The One He Never Held novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: What Lucille Signed

Lucille looked at the paper in my hand and did not reach for it.

"Put that away, Joanna."

"It has your name on it."

"Everything in that family has my name on it." She tried to smile for the people on the steps. "It was a board matter. I signed a hundred letters that year."

"This one fired my father."

The friend who had let go of her arm took two steps back.

The priest came down one stair and stopped.

"Your husband was in the hospital," I said. "Damian told me. You held his signing power for six months."

"That's true."

"Lionel wrote on the margin that the audit wasn't finished. Did you read it before you signed?"

Lucille's mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

"Did you read it?"

"Lionel said the numbers were clear." Her voice had thinned. "He said Walter had confessed to him privately."

"My father never confessed to anything."

"I know that now."

It was so quiet I heard a car door close two streets away.

"I knew it then," Lucille said.

She said it to the stone steps, not to me.

"I knew the audit was thin. The accountant they sent was one of Lionel's men, and he finished in nine days."

She pressed her fingers to her lips.

"Harold was dying. Lionel said the company would not survive a scandal, so a name had to go."

"A name," I said.

"Walter was alone. He had no one to speak for him."

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