Chapter 20: The Board

The board of Vandeleur Freight met on the forty-first floor at ten o'clock on Tuesday.

Fourteen men and women sat around a table the length of a bus.

There was a camera crew at the back, because the shareholders' lawyers had demanded the meeting be open.

I sat beside Rhys with Junie asleep in the carrier on my chest.

He wore a dark suit that no longer fit him, and he hadn't touched the water in front of him.

The chairman stood at the head of the table and tapped a folder.

"We are here on one item," he said. "The removal of Rhys Vandeleur as chief executive."

He was a heavy man with silver hair, who had been my husband's father's oldest friend.

He had hugged me at my wedding.

"Mr. Vandeleur has admitted he signed the order that sank the Mariner's Rest."

He let that settle.

"I move that he be removed today, and that I act as caretaker chief until a successor is named."

He sat down, and the room murmured.

"Seconded," said a director near the end.

"Before the vote," Rhys said, "I'd like to put some pages on the table."

"Mr. Vandeleur, this is out of order," the chairman said.

"It's the board's own rule. Any director may table a document before a vote."

He stood, took a brown envelope from his jacket, and slid it down the table.

It stopped in front of a woman in a gray suit.

She was the audit chair, a quiet person who had said nothing since we walked in.

"These are from my father's files," Rhys said.

"I found them three weeks before the cyclone, in a cabinet Veda thought she had emptied."

The audit chair opened the envelope.

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