Claire and Nicholas After Divorce novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Eleanor's Leftover

Claire walks into Corbin Home's boardroom and claims her mother's forty-one percent.

Corbin Home's headquarters was a glass tower on Wacker Drive, and I had not walked through its doors in fourteen years.

I had worn a grey suit Audrey bought me at eight that morning.

Audrey walked half a step behind me with a black folder under her arm.

The receptionist looked up from her desk.

"Do you have an appointment?"

"My name is Claire Corbin," I said. "The board is meeting on the forty-first floor."

Her face went blank.

"I'll call Mr. Corbin's office."

"Don't bother. I know the way."

I walked to the executive elevator and pressed the button.

Nobody stopped me.

The boardroom had a long walnut table and a wall of windows over the river.

Nine people sat at it, and Gerald Corbin sat at the head.

My father was sixty-three, with silver hair and a navy suit and the same cold, patient face I had last seen at my mother's funeral.

He did not stand.

"Claire," he said.

"Hello, Dad."

One of the directors dropped his pen.

"This is a closed meeting," Gerald said. "You're trespassing."

"I'm not."

Audrey stepped forward and put the folder on the table.

"Ms. Corbin is the sole owner of Ames Row Holdings," she said. "Ames Row holds forty-one percent of Corbin Home. The filings are on top."

The directors passed the folder down the table.

I watched them read.

An old man near the window lifted his head and stared at me.

"Your mother's shares," he said.

"My mother's shares," I said. "They were held in trust until I turned twenty-five. I have owned them for six years."

"Six years," said a woman halfway down. "And nobody told us?"

"I told no one."

Gerald laced his fingers together.

"Her leftover," he said. "That's what you are. Your mother sat in this room once and thought she owned it too."

"She co-founded it."

"She was a seamstress with a loan and a good eye. I built the rest."

"You built it on her name," I said. "Then you pushed her out of it, and she died in a rented apartment."

The room went quiet.

"She died of pneumonia," he said.

"She died because she couldn't pay for the doctor you told her you'd cover."

Nobody looked at him.

I did.

"You want to talk about leftovers, Dad? Here is mine."

I laid my hand on the table.

"Forty-one percent. It's enough to block any vote you want to take and to call a vote of my own."

"A vote on what?"

"The chair."

Gerald laughed.

It was a short laugh, and the directors did not join it.

"You're a copy editor," he said. "You fix commas for a living. You live in Evanston with a professor who doesn't know your name."

"He knows my name."

"Does he know whose daughter you are?"

Audrey kept her face smooth.

I did not blink.

"That's none of your business."

"I'd say it's very much my business." He looked around the table. "My daughter has been hiding under another surname for years. Why would anyone hide, if she were fit to run a company?"

"I hid from you," I said.

I turned to the directors.

"I'm calling a shareholder meeting at the anniversary gala four weeks from now. The vote will be public. Every share will be counted in the room."

"Four weeks isn't enough time to organize anything," a man said.

"Mr. Corbin has run the company for thirty years," I said. "He can survive four weeks."

The old man by the window began to smile.

"Four weeks," he said. "Why not?"

Gerald stood, finally.

He leaned both hands on the table.

"You want a war," he said. "Fine. But don't pretend you walked in here on your own, Claire. You've got a husband you've been hiding behind."

"I left him last night."

"Did you?" he said softly. "Then I wonder who he's been calling this morning."

I picked up my bag.

"Meeting adjourned," I said.

The directors rose when I did, slowly, one at a time.

Audrey held the door.

We rode the elevator down in silence.

At the bottom, I stopped to check my phone.

Gerald's assistant had caught up with us, out of breath, in the middle of the lobby.

"Ms. Corbin," he said loudly, as people turned. "Your father asks that you take the private elevator next time."

"I won't need it," I said.

Behind me, a man cleared his throat.

I knew that cough.

I turned around.

Nicholas was standing by the security desk with his coat open and his phone in his hand.

He had followed the tracking, again, all the way to Wacker.

He looked at the assistant.

He looked at the elevator.

He looked at me.

"Corbin?" he said.

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