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Part 2: Clear View
Jamie looked at me for a long moment. Then he laughed softly.
He said, Hi, Ava.
I couldn’t speak. I just stood there on the sidewalk in my office heels.
He said, This is Nell. My daughter. It’s take-your-kid-to-work week at her school. She wanted to see the tall buildings.
Nell waved at me. She said, Daddy has a box with your letters in it. He reads them sometimes when he thinks I’m asleep.
Jamie’s face turned red. He said, Okay, Nell. That’s enough.
We sat on a bench outside my building. Nell drank a juice box and watched the pigeons.
Jamie told me about the last ten years.
He got out of juvenile detention at eighteen. Nobody would hire him. His record followed him everywhere.
So he took the only job he could find. Washing windows for a small company. Forty feet up, then eighty. Then twelve stories.
He said, I was good at it. I wasn’t scared of heights.
He saved every dollar. When he was twenty-three, the owner retired. Jamie bought the company.
He has forty-one employees now. He hires people with records. People nobody else will hire.
He said, I give them the chance nobody gave me.
He said Nell’s mother left when Nell was two. He’s raised her on his own.
I asked him why he wrote J plus A on my window.
He shrugged. He said, I saw your name on the building directory last year. Senior Analyst. I took the contract for this building on purpose.
He said, I didn’t know if you’d remember me.
I said, Jamie, I’ve never forgotten you. Not for a single day.
He looked at me. Then he looked away.
He said, I’ve got to get back up. Nell’s got school tomorrow.
When I went back upstairs, my coworker Brent was waiting by the elevator. He was grinning.
He said, Did you just run outside to talk to the window guy?
The whole team laughed.
That evening, my boss, Mr. Holloway, called me into his office.
He said, Ava, I don’t care who your friends are. But you walked out of a client meeting. To chat with a window washer.
He said, People notice these things. It doesn’t look good for someone on the partner track.
I kept my voice calm.
Mr. Holloway, I said, I’m sorry I left the meeting. It won’t happen again.
But that man isn’t just a window washer. He’s someone I owe a great deal.
He said, I’d keep that to yourself.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. At midnight, I got a text from an unknown number.
It’s Jamie. Nell made me ask. She wants to know if you’ll come to her school play on Friday.
She says the lady from the letters should see her be a tree.
Part 3: Ten Years
I sat on my apartment balcony that night and let myself count.
Ten years.
Four months Jamie spent in juvenile detention. For something we did together.
I wrote him eleven letters while he was inside. He answered every one.
Then I went to college. I wrote him six more. Then three. Then I stopped.
I told myself I was busy. I told myself he’d moved on.
The truth is, I was ashamed.
Every time I wrote him, I remembered that I was free because he wasn’t.
I counted my years since. Four years of college on that scholarship. Two years of graduate school. Four years at my firm.
Senior analyst. Partner track. A corner office someday.
Every step of it built on one afternoon when a seventeen-year-old boy looked at a principal and said, It was all me.
Then I counted Jamie’s years.
Ten years with a record. Every job application rejected. Every apartment application denied.
He climbed up the side of buildings for eight dollars an hour because nobody else would hire him.
He raised a daughter alone.
He built a company from nothing. He hires people nobody else will hire.
And he kept my letters. Every one. In a box.
His daughter knows about them.
I went to Nell’s school play on Friday. She was the third tree from the left. She waved at me from the stage.
Afterward, Jamie walked me to my car.
I said, Jamie, I need to fix what I did.
He said, You don’t owe me anything, Ava.
I said, I owe you everything.
On Monday morning, I walked into the office.
Brent was standing by the boardroom window with three other coworkers. Laughing.
Jamie’s platform was right outside.
Part 4: The Boardroom
Brent saw me walk in. He grinned.
He said, There she is. Your boyfriend’s back.
He tapped on the window. Hey, buddy! You missed a spot!
Everyone laughed.
Mr. Holloway walked in behind me. He frowned at the window. He said, Ava, a word.
In the hallway, he said, Ava, I’m going to be honest. Partners notice who you associate with.
He said, A window washer with a juvenile record? People talk. Clients talk.
He said, I’m not telling you who to date. I’m telling you what’s good for your career.
Then he said the thing he’d come to say.
Keep your private life private. Or the partner track might not be the right fit for you.
I felt that one land. It was meant to.
Because I had worked ten years for that partner track. Every late night. Every weekend.
I took a slow breath.
Mr. Holloway, I said quietly, I appreciate your honesty.
He nodded.
So I’ll be honest too, I said. That juvenile record belongs to me as much as it belongs to him.
When we were seventeen, we did something stupid together. He took the blame so I wouldn’t lose my scholarship.
I’m sitting in this building because of him.
Mr. Holloway stared at me.
I’m not going to keep that private anymore, I said gently. I’m going to write to our old high school. And to the court. I’m going to tell them the truth. So his record can be sealed.
If that costs me the partner track, then it does.
Mr. Holloway opened his mouth. Then he closed it.
Behind him, the boardroom door opened. Our firm’s managing partner, Mrs. Castillo, walked out. She was holding a contract.
She looked at Mr. Holloway. Then at me.
She said, Ava. Do you know the owner of Clear View Window Company?
I said yes.
She held up the contract. She said, I just found out his company services forty-two buildings downtown. Including ours.
She said, I’ve been trying to get a meeting with him for a year. He won’t return my calls.
She said, He just texted our office manager. He said he’ll only meet with one person here.
You.
Part 5: J + A
Mrs. Castillo explained in her office.
Our firm advises small businesses that hire people with criminal records. Second-chance employers. It’s one of her personal causes.
She said, Clear View is the most successful second-chance company in the state. Forty-one employees. Almost every one has a record. Almost none have gone back to jail.
She said, I’ve wanted to feature him in our annual report for a year. He keeps saying no.
I called Jamie that afternoon. I asked him why he’d only meet with me.
He said, Because I knew if they asked you, you’d tell them the truth. About why I started the company.
He said, I’m tired of hiding it, Ava. So are you.
We met with Mrs. Castillo together. Jamie told her the whole story. The chemistry lab. The fire. Taking the blame.
I told her my part.
Mrs. Castillo listened. Then she said, quietly, That’s the most honest thing anyone’s said in this office in years.
She didn’t take me off the partner track. She put Jamie’s company on the cover of the annual report.
Brent apologized to Jamie in the lobby a month later. He said his brother had a record. He said he’d never thought about it before.
I wrote the letters. To our old high school principal, now retired. And to the juvenile court.
I told them everything.
The principal wrote back. He said he always suspected Jamie wasn’t alone that day. He said Jamie was the most honest liar he’d ever met.
He wrote a letter to the court too.
The judge sealed Jamie’s juvenile record in the spring.
Jamie said it was the first time in ten years he didn’t flinch when he filled out a form.
Jamie and I started slowly. Coffee. Then dinners. Then Sunday afternoons in the park with Nell.
Last month, Nell showed me the box. A shoebox under Jamie’s bed. Seventeen letters. Every one I ever wrote.
Tied with a red ribbon. Read so many times the paper was soft.
Last week, I was sitting in the boardroom on the twelfth floor. Another meeting about quarterly numbers.
Someone tapped on the window.
Everyone turned.
Jamie was outside on his platform. Nell was standing beside him on the ground floor of the building next door, waving up at me.
Jamie dipped his finger in the soap.
He wrote, slowly, on the glass:
J + A
Then, underneath, he wrote one more line.
- N. Marry us?
The whole boardroom went silent.
Then Brent stood up. And started clapping.
I pressed my hand against the window. Right over Jamie’s hand on the other side.
Then I nodded.
Yes.
