Chapter 6: The Vote

Nathan came back to bed with his phone in his hand and a very ordinary face.

"She wanted to know if you got home safe," he said.

"I heard her ask if I was asleep."

"That's what she meant."

He slid in beside me and pulled the sheet over my hip.

I let it go, because his hand was warm and the clock said three-ten.

I will say now that I let it go too easily.

At eight we stood in a bank on Buford Highway while a teller in a tie unlocked a steel drawer.

It held a single folded sheet.

The lab's name was at the top, and a line near the bottom said Probability of paternity: 99.9 percent.

I put it in my purse next to the Goodwill receipt.

At nine-thirty I walked into the Trezevant boardroom on the fortieth floor.

Nine people sat around a table of black glass.

Eleanor sat at the head with her cane hooked on the chair, and she did not look at me.

Camille sat three seats down in an ivory suit, with a look on her face.

"This is Sophia Bulloch," Eleanor said. "She is my guest and my adviser this morning. She does not vote."

A silver-haired man on my right gave me a polite, puzzled nod.

I sat in the chair behind Eleanor's shoulder, and I folded my hands.

The first item was a loan.

Berrien Construction owed Trezevant Hotels fourteen million dollars for a tower in Buckhead, and the note came due in thirty days.

Talbot's father stood at the foot of the table with a folder.

He was a gray, careful man of sixty-two, and he spoke.

Beside him, in a lavender suit, stood Talbot's mother.

Talbot stood behind them both, white to the lips.

He had not looked at me once since I came in.

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