Chapter 16: What Crane Owes

"Four o'clock," Lavinia's father said. "My boardroom. Come and say it to my face."

"I'll be there."

"Bring the wife if you like. I want her to hear it too."

The Crane Foundation's boardroom had a glass table long enough to land a plane on.

Twelve board members sat along it in the silence of people who had just learned their salaries were theirs to worry about.

The treasurer from the gala was among them, and he looked like he hadn't slept since.

Lavinia's father sat at the head with his name on the wall behind him.

Lavinia sat to his left in a plain black dress.

She wore no pin, and her eyes were swollen.

"Mr. Rowe," her father said.

Nothing about him was jovial now, not even the vowels.

"You took two million dollars off my table in front of three hundred people."

"I took back what I gave."

"The children's clinic on the Hill was built on that gift."

"It closes on Friday without it."

"My loan was secured against the foundation's pledges, and the bank called it this morning."

"Which bank?" Emerson said.

He blinked at her.

"The bank," he said. "It doesn't matter which."

"It matters to the clinic," she said.

I almost smiled.

Lavinia stood up.

She came around the table in her plain dress, past a dozen people who weren't looking at her.

She stopped in front of my chair.

"Tristan, please."

"Sit down, Lavinia."

"I was wrong."

Her voice shook.

"I was scared, and Daddy was watching, and I said terrible things."

"I'll take them back to every one of those three hundred people if you want."

"I don't want that."

"Then tell me what you want."

She went down on her knees on the carpet, in front of the board.

"Put the pledge back. Please. For the clinic. For the children."

Nobody breathed.

I looked at the top of her head.

Six years ago she had told me she would wait, and I had believed it all the way across an ocean.

"Get up," I said.

"Not until you say yes."

"Then you'll be down there a while." I leaned forward. "The clinic will have its two million by Friday."

Her head came up.

"From me, to the clinic's director, in the clinic's own account."

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