Chapter 9: The Board Meeting
The foundation's emergency board meeting was held at two o'clock in a conference room on the fourteenth floor of Cross Meridian's Chicago offices.
I was not in the meeting.
I was in the lobby with Lily, who had fallen asleep across two chairs with her cardigan folded under her head, because I had nowhere else to take her and Nathaniel had said, quietly, before we left the estate: bring her.
I sat beside my sleeping daughter and watched the elevator doors and waited.
Patricia had gone up with Nathaniel and Gerald.
The board chair, a woman named Constance Adler, had arrived twelve minutes early and gone straight up without speaking to anyone in the lobby.
At four-fifteen, the elevator opened.
Patricia came out first.
Her face told me something before she said a word.
"It's done," she said.
"The board voted to suspend all foundation operations pending a full forensic audit.
Constance is referring the matter to the state attorney's office herself.
She didn't wait for a recommendation."
"What does that mean for Vanessa?"
"It means the investigation is no longer just internal." Patricia sat down in the chair across from me.
She looked tired in a way that went past the day.
"It means that what she did is now a matter of record."
Lily stirred.
I put my hand on her back and she settled again.
"How did Nathaniel take it?" I said.
Patricia was quiet for a moment.
"He was the one who presented the evidence.
He stood up in front of seven board members and laid out fourteen months of transfers, forged authorizations, and a wiped server.
He did it without raising his voice once."
"That sounds like him."
"Constance asked him if he wanted to give Vanessa an opportunity to respond before the referral.
He said no." Patricia looked at her hands.
"He said the foundation belonged to his mother.
And his mother deserved better than an opportunity."
I looked at the elevator.
"He'll be down in a few minutes," Patricia said.
"He wanted to speak with Constance privately."
I nodded.
We sat in silence for a moment.
The lobby was marble and glass, very clean, very quiet.
A security guard near the front desk was reading something on his phone.
A woman in a blue coat crossed to the revolving door and pushed through into the cold outside.
"Patricia," I said.
"Why did you come to the gala?
You could have sent the folders to Gerald.
You could have mailed them to Nathaniel.
You didn't have to be there."
She looked at me.
"I needed to see her face," she said.
"When she understood it was over." She paused.
"Is that terrible?"
"No," I said.
"I spent fourteen months being called a disgruntled former employee.
By her attorneys.
By people who had known me for years." She folded her hands in her lap.
"I needed to be in the room."
The elevator opened.
Nathaniel stepped out.
He looked at Lily first.
Then at me.
"She's fine," I said.
"She slept through most of it."
He nodded.
He sat down in the chair beside Patricia.
He didn't say anything for a moment.
"Constance wants to issue a public statement," he said finally.
"The foundation's name is going to be in the news regardless.
She thinks it's better to control the narrative than to let it come out through the attorney's office."
"What will the statement say?" Patricia asked.
"That the foundation identified irregularities in its accounts.
That it has referred the matter to the appropriate authorities.
That it is cooperating fully." He paused.
"Vanessa's name won't be in the initial statement.
Her attorney will fight that."
"Her attorney will fight everything," Patricia said.
"Yes." He looked at his hands.
"But the forensic audit will take three to four months.
And the attorney's office moves at its own pace." He looked up.
"This isn't going to be fast."
"No," Patricia agreed.
"It never is."
Lily woke up then.
She sat up, looked around the lobby with the focused confusion of a child returning from deep sleep, and then looked at Nathaniel.
"Hello," she said.
"Hello," he said.
"Are we going home?"
He looked at me.
"Yes," I said.
"We're going home."
Lily climbed off the chairs and took my hand.
She looked at Nathaniel again, with the direct assessment of a four-year-old who has decided something.
"You were nice to me," she said.
"At the party.
You asked if I was okay."
"I remember," he said.
"Nobody else asked," she said.
She said it simply, the way children say true things.
Without weight.
Without accusation.
Just the fact of it.
Nathaniel looked at her for a long moment.
"I'm sorry about that," he said.
Lily considered this.
"It's okay," she said.
"Mama asked."
May you like
She tugged my hand toward the door.
I followed her.
