Chapter 13: A Tie Goes to the Chairman

We reached the boardroom floor at eleven forty.

Rhys went to find the company counsel.

I went to the ladies' room, because my hands would not stop shaking, and I turned my phone's recorder on before I pushed the door open.

Delphine stood at the mirror in the cream dress, fixing her lipstick.

She saw me in the glass and did not turn around.

"You can't vote," she said. "The court froze it. I looked it up."

"I'm here to watch."

"Then watch."

I leaned on the sink beside hers.

"You touch your stomach when people are looking," I said. "You never do it when you think they aren't."

Her hand stopped on the lipstick.

For a moment she was only a tired woman in a bathroom, and I saw the girl who had shared my dorm room.

"God," Delphine said. "You always did notice the wrong things."

"Whose is it?"

"Nobody you know." She capped the lipstick. "It isn't Emmett's. He can't count to ten weeks, Annie, he's never counted anything he didn't want."

"He'll find out."

"He believes it. He's counting on it, because he needs my five shares, and I need him to need them."

"And if I tell him?"

"Tell him." She smiled at me in the mirror. "You're the wife with the recordings. Everyone's tired of you already."

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