but that is not where we make money so it does not matter. The yard access is from two points which means vehicle flow is significantly better."

"Ethan?" she said.

He was still standing in the middle of the workshop.

"It feels right," he said.

Jake looked at the ceiling.

"That is not a structural assessment," Priya said.

"No," Ethan said. "But it is true."

Lily looked at him.

"It feels right," she said.

"Yes," he said.

"Okay," she said.

She turned to the estate agent.

"What is the asking price?" she said.

He told her.

She looked at Priya.

Priya had already written a number on the clipboard.

It was eleven percent below the asking price.

"That is our opening offer," Lily said to the estate agent.

He blinked.

"I would need to take that to the vendor," he said.

"Take it today," she said. "We need an answer by Monday because we have a parallel negotiation in progress and the outcome of that affects our position here."

"I will call them this morning," he said.

"Good," she said.

They went outside.

The September morning was doing what September mornings did in the east quarter, cool enough to need a jacket but with enough sun to make you glad you came out.

Jake looked at Ethan.

"Parallel negotiation," Jake said.

"Yes," Ethan said.

"She just used the Webb situation as leverage on a completely separate deal," Jake said.

"Yes," Ethan said.

"While we were still inside," Jake said.

"Yes," Ethan said.

Jake looked at Lily.

"Did you plan that before we arrived?" he said.

"On the way here," she said.

"In the car," Jake said.

"Yes," she said.

"That is twelve minutes of planning," Jake said.

"It was a straightforward connection," she said. "We have a time-sensitive negotiation with Webb's company. That creates genuine urgency on any parallel decision we need to make. Using genuine urgency as leverage is not manipulation. It is accurate information."

Jake looked at Ethan again.

"How are you keeping up with her?" Jake said.

"I stopped trying to keep up," Ethan said. "I just make sure I am moving in the same direction."

Priya looked at both of them.

"That is the correct approach," she said.

They walked back toward the east quarter.

\---

Richard called at eleven.

Lily answered on the second ring.

"Webb's company has responded," Richard said.

"Already?" she said.

"They called me at nine this morning," he said. "Before the close of business yesterday they had legal counsel review what we sent."

"They reviewed it overnight," she said.

"Yes," Richard said. "Which tells you how seriously they are taking it."

"What did they say?" she said.

"They rejected the number," Richard said. "But they did not close the conversation. They came back with a counter."

"How much?" she said.

He told her.

She was quiet for a moment.

The counter was significantly above the original offer but significantly below Priya's number.

"They are in the middle," she said.

"Yes," Richard said. "Which means they are negotiating rather than walking away. The access issue is real and they know we know it."

"And Webb?" she said. "Any acknowledgment of his involvement?"

"None," Richard said. "Their legal team has been very careful to keep his name out of it."

"Which means they want to keep it out," she said. "Which means it matters to them."

"Yes," Richard said.

"Tell them we will consider the counter," she said. "Do not reject it and do not accept it. Tell them we need seventy-two hours."

"Why seventy-two?" Richard said.

"Because we may have a purchase offer accepted on a new property by Monday," she said. "If we own our building we have a different negotiating position than if we are still leasing."

"You are buying a building," Richard said.

"We are trying to," she said. "If the numbers work."

Richard was quiet for a moment.

"Lily," he said.

"Yes?" she said.

"When did you start thinking like this?" he said.

She thought about it.

"I have always thought like this," she said. "I just used to apply it to medical cases."

"The application has broadened," Richard said.

"Yes," she said. "Tell them seventy-two hours."

"Done," he said.

She ended the call.

She looked at Ethan beside her.

He had heard one side of the conversation and was filling in the rest from her face.

"They countered," he said.

"Yes," she said.

"Below Priya's number," he said.

"Yes," she said.

"But they did not walk away," he said.

"No," she said.

"So we have leverage," he said.

"Yes," she said. "And now we wait."

He looked at her.

"Waiting is not something you do well," he said.

"I have gotten better at it," she said.

"You have," he said. "You are still not good at it."

She looked at him.

"No," she said. "I am not."

"What do you want to do for seventy-two hours?" he said.

She thought about it.

"The house," she said. "The renovation. There are decisions that need making about the bathroom and I have been putting them off because of this."

"The bathroom can wait," he said.

"The bathroom cannot wait," she said. "Priya put it in week four and week four starts in six days."

"So we go to the house," he said.

"We go to the house," she said.

They went to the house.

Priya, who had somehow arrived there before them despite leaving the property viewing at the same time, was standing in the bathroom with a tile catalogue.

Ethan looked at Jake.

"How," Jake said.

"I do not ask anymore," Ethan said.

Priya handed Lily the catalogue.

"Bathroom tiles," she said. "You have twenty minutes to decide because the supplier closes at noon."

Lily sat on the edge of the bath that was being replaced next week and opened the catalogue.

She thought about Webb and his counter offer and the seventy-two hours and the new property and the planning application and all the moving pieces of a situation that had started with a letter on a kitchen counter on a Tuesday.

She looked at a page of white tiles.

Simple. Clean. Without any pattern that would feel wrong in three years.

She thought about what Priya had said at the property viewing.

She thought about what Jake had said in the car outside the hospital.

She thought about what Ethan had said in the workshop.

It feels right.

She looked at the tiles.

"These," she said.

Priya looked at the page.

She nodded once.

She called the supplier.

Lily closed the catalogue.

Outside the September morning continued.

The renovation continued.

The seventy-two hours started.

And somewhere in a city office a man named Webb was looking at a formal response from Richard and calculating whether the price of the garage was worth the attention that fighting for it would bring.

Lily was fairly certain she knew how that calculation was going to land.

She had been good at calculations for a long time.