Chapter 11: Whose Vote

Merritt left without a word.

His umbrella caught the wind at the corner and almost took him with it.

Gavin didn't move.

He looked at Hayes.

"You own forty percent of the company," he said.

"Yes."

"Since when?"

"Since my thirty-fifth birthday."

"A lawyer in Boston wrote me a letter."

"My father left it in his will, to be released when I turned thirty-five."

"And you never said anything."

"No."

"Why?"

"Because you'd have asked me to come home," Hayes said, not unkindly.

"And I'd have said no."

Gavin put his phone in his pocket.

He looked at me, then at the broken check on the pavement, then back at his half-brother.

"I need to think," he said.

He got into his car and drove away slowly, with the door finally shut.

Hayes bent and picked up the pieces of the check.

"He didn't know about the trust," I said.

"No."

"That's almost worse."

"It is," Hayes said.

"It's what she wants him to be."

We stood together in the doorway.

The rain had thinned to a fine drizzle.

"What does it mean?" I asked.

"The shares."

"It means she's been voting my forty percent since my father died."

"She has a proxy from when I was a boy."

"It was supposed to end the day I turned thirty-five."

"And it didn't."

"Nobody told the board."

"She just kept voting."

"Why haven't you stopped her?"

He took a long breath.

"Because I'd have to walk into that boardroom and ask for what's mine."

"And the second I do, I'm the grasping stepson she always said I was."

"You're not."

"I know that on a good day."

"Hayes."

"I'm not asking you to help," he said quickly.

"I just want you to know it isn't nothing."

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