Chương 3
“You believed?” Claire said.
“I made a judgment.”
“You pretended she’d already made it.”
“I kept the transaction alive.”
“By signing for her.”
“I did not sign. I submitted a stored signature.”
Marcus looked at the floor.
Claire gave Grant a disbelieving stare.
“Oh, good. That’s so much better.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Reduce the last year of my life to one document you don’t understand.”
Claire flinched as if he had touched her.
Eleanor saw it.
Grant saw Eleanor see it.
He leaned back.
“Fine,” he said. “That came out wrong.”
Claire laughed once, quietly.
“You think?”
Rain streaked the windows in silver diagonals.
Somewhere in the hangar, an auxiliary power unit started with a low mechanical hum. A ramp worker in a reflective jacket crossed behind the glass carrying orange safety cones, head down against the storm.
The world continued.
Eleanor found herself looking at the coffee machine.
Daniel Hayes had hated that machine.
He had still been alive when they renovated the office, ninety-one years old and offended by anything that required a touch screen to produce coffee.
Coffee needs one button, he had said.
Eleanor had told him the machine had six.
Exactly, he said, as if she had proven his point.
The memory arrived because of the photograph in Claire’s hand, not because Eleanor wanted it.
She rubbed her thumb over the folder’s leather edge.
“Marcus.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Can you tell me who entered this office today?”
Grant turned toward him.
Marcus’s expression did not change.
“I can pull access logs.”
“Do that.”
Grant pushed his chair back.
“This is getting ridiculous.”
Eleanor looked at him.
“You struck something out of my hands, told me to leave property I own, and I’m holding a document that uses my signature without permission. We are several miles beyond ridiculous.”
“You know why I came here.”
“No. I know what you told me when you arrived.”
Grant looked at Claire.
Claire turned from the counter.
“What did he tell you?”
Eleanor waited.
“He said the board had approved a transition tonight.”
Claire’s face emptied.
Grant’s mouth opened.
Eleanor continued.
“He said my access would be suspended at midnight and that the aircraft had been placed under his authority.”
Claire looked at the card on the table.
“That’s why you brought her here?”
Grant stood.
“I came because she was about to fly to Seattle and blow up the Northstar transaction.”
“I was going to Seattle for Daniel’s memorial foundation meeting.”
“You added the bank meeting yesterday.”
Eleanor did not answer.
Claire noticed.
“Mom?”
“I had questions.”
Grant gave a humorless laugh.
“Exactly.”
“I had questions,” Eleanor repeated. “That is what owners are allowed to have before surrendering control of the company.”
“It wasn’t surrender.”
“Then why didn’t you bring me the fifty-one-percent document?”
He stared at her.
Nobody moved.
Marcus’s radio murmured in his earpiece.
He touched it, listened, then said, “North service road has standing water over the lower switchback. County is closing it until the storm moves east.”
Grant turned sharply.
“For how long?”
“No estimate.”
“I have a car.”
“You have a car on the wrong side of a closure.”
Grant took out his phone.
The screen showed one bar.
He walked toward the far corner.
Eleanor watched him type.
Claire came back to the table and sat.
Her face had gone pale.
“Mom, what board transition?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Why would he say that?”
Eleanor looked toward Grant.
He was speaking quietly into his phone now, facing the glass.
“Because he expected me to believe it.”
Claire pressed her lips together.
The photograph remained in her hand.
“You really bought the company from Grandpa Daniel?”
“Yes.”
“I thought Dad inherited it.”
Eleanor studied her.
“Your father inherited twenty percent.”
Claire frowned.
“Then why did we always say it was Dad’s family business?”
“Because it was.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Eleanor had no answer she liked.
So she gave the true one.
“Because it was easier.”
Claire looked down.
Eleanor had met Daniel Hayes at thirty-two, when she was an accountant working for a regional air cargo company in Oregon. Daniel owned three aircraft, two hangars, six million dollars in debt, and a supernatural resistance to paperwork. His son Robert, Eleanor’s future husband, loved flying and hated management.
Daniel eventually hired Eleanor.
Then he argued with her for eleven years.
When he decided to retire, his sons did not want the debt. Eleanor did.
The purchase took every dollar she and Robert had, a commercial loan that made her nauseated for months, and a seller note Daniel used to threaten her whenever she changed something he liked.
Robert had inherited twenty percent because Daniel could not quite bring himself to sell everything outside the bloodline.
Eleanor bought the rest.
After Robert died, Claire inherited part of his interest.
Eleanor had never corrected people when they called her the founder’s daughter-in-law who “kept the family company running.”
There were advantages to being underestimated.
There were costs too.
She was looking at one.
Grant returned from the corner.
“Who were you calling?” Claire asked.
“Peter.”
Eleanor recognized the name.
“Peter Vaughn?”
“Yes.”
“Northstar?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because their committee is waiting.”
Eleanor stared at him.
“You’re still trying to close it.”
“I’m trying to stop a financing package from collapsing while we sit here pretending this is only about your feelings.”
Claire stood so quickly her chair rolled backward.
“Don’t.”
Grant looked at her.
“Don’t what?”
“Talk to her like that.”
He opened his hands.
“You have no idea what’s happening.”
“Then tell me.”
“I have been trying.”
“No. You’ve been explaining why everyone else is too stupid to understand why you had to lie.”
His face changed.
Eleanor saw anger come first, then restraint.
Grant swallowed.
“That’s not fair.”
Claire almost smiled.
“Now we’re worried about fair?”
Marcus returned to the table with a security tablet.
“I have preliminary access history.”
Grant looked at Eleanor.
“This is insane.”
May you like
Eleanor ignored him.
Marcus set the tablet down but kept one hand on it.
