Chapter 20: Returned

Laurel's POV

The shareholders met at ten on Thursday in the ground floor hall of the Hartford building.

The red tie had opened it to the press, and the bylaws let him.

Eighty folding chairs filled the room, and every one of them had someone in it.

Reporters stood along the back wall.

Colin sat in the last row, alone, in a gray sweater, with his hands between his knees.

He did not look at anyone.

Margaret walked in at two minutes to ten with her silver hair set and her pearls on.

She did not look at the reporters either.

She took the chair at the head of the long table on the platform, where she had sat for twenty-two years.

Tobias came in after her and sat at the far end, two chairs away from where she could have touched him.

I sat in the front row, directly below the platform, with my grandmother's lawyer on my left.

The red tie called the meeting to order.

"We have one matter," he said. "The voting trust created by the late chairman, and who has the right to vote it."

"There's no matter," Margaret said. "I vote the trust. I've voted it for eight years."

"You've voted it as acting trustee," said the woman in the gray suit.

"On a resignation that Tobias Thayer says he never signed."

"He signed it."

"Then you won't mind the board hearing from someone who watched."

The red tie lifted a typed page.

"Mr. Colin Thayer has given a sworn statement," he said.

"He states that he held the lamp while his mother practiced the signature in his father's study."

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