Chapter 24: Wear the Green

The nameplate arrived on the morning of our anniversary, in a white box with a ribbon.

I opened it at my father's desk on the fourth floor.

Chair of the Board, it said in brass. Tilda Lowry.

I had dropped Reyburn in the spring, in a short hearing, and nobody in the courtroom had said a word against it.

Gavin had pleaded guilty to the forgery in March.

The sentence was seven years, and he would come out a stranger to everyone who had ever liked him.

I did not visit, and I did not think about him more than twice a week.

"Is that the one?" Odette said from the doorway.

She wore a navy suit and carried a coffee in each hand.

She had been on the board for eight months.

She had been annoying in every meeting, and the banker had begun asking her opinion first.

"That's the one," I said.

"Let me." She put the coffees down.

She screwed the plate onto the front of the desk with a dime, because she'd forgotten a screwdriver.

She stepped back.

"He'd have hated it," she said. "A woman in his chair. A baker."

"He'd have eaten the doughnuts and said nothing."

"That's what I mean."

We looked at the brass for a moment.

Then she cleared her throat.

"I made you a reservation," she said. "Marchetti's. Eight o'clock. The private room."

I stared at her.

"You didn't."

"I did. Emmett asked me to. Don't be angry, he's been sweating about it for a week."

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Sent Me the Green Dress, So I Took His Company from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.