The Wife He Buried Alive novel · Chapter 19 of 32
Chapter 19: Forty-One Percent
The board of Garrick Holdings met on Monday morning in the same glass room where I had once handed Winston divorce papers.
Six board members sat along the table in dark suits.
Harriet sat at the far end with her knitting in her lap, because she held eleven percent of the shares and had not missed a meeting in thirty years.
I sat beside Winston.
He had not slept, and neither had I.
He stood up with a single folder in his hand.
"Before the agenda," he said, "I have three things to say, and I'd like all of them in the minutes."
The chairman, a heavy man with a pen, tapped it once on his pad.
"Winston, the quarter's numbers..."
"After."
The chairman put the pen down.
"First," Winston said. "For four years I have appeared in public with Juliet Carrow. I told you all it was grief. It was not. I believed my wife's death was no accident, and I used the engagement to watch her."
Nobody spoke.
Somebody at the table had gone gray.
"That was cruel to Ms. Carrow, and it was a cruelty I chose. The company's statements about it will say so, and the company will carry whatever that costs."
"Winston," the chairman said, low. "The press..."
"Can say it. I'll say it first. I'm giving an interview on Thursday."
I looked at my hands on the table.
I had asked him to end the engagement. I had not asked him to put his name on the cruelty in front of six men who bought and sold buildings for a living.
"Second," he said. "My son has a trust, and as of this morning I have placed all my voting shares in it."
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