Chapter 19: One Suitcase

Corbin stood up beside me.

He didn't raise his voice. He never did.

"Monday, then," he said. "Ten o'clock. Bring your folder."

Honora walked out of the ballroom with her chin up.

Three hundred people watched her go, and then every one of them turned and looked at me.

I stood up in my black dress, in front of all of them.

"There's a lobster dinner on the porch," I said. "It's paid for. Somebody should eat it."

The owner laughed first, from the back. Then the whole room.

On Monday the board met in the Greenwich ballroom again, under my medallion.

Seven chairs. Seven water glasses.

This time the press was in the room. Corbin had invited them.

I sat against the wall in a chair by the stage, with my sketchbook on my knees.

Honora came in last, in white silk and the pearls.

She sat down and opened her leather folder.

The chairman didn't let her speak.

"Before Honora's motion," he said, "I have one."

He read it slowly, off a single sheet of paper, adjusting his hearing aids.

Honora Fitzroy was to be removed from the board for misconduct, effective today.

"You can't," Honora said. "I own twenty-two percent of this company."

"You've borrowed against all of it," the chairman said. "Your lender called me on Saturday. After the wedding. He'd seen a video."

Honora's face didn't change. Her hand did. It went flat on the folder.

"In favor?"

The chairman's hand went up.

Then the old man who sang badly.

Then, slowly, the two who'd voted with her last month, without looking at her.

Then Brennan.

He raised his bandaged hand and held it there.

Honora looked at her son for a long time.

"Brennan," she said.

"I asked you for one true thing my whole life, Mother," he said quietly. "You gave me pictures."

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