Chapter 18: The Head of the Table

The boardroom of Rutledge Marine sat over the sail loft.

It had a long oak table and portraits of three stern Rutledge men.

On Monday morning it held forty people.

The crew had come up the stairs in work boots with sawdust on their sleeves.

Nobody had asked them to.

They stood along the walls with their arms folded.

Sawyer sat at the table's foot. I sat at his right.

At the head, in the chair with the brass plate, sat my mother-in-law in a gray suit.

A leather folder lay squared in front of her.

She had not slept. I could tell by the way she held her coffee.

"This meeting is irregular," she said. "I call it to order."

"I move to remove you as chair," I said.

Somebody in the crowd drew a quiet breath.

"You may not. I hold four proxies."

She opened the folder.

"From four of the founding foremen. They have voted with me for thirty years."

"Then let's hear from them," I said.

The door at the back opened.

Four old men came in one at a time, in their church jackets.

They had built hulls for her husband before Sawyer was born.

The first, a tall one with white eyebrows, walked to the head of the table and held out his hand.

"Mrs. Rutledge. Give me my proxy back."

"Don't be absurd."

"It's mine. My name's on it."

She looked at his hand for a long moment, and then she slid a page across the oak.

He tore it in half and set the halves on the folder.

"I saw the newspaper," he said. "I won't have it said I voted for that."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Five Years Gone, She Walked Back In, So I Walked Out from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.