Chapter 20: What Lavinia Did

"Give me twenty minutes alone with her," Emerson had said at the foot of the gangway. "Then come up."

I gave her fifteen.

The Lindahl offices were dark except for the glass box on the mezzanine.

A single lamp burned there, over the freezer floor.

I climbed the iron stairs as quietly as I could and stopped on the landing, outside the open door.

Emerson sat behind her desk with her hands flat on the blotter.

Lavinia sat in the visitor's chair with her coat still on.

She was speaking to the desk.

"He came to the house on Tuesday night," she said.

"After Tristan said no to me. After I knelt on that carpet in front of my father's entire board."

"Go on," said Emerson.

"He said the foundation's loan could be paid in a week."

"A bridge from Halden Row, no questions."

"He needed an officer's signature on the operating account for a donor-advised transfer."

"A what?"

"A gift routed through us. That's what he called it."

She laughed, and it broke in the middle.

"I knew it wasn't. I'm not stupid, Emerson. I'm only a coward."

"Your father?"

"Daddy said no."

"He said a man who won't put a thing in writing shouldn't be handed a signature."

She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

"I waited until he was in the shower. I used the foundation's laptop in his study. I saw the number."

"Two hundred million."

"I signed it anyway, at seven forty."

"I told myself it was Sullivan's money to give and not my business to count."

"When did you know he wasn't Mr. S?"

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