Chapter 6: The Board Room

Holly stared at the word until her phone screen went dark.

Then she put her face in her hands.

"I can't do this," she said through her fingers. "I can't beat her. She has his password, his calendar, his ear. I have nothing."

"You have a head."

"Everything I made was on that laptop."

"Everything?"

She lifted her face.

She looked at me for a long time.

Then she got up and went upstairs without a word.

She came back down with a battered green sketchbook held against her chest.

"I draw everything by hand first," she said. "I always have. I never told anyone here. Chase thinks paper is for people who can't afford software."

The pages were soft from use.

Every one had a date in the corner in her small square handwriting.

The terraces. The dock. The school on the rail yard. Coffee rings on half of them.

"That's not nothing," I said.

She held it tighter.

Monday morning the board met on the forty-first floor of Pembroke Tower.

A long table of black walnut. Twelve chairs. Windows on the river.

I sat at the head.

It was the first time I'd sat in that chair, and every person who walked in stopped to greet me before they found their seat.

The file in my head named the two oldest.

My late husband's brother, white-haired and silent.

And his first partner, a heavy man with a cane of his own who winked at me.

Maybe we were.

Chase came in last with Brielle beside him.

She'd had her hair redone. Charcoal suit. A leather portfolio.

She looked like the cover of a magazine about women who'd made it.

"Mom," Chase said. "I didn't think you'd actually come."

"I said I would."

He took the seat at my right hand.

Brielle stood at the screen.

"Good morning, everyone. I'm so honored to present Riverbend, the project I've been building alongside Chase for the last six months."

The first slide came up.

Holly's terraces. Holly's dock. Holly's school.

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