Chapter 20: The Toast

My mother held the pen in her hand and did not sign.

She stood at the podium in her silver gown, and the ballroom waited.

"Thank you all for coming," she said. "Forty years ago this company had one truck and a borrowed dog."

The room laughed, warmly.

"Tonight I intend to sign an agreement that will change it."

She turned the pen over in her fingers.

"Before I do, I want the man who started it with me to say a few words."

Russell's smile slipped by a hair.

"Helen, my love. The speeches were meant to follow."

"Davis," my mother said, over him. "Would you come up?"

At the far end of the head table, my father looked up from his plate.

He wiped his hands on his napkin, and rose, and buttoned the jacket that didn't fit.

He climbed the steps with one hand on the rail.

He stopped beside my mother and did not touch her, and she did not look at him.

"I'm not a speaker," he said into the microphone, mildly. "Helen will tell you."

A few people laughed.

"We had a dog on the first truck. He bit our first client, and she gave us a second truck out of pity."

More laughter.

My father waited for it to fade.

"I've loved this company," he said. "More than I managed to show."

He glanced sideways at my mother.

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