When they returned, Gloria offered lunch at the depot canteen. Anna declined at first, worried that she had already taken too much of her prospective customer's time, but Gloria insisted she would be eating with the drivers anyway. They carried their trays to a table where Emma and Calvin were arguing good-naturedly about whether the old yellow bus should be repainted. Gloria said it had earned every patch of sunfade and that repainting it would be like ironing all the wrinkles out of an old family photograph.
Anna listened more than she spoke. She heard a driver describe how Gloria had covered his route herself when his mother was hospitalized; another mentioned that the company reimbursed annual license medical exams instead of quietly shifting the cost onto employees. She also heard people complain about real things: the dispatch software that occasionally froze, an awkward schedule change, and the cafeteria coffee. The freedom to complain in front of the owner told her more about the company than a polished tour could have done.
After lunch, Gloria walked her back toward the parking lot. "Well," she said, "do you still think your dealership can help us?" Anna considered the question with the seriousness it deserved. "I think we have models that might fit, but I need written confirmation from fleet supply and our service team before I promise anything. You have a delivery deadline tied to your contracts. I won't give you numbers that sound good here and disappear when you try to put a vehicle on the road."
"When can you bring a proposal?" Gloria asked. "Thursday morning. I'll have price, availability, warranty terms, service coverage, and a realistic handover schedule. If a supplier hasn't confirmed something, I'll mark it as unconfirmed."
Gloria held out her hand. "Thursday, then. And please put the appointment in your system. I don't want you arriving with all that work and finding there's no record of why I'm there."
Anna promised she would, and when she reached her car, she sat for a moment with her hands on the steering wheel. She had visited a business she had never known existed, listened to a woman who had built it from one old bus, and discovered an opportunity larger than any account she had handled since joining Eastside Premier Motors. But the part that stayed with her was not the number of vehicles. It was Gloria standing beside the oldest one, speaking of the children it had carried as though they were still sitting behind her.
Back at the dealership, Anna spent three hours assembling preliminary specifications and another hour on the phone with fleet services. A purchasing coordinator confirmed that fourteen vehicles could be sourced, although several required allocation from other branches and all had to pass pre-delivery inspections. The commercial service director agreed in principle to a response plan with reserved service slots, subject to the final contract. Anna wrote every point down and refused to turn any verbal assurance into a written guarantee until the appropriate department had approved it.