Chapter 21: The Relaunch

"Did you?" I asked Patrick, with my cheek still on his chest and Bea's voice gone from the phone.

"No."

"Did you plan any of it?"

"No. I wanted your code. I wanted to be sure you had picked well. That's all I'm guilty of."

"I know," I said.

He went very still.

"That was fast."

"Marilyn names the one person I trust, to break me. I'd have expected nothing else from her."

I sat up and pulled the sheet around me.

"I'm not postponing the launch."

"Cora, the filing..."

"Is a filing. Tuesday, noon, as planned."

On Tuesday at noon I stood in the glass atrium of Patrick's building, behind a podium with a new sign on it.

LITTLEBIRD.

Under the name, in smaller letters: From its founder, Cora Lindell.

Two hundred reporters sat in folding chairs.

Five cameras pointed at me, and a banner behind my head showed a counter that said four million families were watching the livestream.

My daughter was asleep at Bea's, which was the only reason I could breathe.

"Good afternoon," I said. "I wrote this app at my kitchen table nine years ago, to help one tired mother keep track of her baby."

Applause.

"For nine years someone else's face was on it. Today my name is."

Patrick stood on my left in a charcoal suit, and he did not smile, but his eyes did.

A woman in a navy blazer brought a leather folder to the podium.

It held the papers for Littlebird Inc., with me as founder and controlling owner, and Patrick's company as a twenty percent partner.

I picked up the pen.

"Four million of you are watching me do this," I said into the microphone. "So watch."

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