Chapter 4: One Vote

On Monday morning my divorce petition went to the courthouse at eight, and at nine I walked into the Carrow boardroom.

The table seated twenty. Eleven directors waited with their coffee and their reading glasses.

Augustin Carrow sat at the head, in his charcoal suit, with Emmett at his right hand.

Emmett had shaved and put on a navy tie, and he wore the face of the wronged husband.

Rhys stood at the window with his back to us until I came in.

"Mrs. Carrow," Augustin said. "I'm told you've had a difficult weekend. We can postpone the vote out of respect."

"I'm Ms. Rowe," I said. "I filed this morning."

Nobody in the room moved.

"You are still, today, the holder of your mother's thirty percent," Augustin said, "through the proxy you gave my son."

"That's what I'm here to talk about."

I put my phone on the table in front of the company counsel and said, "Please record this."

The counsel, a thin gray woman who had worked for my mother, looked at Rhys. He nodded once.

She pressed her recorder.

"I, Annika Rowe, revoke the voting proxy I signed in March in favor of Emmett Carrow, effective now," I said. "I vote my shares myself."

Emmett half rose from his chair.

"Annie, this is a mistake. Your judgment is compromised. Father, she's not herself, the fire..."

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