Roses Revenge novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: Haverty

The sign was leaning against the wall of the fourth-floor hall when we got there.

It was a flat black board, four feet wide, with white block letters hand-painted across it.

HAVERTY LABS.

The painter, a young man with white paint on his sleeves, stood beside it with his cap in his hands.

Aunt Bea stood opposite him with her arms folded.

"It's wrong," she said.

"It's spelled right," said the painter. "I checked it twice."

"It's wrong," Bea said again.

The woman from payroll looked at me helplessly over her coffee.

The staff had gathered in the hall, all of them, with the junior engineer perched on a filing cabinet.

"What's wrong with it?" I asked.

Bea unfolded her arms and pointed with one finger.

"That word."

I looked at it.

"Labs?"

"That's his word," she said. "He had a word for everything."

"He had Labs and Platforms and Solutions. You are not a laboratory, Rosie."

"What am I?"

"You're a Haverty," she said. "That's the whole sign."

Nobody in the hall said anything.

The engineer slid off the filing cabinet.

"She's right," he said. "I'd put it on my vote card if I had a vote card."

"You do have a vote card," said the woman from payroll. "I printed them last night."

"Then it's yes."

"Yes," said the woman from payroll.

One at a time, the staff said it.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

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