Chapter 14: The Terms

The Merrick boardroom was on the forty-first floor, and I walked into it on a Tuesday morning with my hands steady.

Twelve people sat around a table of black glass.

At the head of it, Lachlan stood up.

I had not seen him in three years.

He was thinner, and there was gray at his temples that had not been there before.

His eyes went straight to my face and stayed.

I had planned for this for six weeks, in a hotel mirror and in a plane seat, and none of the plans covered the way my stomach dropped.

"Imogen," he said.

"Mr. Merrick," I said. "I'm here for the Showcase."

Cordelia was out of her chair before he could say more.

She crossed the room in three steps, in a cream suit with her hair in its neat chignon, and put both arms around me.

"Oh, I have missed you," she said into my shoulder. "You look wonderful. You look like yourself again."

She smelled of the same soap.

She had hugged me on the front steps three years ago, on the morning I left, and asked me three times where I was going.

I patted her back once and stepped out of her arms.

"Thank you, Cordelia," I said. "It's good to see you."

She smiled, warm and bright, and went back to her chair.

A board member at the far end cleared his throat.

He was old, with a thick gold ring, and he had sat beside Lachlan's grandfather for thirty years.

"With respect," he said, "this house has never hung a painting as its centerpiece. The Showcase is for stones."

"It is," Lachlan said.

"And the artist is, if I have the history right, the woman in the newspaper photograph."

Nobody breathed in.

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