How to Say Our Final Goodbye novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: What He Knew

I read it three times standing in the middle of my father's floor.

Then I gave the company secretary her phone back.

"Thank you," I said.

"Miss Fairbairn. Are you all right?"

"I'm the chairman now," I said. "I think I'm supposed to be."

Wyeth called a dozen times on Tuesday.

He called nine times on Wednesday.

I didn't pick up.

I ran the Bellmore from the back office.

I signed payroll for the first time in my own name, and I checked in a tour group, and I didn't think about him for whole minutes at a time.

On Wednesday night Dolly put a Bellmore in front of me without asking.

"You're going to have to talk to him," she said.

"I know."

"Today would be good. My bar can't take much more of your face."

At nine on Thursday morning I walked into Wainscott Trust on LaSalle Street.

It was a gray stone bank with bronze doors and a lobby.

I told the man at the desk who I was.

He went pale and picked up a phone.

Two minutes later the elevator opened, and Wyeth stepped out of it.

He was in the navy suit.

He looked like he hadn't slept since Sunday.

He stopped six feet away from me.

He hadn't done that in a month.

"The board's meeting at nine thirty," he said. "My review. I wasn't sure you'd come."

"Is it true?"

He didn't pretend not to know what I meant.

"Yes."

People were crossing the lobby around us.

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