Chapter 16: The Boat

Harrison's POV

I watched Celia's face in the boardroom, and I understood that I had never seen it before.

I had seen the soft version for two years, and again all fall.

Now it was off, and what sat underneath was counting.

I let the meeting finish.

The board kept me in the chair, eleven votes to three.

My mother signed her stepping down in a hand that hardly held the pen.

Thea left before the vote was read.

I wanted to follow her down the stairs, and I didn't.

She had told me where I was allowed to stand, and I was learning to stay there.

At eight that night I was in Brookline, in a furnished kitchen with a bad lamp.

Celia sat at the island in her socks.

Caleb was asleep in the next room.

I had left the door open a hand's width so I could hear him breathe.

"You didn't defend me today," Celia said.

"You didn't need it. You were fine."

"Harrison."

"I brought three papers."

I laid them on the counter, one at a time.

"You can have your lawyer read them. You can sign tonight or in a week."

She did not touch them.

"The first one is a trust for Caleb. It pays for his school, his doctors and his house when he's grown."

"Nobody can take it back, Celia. Not me, not my mother, not you."

"You don't have that kind of money without the company."

"I sold the boat."

She went still.

It was my father's boat, thirty-eight feet of white oak that he had taught me to sail on.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Composure After Divorce Became His Greatest Torment from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.