By noon, three structural blueprints for the American River bridge retrofit lay unrolled across my maple drafting table.

Red pencil notes filled the margins with exact weight calculations, concrete density requirements, and stress load tolerances.

A knock sounded on the open glass door of my office.

David Miller stood in the doorway with a dark velvet box under his arm.

His silver pen sat neatly in his shirt pocket.

“Do you have a minute, Iris?” David asked.

“I just finished checking the secondary girder tolerances,” I said, setting my red pencil down on the margin of the blueprint.

“We’re four percent under the state maximum.”