Chapter 10: Sixty to Forty

The speakers squealed.

Half the room winced.

Dad dropped the microphone on the stage and walked off, scotch in hand.

Victor Halstead followed him out without a word.

Mom grabbed Sadie by the wrist and hauled her toward the coat check, the white gown dragging.

Sadie screamed over her shoulder at me the whole way.

"You'll have nothing! Daddy said you'll have nothing!"

The doors swung shut behind them.

Two hundred people turned and looked at me.

I looked down at the sapphire on my hand.

Then I looked at Mitch.

"Monday," I said.

"Monday," he said.

Arthur Keaton patted my arm with his papery hand.

"Walter used to say the quiet ones hit the hardest," he said. "Go on and hit him."

Monday morning, the Granger Aviation boardroom was on the top floor of the hangar building.

Glass on three sides. Runways stretching out below.

I'd been in that room once before, at eleven, when Grandpa let me sit in his chair and spin.

I walked in at nine sharp.

Navy suit. Hair pinned back. The sapphire on my hand.

Mr. Pierce walked on my right with a leather folder.

Mitch stayed downstairs in the hangar. Esther's condition. He'd walked me as far as the stairs, squeezed my hand, and let go.

Everyone at the long table turned.

Dad at the head. Mom at his right.

Victor Halstead at his left, with two lawyers.

The company secretary, a nervous man named Dennis, with a laptop.

And, in the back row of chairs, the gray-haired mechanic from the hangar floor.

He'd come in his coveralls.

Dad sighed.

"Molly. This is a board meeting. Shareholders only."

"I'm a shareholder."

I took the chair at the foot of the table.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Made Me the Knight, But I Became My Own Princess from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.