Chapter Two: An Empty Seat
Westbridge Advisory occupied the upper floors of a brick building that had once housed a textile warehouse.
The reception area displayed photographs of smiling consultants beside slogans about listening to communities.
I had helped choose one of those slogans.
That morning it embarrassed me.
My director, Naomi Bell, was already in the conference room when I arrived.
She held a tablet in one hand and looked as if she had been awake all night.
“Close the door, Michael.”
“I was about to ask you for five minutes.”
“You can have twenty.”
I placed the beige folder before her, but she pushed it back.
“Keep your copy.”
“You know what’s in it?”
“Counsel told me an outside reviewer received the same records yesterday.”
“Why wasn’t I informed?”
“We didn’t know who was affected.
”
“My name is on the report.”
“That’s one reason you’re here.”
Naomi sat down and asked whether I had changed any survey responses.
I told her I had handled forecasting and scheduling, not interviews.
She asked whether I knew that two of our field workers had disputed the completed interview log.
I admitted I had noticed their objections in the project channel but assumed the client experience team was resolving them.
“Assuming is not a defense I enjoy hearing from you,” she said.
“I know.”
She opened a dashboard on her tablet.
It showed the percentage of county residents classified as willing to replace mobile library visits with remote consultations.
The figure stood at eighty-one percent.
“The raw attendance logs suggest the opposite,” she said.
“The bookmobiles have waiting lists.
”
“Yes.”
“Why did we recommend shutting routes that people are using?”
“Because the county told us its budget was shrinking, and the model found the cheapest answer that fit the assumptions.”
“Who supplied the assumptions?”
“Laura’s team.”
I looked away.
Naomi did not soften her voice.
“Your marriage is not part of the review unless somebody made it part of the work.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
“I am trying.”
She told me the county intended to vote on the service redesign the following Thursday.
If it passed, two mobile units would be sold before winter and two more would be parked at central branches.
The county’s oldest bookmobile, a faded yellow vehicle called Marigold, served communities separated from the nearest permanent library by forty miles of difficult roads.
The savings calculation treated that distance as a minor inconvenience.
I had built the formula that turned inconvenience into dollars.
“We need to stop the submission,” I said.
“The submission is already with the county.”
“Then we need to correct it.”
“Counsel wants the facts established first.”
“The vote won’t wait for our lawyers.”
Naomi turned her tablet facedown.
“You can review the raw operational records with an independent analyst.”
“Who?”
“Nadia Flores from our Chicago office.”
“Will Laura be involved?”
“Not in the data review.”
“And Adrian?”
“The county hired him to audit public engagement.”
“The folder shows his travel expenses charged to us.”
“That’s among the questions on Monday’s agenda.”
I left the conference room feeling neither protected nor accused.
The office continued moving around me as though the firm had no idea what waited behind its polished doors.
At eleven, Nadia called and introduced herself without pretending we were friends.
“I don’t want your conclusions,” she told me.
“I want to know which numbers you personally saw.”
She had a sharp voice and an appetite for precision that I would have admired under different circumstances.
I sent her the original forecasts, the revised assumptions, and the notes from three county workshops.
Within forty minutes, she called back.
“There is a problem in the attendance denominator.”
“How serious?”
“Your model divides responses by households, but the input file counts library cards as households.”
“That would reduce repeat-user influence.”
“It does more than that.”
“Explain.”
“People who attend twice a month are treated as duplicate observations and dropped, while anonymous web visitors count individually.”
I stared at the spreadsheet on my monitor.
The formula was mine, but the definition of a household had changed after the model went into review.
“Who changed the source map?”
“That’s what I intend to find out.”
I printed the model’s revision history and discovered that the access key belonged to a temporary account created for the public-engagement vendor.
Adrian Vale was listed as the vendor’s primary contact.
I felt an impulse to call Laura immediately.
Instead, I asked Nadia to preserve the logs before anyone could revise them again.
“Already done,” she said.
“You’re not the first person this week to be frightened of disappearing numbers.”
