I Wouldn't Take Their Daughter's DUI, So I Healed the Man She Crippled novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Trust

My darling Wynne, the letter said, if you are reading this, you are grown, and I am sorry I am not there to see it.

I read it on the porch step by the light from the kitchen window.

My mother wrote that she had been afraid the day I was born, and happier than she had ever been.

She wrote that my father laughed when I cried, and that she had to leave the room to keep from laughing too.

She wrote that I would be told what I was worth by a great many people, and that I should count only the ones who asked what I wanted.

At the bottom she had written a last line, pressed hard into the paper.

Use your hands. They are the best thing about you.

I folded it along its old creases and held it against my chest until the porch light clicked off by itself.

Harlan did not ask whether I would take the chair.

He asked it in a boardroom on the fortieth floor of the Fitzhugh tower, with six directors in gray suits and a view of the whole gray harbor.

"Chairman of the board," he said. "Fitzhugh Shipping and Steel. It is yours the day you say yes. I'll stay on as an advisor and tell you where the bodies are."

One of the directors coughed.

"I'm grateful," I said.

"You are about to refuse."

"I am."

Harlan's mouth moved, and I could not tell if it was a smile.

"Tell me why."

"Because I don't know a thing about ships," I said. "And I'm not going to spend my life being the girl behind a desk because that's where I was put. I was put somewhere my whole life. I'd like to choose."

"Then what do you want?"

I had thought about it all week.

"I want to keep the board seat and the vote," I said. "I want to watch every dollar leave this company, and read every number. Nobody will take a cent from me again."

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