Chapter 21: The Board, Part One

Tara's POV

On Monday morning I wore the black suit I had worn the day I quit.

Vaughn stood behind me in the elevator and said nothing, because we had said everything in the dark after Rory's call.

"You don't have to go in," he had said then.

"I have to. I wrote the pages."

"I know."

"Then you know why."

The doors opened on the forty-first floor.

The whole floor looked up.

The staff at their desks, the man from accounting with a stapler in his hand, and the two elevator women who had gossiped about me for five years.

Nobody said a word.

One of the women, the older one, stood up slowly and stayed standing until I had passed.

I did not know what it meant, and I nodded to her anyway.

The boardroom had a long glass table and thirteen leather chairs, and twelve of them were full.

Richard sat at the head in his cardigan, with a cane across his knees and two lawyers behind him.

He saw me and smiled, kind as ever.

"Tara, dear. How good of you to come."

"Chairman," I said.

Vaughn pulled out the chair at the foot of the table.

He did not sit. He stood behind it with his hands on the back.

"I'll begin," Richard said, and the room settled.

He spoke for twelve minutes.

He spoke about Vaughn's health, and about eighteen-hour days, and about a collapse last winter that had frightened all of them.

He had a folder, and he passed a page to every director.

I knew what it was before it reached the woman beside me. I had typed it.

It was Brenner, the lease and the night at the desk, with his own penciled Unfit.

"These are the observations of someone close to him," Richard said gently. "A person who watched him daily and was frightened for him."

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