Chapter 18 - Seattle Bound
Fourteen days later, the wire transfer hit my account.
*ADA COUNTY TITLE & ESCROW: +$442,118.50.*
I stared at the green digits on my banking screen for a full minute.
I didn't feel giddy. I didn't feel frantic. I felt an immense, grounding weight of peace settle into my bones.
I was thirty-four years old. I had a master’s degree in supply chain management. I had zero debt. And I had nearly half a million dollars in liquid capital.
Two days later, a 26-foot moving truck pulled away from my Boise apartment complex, heading northwest on Interstate 84 toward the Oregon border.
Behind the truck, I drove my sedan, my windows cracked to let in the cool mountain air. In the passenger seat sat my diplomas—both my bachelor’s and my freshly framed master’s degree—and on the backseat rested the vintage photo album of my childhood.
The road wound through the high desert, past the rolling hills of eastern Oregon, and into the dense, majestic evergreen forests of the Cascade Mountains.
Seattle welcomed me with a light, misty rain that made the city lights shimmer like fallen stars against the dark waters of Puget Sound.
I had leased a modern, corner-unit condominium on the fourteenth floor of a high-rise in Queen Anne. It had floor-to-ceiling glass windows that looked directly out over the water, where green-and-white Washington State ferries glided across Elliott Bay toward Bainbridge Island.
The new job at the international logistics firm started on Monday. My salary was thirty percent higher than in Boise, with full benefits, stock options, and an executive track.
As the movers carried the last box of books into my new living room, the lead mover wiped his brow and smiled.
“Where do you want this box, ma'am? It’s labeled *Graduation*.”
“Put it on the dining table, please,” I said.
Inside the box was the framed diploma from the University of Washington, my cap and tassel, and a small, delicate silver cake server that my Aunt Karen had mailed to me three days ago with a note:
*“For the cakes yet to come. With all my love, Aunt Karen.”*
May you like
I set the silver server on the marble kitchen island, looked out at the Pacific rain falling across the harbor, and for the first time in as long as I could remember, I smiled until my cheeks ached.
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