I Was Done Begging novel · Chapter 5 of 24
Chapter 5: Twenty Years, No Exit
Hattie came over the back wall at seven the next morning with two coffees and a legal pad.
"Your mother-in-law has a guard on the front gate," she said, brushing leaves off her blazer. "I've been climbing fences since I was twelve. Give me the paper."
I gave her the folder.
She read it standing up, with her coffee going cold on the counter.
By page three she had stopped breathing.
"Celia."
"I know."
"This isn't a proxy while you recover. It's a twenty-year assignment of your vote. Irrevocable, no exit, no review, nothing."
"What does it do?"
"It makes your fifteen percent his mother's for twenty years, and it makes you a spectator in your own company."
She flipped to the yellow tab.
"And it's dated for the day before the shareholder vote on the Everhart merger. Julien needs your fifteen to get that merger through."
"The vote is the twenty-seventh."
"Then he needs your signature by the twenty-sixth."
"Hattie, he told me so last night."
She put the pages down very slowly.
"That man brought you a pen with the cap off."
"He did."
"I'd like to put that pen somewhere."
"File the divorce," I said.
She looked up fast.
"Now?"
"Under seal. Filed the morning after the ball, not before. Draft everything today, and keep it in your office safe."
"Why wait three weeks? File tomorrow and freeze his assets."
"If it's filed, he'll know. I need to be in this house until the twenty-sixth."
"Celia, what happens on the twenty-sixth?"
I almost told her.
I opened my mouth, and I thought of Hattie standing at a grave in a life I had lived without her knowing.
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