Chapter 23: The Chair

I took the chair on Tuesday morning, in the boardroom on the fortieth floor.

I wore a plain navy suit I had bought that morning, and my father's watch was not on my wrist, because it was in the ground where it belonged.

On my left wrist I wore the twin, with the cracked glass.

The directors stood when I came in.

I hadn't known people did that.

"Please sit," I said. "I don't know the rules yet. I'll learn them."

The gray-haired woman, who had turned out to be the oldest independent director, put the leather folder in front of me.

"We'll need your signature on the minutes," she said.

I took the pen.

Under the line for the chair, I wrote my own name, in cursive for the first and last time in my life, so it would be clearly mine.

Maisie Corrigan.

Then I put the pen down.

"My father left me a note," I said. "It says I don't have to run this company. I only have to own it."

A few of them smiled.

"I'm going to take him at his word. I need a chief executive."

I looked at the door, where Jerome was standing in the same coat he'd worn to the cemetery.

"Jerome Werner," I said. "Will you come in, please?"

He stayed where he was.

"Maisie."

"Full name."

"Jerome Werner." His voice was low. "I'm the wrong man for it. I'm the one they threw out. I've run a tool yard."

"You're the one who said no to twenty million in a bank lobby with people watching," I said. "I want that man to be the CEO."

"You can't trust a Werner with it."

"I don't," I said. "I trust you."