Room 14's Secret novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Acting Chair

The Garrick Foundation boardroom is on the fourteenth floor of a glass tower in downtown Hartford.

My father chose that floor himself.

On Monday at nine I walked into it for the first time in four months, with his lawyer at my elbow.

Nine board members sat around the long table.

Not one of them would meet my eyes.

At the head of the table, in the chair that had been my father's and then Quinton's, sat Giselle.

She wore gray silk and a small gold pin.

She had a legal pad squared in front of her and a pot of tea at her elbow.

"Melinda," she said warmly. "I'm so glad you came. Please sit."

"I'll stand."

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

It was Zachary, from the lobby: Not going anywhere.

I held on to that for a second and put the phone away.

"The motion is simple," Giselle said, and looked down the table. "Melinda is not well. The court said so by sending a visitor to her house, and the doctor's report is in your folders.

"I move that she be suspended as trustee of the Garrick Family Trust, and that I serve in her place until the thirty-day review."

"The court vacated the order," my father's lawyer said.

"It found she wasn't a danger tonight," Giselle said gently. "It didn't find her well. I love her. I'd give anything for that to be different."

A man at the table with a silver mustache cleared his throat.

"Melinda, there were recordings," he said, and stopped, embarrassed.

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