Chapter 18: Pierce

The Throckmorton Founders Dinner filled the Grand Ballroom with two hundred and ten people in black.

Lucinda sat at the long head table in her father's old seat, in a navy dress, with Alden at her right hand.

Gordon sat at her left.

He had not spoken to her since she arrived.

He had kissed her cheek once, in front of the board, and she had let him.

Pierce sat three chairs down with a glass of whiskey.

He had not been invited to the table.

He came anyway, and no one stopped him.

At nine, Gordon rose with a champagne flute and tapped it with a spoon.

"My friends," he said. "Thirty-one years ago my brother and I took a small shipping line and made it a family."

A murmur ran around the tables.

"He is gone. But his daughter is among us, against every expectation."

He let it settle.

"I'm told we must now vote on whether the company passes to her or to the family."

He smiled sadly at Lucinda.

"I love her. I will accept the board's decision."

He sat.

Applause came from three tables, warm and uncertain.

Lucinda stood.

She had no notes.

"Thank you, Uncle," she said. "Before the vote, I'd like the room to hear something."

She nodded to the technician at the back.

He pressed a key, and the ballroom speakers crackled.

A glass clinked.

Then Pierce's voice filled the room, slurred and cheerful.

"You don't get it. The door was open when I got there. Passenger side. She'd already crawled out."

A pause, and another voice, which was Lucinda's own, asking how he knew.

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