Marriage Offered, Love Declined novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: February Twelfth
On the twelfth of February, the hallway outside the boardroom on the thirty-first floor was full of people in work jackets.
There were forty of them at least.
Men from the Aramingo Avenue yard, with their hard hats under their arms and their union buttons on their collars.
The widow from the corner of Edgemont Street, in her church coat.
The man in the SEPTA jacket, with his cousin who sold insurance.
They stood against the wall in a long quiet line.
When the cousins arrived to vote, they had to walk past them one at a time.
Nobody said a word.
The block had come on the 6:40 bus, with a thermos.
I had not asked them to.
I had only told my father, on Sunday, what day it was.
"They can't come in," Sebastian said, low, at my shoulder. "It's a shareholders' meeting."
"I know. They just want to be seen."
"You're smiling."
"I'm a physical therapist. I like it when people stand up."
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, and I saw how much sleep he'd lost.
The ten percent was still locked.
Lowell's lawyer had won an injunction in December, freezing the trust's shares until a judge could hear the "validity of the household" in March.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of Marriage Offered, Love Declined are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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