Chapter 6: Item Four

Dalton stood in my mother's kitchen with the washer in his hand and said nothing for a long time.

"I can't answer that today," he said.

"You can't, or you won't?"

"Both."

"Then you can leave."

He put the washer on the counter and went to the door.

My mother handed him the rotisserie chicken in its bag.

"Take your salt with you," she said.

He took it.

On Friday morning I walked into the boardroom on the fortieth floor of Aldridge Holdings.

Ruby walked on one side of me and my lawyer on the other.

There were twelve leather chairs around a long table, nearly all of them filled.

Nobody had told them I was coming.

The board chair sat at the head of the table with his silver hair and his tidy grey eyes.

He smiled at me as if I were a guest at his own party.

"Mrs. Aldridge," he said. "This is a private session. I'm afraid you'll have to wait outside."

"There's no Mrs. Aldridge," I said. "Your CEO told the whole country."

A few people looked at their papers.

"I'm Monica Aldridge, inventor on eleven patents in this company's Harbor City portfolio," I said.

"Your agenda says you're reviewing my attribution. I'd like to attend my own review."

The chair folded his hands.

"Very well. Five minutes."

I did not sit down.

"Item four," he read. "The Harbor City filings were developed on company time with company resources."

He turned a page.

"The company proposes to list the board's engineering group as the original inventor."

"The board's engineering group," Ruby said, behind me. "That's a group of four people who've never been to Harbor City."

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