Chapter 26: At Cost

I thought about it for exactly one night.

I did it in the back booth, with a ginger ale and a stack of Ciara's blank placemats.

Fergus worked the grill and didn't come over once.

That was how I knew he was scared.

He came over every night.

At midnight I turned a placemat to the blank side and drew a line down the middle.

On the left I wrote what Emerson had offered.

A title. An office on Market Street. A salary I didn't let myself read twice.

On the right I wrote what the families in the Kitchen actually needed.

It was a much longer list.

Emerson came to the Kitchen the next afternoon.

He stood on the sidewalk, the way he always did.

"Come in," I said.

He blinked.

"You've never asked me in."

"I've never had a contract for you before."

He came in and stood very carefully in the middle of the white room.

The milk boy's mother was in a chair by the fish tank, waiting for a refill.

She looked at him over her magazine.

I handed him the placemat.

"No," I said. "I won't run your medical side. I won't work for Kenley. Not for any salary."

His face fell, and he caught it.

"Okay."

"Read the other side."

He turned it over.

I had written it in pencil, in capital letters.

KENLEY MAKES THE FORMULAS. AT COST. MY RECIPES. MY CLINICAL RULES ON EVERY LABEL.

FREE TO ANY FAMILY WITH NO INSURANCE.

NOT ONE CAN SOLD UNDER THE WORD RESET. EVER.

EVERY BATCH TESTED BEFORE IT LEAVES THE PLANT. I SEE THE RESULTS.

Emerson read it twice.

"At cost," he said. "The board will lose their minds."

"Good," I said.

It was what he'd said in his own lobby, the morning he signed away his records.

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