Chapter 7: The Board Room and After
Alexander called me at half past four.
Lily was napping.
I sat by the window and picked up before the second ring.
"It's done," he said.
"How bad?"
"Eleven months of diverted funds.
Approximately four point two million dollars.
The board voted unanimously to freeze Reynolds Digital's access to Sterling Capital financing and refer the matter to their legal team." A pause.
"Mark was not in the meeting.
His attorney had already called in sick on his behalf."
"He knew it was coming."
"He knew the moment I sent the report this morning." Alexander's voice was even.
Tired, maybe.
"His attorney released a statement at three o'clock claiming the account irregularities were an administrative error and that Mark has been cooperating fully with an internal review."
"He wasn't cooperating with anything."
"No.
But that's the story he's starting with."
I looked out at the city.
"What happens to him?"
"The board's legal referral goes to the state financial regulator tomorrow.
Whether it becomes a crjminal matter depends on what the regulators find.
My attorney believes it will." He paused.
"Mark is also going to lose the Sterling Capital financing.
Without that backing, three of his largest contracts collapse.
Reynolds Digital as it currently exists probably doesn't survive the year."
Four point two million dollars.
Gerald Frost's petition.
The text message in the car.
Mark Reynolds had spent the entire previous night building a strategy to protect himself using my daughter as the central piece.
And by four-thirty in the afternoon, that strategy had cost him everything he had been trying to protect.
"Where is he now?" I asked.
"His attorney's office, I imagine." Another pause.
"His personal accounts have been flagged as a precaution.
He can't move money without it being visible."
I thought about Chloe.
Her small step away from Mark on the patio.
The way she had called me at noon.
"Chloe is going to need help," I said.
"I know." He was quiet for a moment.
"She called Claire this afternoon, actually.
On her own.
She asked about her options."
That surprised me.
Then it didn't.
"She knew," I said slowly.
"Not about the funds.
But she knew what he was."
"I think she's known for a long time," Alexander said.
We were both quiet.
"There's something else," he said.
"Tell me."
"My father called me at two o'clock.
He told Gerald Frost to withdraw from the Carter petition." A pause.
"He also told me that the money he sent you five years ago — the payment to relocate — was thirty thousand dollars, routed through a law firm account so it wouldn't trace back to him directly."
My stomach turned.
I had received a check five years ago.
From a law firm I didn't recognize.
The letter said it was a grant from an anonymous technology education foundation.
For graduate students who had withdrawn from their programs due to personal circumstances.
I had been stunned by it.
I had cried.
I had used it to rent the apartment where Lily came home from the hospital.
"I thought it was real," I said.
My voice came out strange.
"I know."
"I thought someone genuinely wanted to help me."
"Emily—"
"I named Lily after the street where that apartment was," I said.
"Lily Lane.
Because it was the first place I ever felt like we were going to be okay."
The line was very quiet.
"I didn't know that," Alexander said.
"No." I pressed my hand against the window glass.
Cold.
"She wasn't named after a flower.
She was named after a street I could only afford because your father paid me to disappear."
I heard him exhale.
"I'm sorry," he said.
It came out rough.
Not polished.
Not managed.
"You didn't do it."
"My family did."
"Yes." I took a breath.
"But Frost is withdrawing from the petition?"
"Yes.
My father confirmed it an hour ago.
Claire will file the response paperwork regardless, to make the record clean.
But Frost won't appear at the hearing."
Without Frost, the petition collapsed.
Richard Carter was many things but he was not a man who would pursue a legal strategy alone.
Without the lawyer telling him exactly what to say, he would lose his nerve.
"So it's over?" I said.
"The petition is over." A pause that carried something I couldn't quite name.
"Emily.
We still need to talk about what comes next.
Not tonight.
Lily needs to sleep and you need to rest.
But tomorrow."
"I know."
"I want to be part of her life." His voice was steady, but underneath it was something very careful and very fragile.
"I don't know yet what that looks like.
I'm not asking you to decide anything tonight.
But I need you to know that I'm asking."
I looked at the closed door of the bedroom where Lily was sleeping.
"I know you are," I said.
"That's enough for now," he said.
"Get some rest."
The call ended.
I sat with the phone in my hand for a long time.
Lily Lane.
I had never told anyone why I chose that name.
Not my mother.
Not Chloe.
Not the pediatrician who always asked cheerfully if there was a family story behind it.
I had just said it was a name I loved.
Because it was.
Because that apartment — small and cold in November, with one window that looked out onto a parking lot — had been the first place where I had ever sat alone with a baby on my chest and thought: we are going to be all right.
And we had been.
We had been all right for four years without anyone's help.
The question that sat with me now, quiet and real, was what all right could look like with someone in it.
I didn't have an answer yet.
But for the first time in five years, the question didn't frighten me.
What did frighten me was the knock at the suite door at seven-fifteen, and the person standing on the other side of it when I opened it.
My father.
Alone.
Without bourbon.
He looked like he hadn't slept.
"I need to talk to you," he said.
---
My father had never once in my life come to me without being summoned.
He had never stood in a doorway looking like that.
May you like
And whatever he was about to say — I could already see it was going to cost him something.
I just didn't know yet if it would be enough.
