Chapter 8: The Night After the Stage
The television crews left at ten-fifteen.
The investors stayed until nearly eleven.
The caterers began breaking down the tables at eleven-thirty, moving around the small clusters of people who had not yet finished what they needed to say to each other.
Audrey sat at the front table with Constance, Miriam, and Gerald Foss, and they talked for a long time.
Micah sat beside her for the first hour, then fell asleep in his chair with his head against her arm and his grandmother's recipe card still in one hand and the gold wheat brooch in his jacket pocket, where he had put it the moment he picked it up from that tablecloth and no one had asked him to give it back.
The two board members from table seven joined them at ten o'clock.
Their names were Patricia Sheldon and Ruth Okafor.
Patricia was seventy-one and had founded two nonprofits of her own before retiring.
Ruth had spent thirty years in finance and had a way of listening that made people feel they were being very precisely catalogued.
They sat down without asking whether they were welcome, which meant they had been waiting for an appropriate moment rather than an invitation.
"The foundation funds," Ruth said.
"Walk me through what you know."
Audrey walked her through it.
Patricia took notes on her phone.
Ruth asked four questions.
At the end, Ruth looked at Constance and said: "How quickly can we get a forensic accounting review initiated?"
"Depends on whether Brett's attorneys cooperate or resist," Constance said.
"Plan for resistance," Ruth said.
"We'll approach this as if they will resist at every stage.
That way anything cooperative is a bonus."
It was the most practical conversation Audrey had been part of in months, possibly years.
Something about its precision was steadying — the way being told the exact shape of a difficult path is less frightening than being told simply that the path is difficult.
Douglas Reeve had disappeared sometime before nine-thirty.
Brett had left the stage, spoken briefly to someone near the service corridor, and then was gone.
His publicist sent a prepared statement to both television journalists at 9:47 PM.
Audrey found out about the statement from one of the journalists, who texted Constance, who showed her phone to Audrey.
The statement described Brett as committed to transparency, noted that the company was undergoing a planned financial review, and characterized the evening's events as a private family matter that had unfortunately become public.
It expressed his hope for an amicable resolution.
Audrey read it twice and felt something almost like admiration for the speed of it.
"He's already reshaping the story," she said.
"He will keep reshaping it," Miriam said.
"It's what he does well.
The question is whether the documents reshape it faster." She folded her own notes.
"I'll file a formal complaint with the state bar regarding the signature instruction tomorrow morning.
That creates a public record independent of any civil proceeding."
"What does that mean for the company?" Audrey asked.
"It means any restructuring he has already filed or is attempting to file will face immediate scrutiny," Miriam said.
"It also means his current attorneys will spend the next several weeks deciding whether representing him is worth the professional exposure."
Audrey looked at the room around her.
The tables she had selected because they allowed comfortable conversation between the investor clusters and the foundation donors.
The flower arrangements she had redesigned because the originals had looked too bridal.
The centerpieces she had assembled herself in the three days before the event while Brett finalized his remarks.
She had built this room for tonight.
She had built it for the wrong version of tonight.
"I want the company," she said.
It was the first time she had said it plainly.
"I don't want to destroy it.
I don't want to sell it.
I want what I built."
"Then we fight for exactly that," Constance said.
She said it without drama.
Like a fact.
Ruth Okafor picked up her bag.
"We'll be in touch Monday morning.
Patricia and I will speak with the other foundation board members over the weekend." She stood, and then paused, and looked at Micah sleeping in his chair.
"He's a good boy," she said.
"What he said tonight, at twelve years old." She shook her head once.
"His name should be in the story."
She left without waiting for a response.
Audrey looked at her son.
One of the caterers, a young woman with a quiet face, was clearing the table beside them.
She slowed as she passed.
She looked at Audrey and then at Micah, and then she said — not loudly, not performing for anyone — "I work the Lakeview location.
Three years.
Mrs.
Holloway." She nodded once.
"We know who actually runs things."
She moved on with her stack of plates.
Audrey put her hand on Micah's hair.
Outside the tall windows of the Blackstone Hotel, the Chicago night was indifferent and enormous and completely unimpressed by any of it.
Gerald Foss stood and buttoned his jacket.
"I'll see myself out," he said.
He stopped at the edge of the table and looked at Audrey for a long moment.
"Opal would have done the same thing," he said.
"She would have gone up those steps."
He nodded once and was gone.
Constance began gathering the documents from the table, organizing them with the careful speed of someone who already had a filing system in mind.
"I'll have copies made tonight and the originals secured by morning."
"What do I do right now?" Audrey asked.
"Tonight, I mean.
When I walk out of here."
Constance looked at her.
"Go home.
Put Micah to bed.
Make yourself a cup of tea." She paused.
"Breathe, Audrey.
You did the hard part.
The rest is paperwork and process, and we are very good at those."
Audrey woke Micah gently.
He surfaced slowly, the recipe card still in his hand.
"Is it done?" he asked, blurry.
"Not all of it," she said.
"But the important part."
He thought about this for three seconds, which was his habit before accepting information.
"Okay," he said.
She helped him into his coat.
He transferred the brooch from his jacket pocket to hers without being asked, as though he had known all along that it was his job to carry it safely and her job to take it home.
They walked out of the Blackstone Hotel at eleven forty-nine.
The doorman held the door.
Outside, the city was cold and clear.
Micah's breath made small clouds in the air.
He took her hand — not because he was frightened, not because he needed to, but in the uncomplicated way of a child who is not yet embarrassed by loving his mother in public.
They stood on the sidewalk for a moment.
"Mom," Micah said.
"Mm."
"Grandma Opal's brooch has a bent grain on it."
"I know.
I bent it."
"I know," he said.
"You told me once." He leaned against her arm.
"I'm glad you bent it.
Now we always know which one is ours."
She held his hand tighter.
A taxi pulled up without being called.
She got in with her son, the documents in her bag, and the brooch in her pocket.
The city moved past the windows.
Micah fell asleep against her shoulder before they reached the second traffic light.
She did not think about Brett.
She did not think about Monday or the attorneys or what the statement would look like in the morning news.
May you like
She thought about flour and butter and a kitchen in Iowa and a woman who entered the same competition every year and pretended she did not care about winning.
Opal had always won.
