The Weight of Listening
The office key stuck the way it always did on Monday mornings, as though the lock itself resented the start of another week. Clara jiggled it with the practiced twist of her wrist, felt the tumblers give, and pushed the door open into the hush of her waiting room before the building had fully woken. Six-forty. Forty minutes before Diane arrived to man the front desk, an hour and twenty before her first appointment. She liked the emptiness. It asked nothing of her.
She flipped on the lamps rather than the overheads—soft light was kinder to people who came here already raw—and moved through the small suite with the unthinking choreography of a woman who had done this for seventeen years. The blinds, angled just so, to let in the gray wash of morning without exposing the room to the office building across the street. The white-noise machine, clicked to its lowest hum. The box of tissues, checked and replaced with a full one, positioned at the exact corner of the side table where an arm could reach it without a person having to look away from her.
In her private office, she set her leather satchel on the desk and drew out three folders. New intakes. She hadn't opened them yet, had…