No Longer the Family Clown novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: Alarm Four
The Halvorson Cold Storage boardroom had a long table, twelve leather chairs, and a projector that someone had pointed at a screen the size of a bedsheet.
I sat in the back row between Mom and June, in the one jacket I owned that had a collar.
Colin sat on the other side of June with his hands flat on his knees.
Dad was at the head of the table, in a gray suit and a tight tie, with a glass of water he was not drinking.
The chair of the board was a woman with silver glasses who spoke in numbers.
She went through the Annex fire, the insurance and the cost of rebuilding.
Then she said, "Item four. The CEO's continued fitness."
One of the directors, a man with a tan and a very white shirt, leaned forward.
"Gordon, I like you," he said. "But the last month has been a lot. A hospital stay. A fire. And this."
He clicked a remote.
The screen filled with the school auditorium, a grand piano, and a seven-foot badger stuck between two rows of parents.
Circus music started.
The room laughed.
Not the whole room, but enough of it, and I felt it land on the back of my neck.
"Two million views," the director said. "Your family is unstable, Gordon. This is the household running the company."
Mom's hand closed around my wrist.
On the screen the badger shook a man's hand, and then another's, and the music swelled.
I watched it, and I didn't make a face, and I didn't say a word.
I had a hundred things I could have said, and they were all for him.
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