I knew because I could hear Judith behind me, demanding that he call his attorneys, the board, the bank, anyone who could put the world back in the order she preferred. Her voice rose over the traffic on Dearborn Street until it became part of the city noise—car horns, bus brakes, courthouse doors opening and closing, strangers moving on with their lives.
I did not turn around.
For twenty-seven years, I had turned around every time Grant called my name. I had turned around when payroll was short, when a supplier threatened to walk, when Judith needed surgery, when Lily had nightmares, when Grant forgot an anniversary and blamed the pressure of work. Turning around had become a reflex.
That afternoon, I broke it.
At the curb, a black sedan waited. Daniel Cho, Northstar’s general counsel, stood beside the rear door. He had worked for the company for nine years and had never once called me anything but Mrs. Mercer, even after Grant began introducing Natalie as his “strategic partner” at private dinners.
“Rebecca,” he said carefully. “The board is assembled.”
I glanced at the courthouse entrance. Grant was still staring at his phone. Judith had finally opened the cream-colored notice and was striking the paper with one finger as if she could beat the words into changing.
“Then let’s not keep them waiting.”
Daniel opened the door.
The drive to Northstar’s headquarters took twenty minutes. In those twenty minutes, my phone filled with messages.
Three were from Grant.
CALL ME.
THIS IS NOT LEGAL.
YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’VE DONE.
One was from Lily.
Mom, Dad says you destroyed the company. Please tell me that isn’t true.
I read her message twice and set the phone facedown.
Northstar occupied fourteen floors of a steel-and-glass tower near the river. Grant had chosen the building because the lobby ceiling was forty feet high and visitors had to pass beneath a suspended model of our first precision-guidance assembly. He liked telling people he had designed that first system in a garage.
The truth was less dramatic.
We had designed it together in the laundry room of our first apartment because the garage leaked.
When I entered the boardroom, twelve people stopped talking.
The city stretched behind them through a wall of windows. Files lay open across the polished table. On the screens, Northstar’s stock price was dropping in red increments.
Eleanor Price, the board chair, stood first. She was sixty-two, silver-haired, and almost impossible to intimidate.
“Mrs. Mercer,” she said, “thank you for coming.”
“Rebecca is fine.”
Her expression changed by half a degree. Respect, perhaps. Or caution.
At the far end of the table, Natalie Pierce sat with both hands folded before her. She wore a cream suit and no wedding ring, though she had spent months behaving as if the title of Mrs. Mercer was already hers.