The security attendant checked her name against a visitor list. "You're here to see Ms. Hayes?" he asked. Anna nodded and offered her dealership card. "Nine o'clock appointment.
I'm a few minutes early." The attendant smiled, called dispatch, and lifted the barrier. "You can park by the office. Ms. Hayes said to make sure you get a proper tour."
Anna parked her six-year-old hatchback and sat a moment with the engine off. The scale of the facility changed the meaning of the business card in her jacket pocket, but it did not change what she had already decided about the woman who had handed it to her. Gloria Hayes had needed information, and Anna had treated that request as legitimate before seeing a single bus in the depot. If the fleet was larger than she had imagined, it meant her questions would need to be more careful, not that her courtesy had suddenly become justified.
A woman wearing a dispatch headset met her outside the office. "Anna Morales? I'm Emma Shaw, operations supervisor. Gloria is finishing something out in the wash bay."
Emma looked toward the maintenance buildings and smiled. "If she says she'll be here in five minutes, it will be five minutes unless somebody starts talking to her about the old yellow bus. Then we might need twenty."
They walked through a corridor lined with route diagrams and driver notices. One board held the names of backup drivers qualified for particular vehicles; another showed a color-coded service schedule with inspections marked by date and mileage. Anna noticed a photograph pinned above the first-aid cabinet. It showed Gloria twenty-five years younger, standing beside the same yellow bus with a group of children holding handmade thank-you signs.
"That was the first vehicle," Emma said, following her gaze. "She drove the original route herself, and the children in that picture are old enough to have children of their own now." "Does it still go out?"
Anna asked. "Only for short private runs, inspections, and local events when it's appropriate. We don't use it for current school contracts. Gloria keeps it because it's the beginning of everything."
Through the window, Anna saw Gloria at the wash bay, working a hose across the side of the old bus. Its paint was faded in places, but the windows were clean, the tires properly inflated, and the lights in working order. The woman who had been told she shouldn't touch a brand-new van was leaning into the job with a bucket at her feet, completely at home among mechanics and drivers. Anna felt a brief surge of anger on Gloria's behalf and let it pass into something more useful: a determination to give her a proposal that deserved serious consideration.