The Abandoned Wife novel · Chapter 4 of 24
Chapter 4: The Chair at the End
The boardroom of Kellerman Freight sat on the fortieth floor of a Wacker Drive tower, and I had once chosen its carpet.
It was still the same oatmeal wool.
I walked down the long glass hall at nine o'clock sharp with two associates behind me carrying boxes.
My heels were low and my suit was the deep green of a pine tree, and my left leg did what it always does when I'm tired, which is lag a half beat behind.
I did not let it.
The receptionist stood up when she saw the Gilchrist name on my badge.
She did not look at my face.
Nobody ever does, when a firm is about to eat their company.
At the door I stopped and let my associates go in first.
Through the glass I could see them all.
The board chair sat one seat down from the empty head of the table, in his seventies, white-haired and red in the face, with a water glass he hadn't touched.
The CFO sat beside him, sweating through a blue shirt.
The company lawyer sat at the foot, tapping his pen.
And on the left, with a legal pad and a silver case of cough drops, sat Lena.
Her dark curls were pinned up exactly as they had been at the funeral.
She wore white.
Tom was at the window with his back to the room, talking low into his phone in the voice that closes sales.
I stepped through the door.
"Good morning," I said. "I'm Dara Salter, from Gilchrist Partners."
The board chair half rose.
"Ms. Salter. We've heard a great deal. Mr. Kellerman will join us in a moment."
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