Chapter 5: The Deciding Vote
The library was on the second floor, all dark wood and old ship models in glass cases. Seven board members sat at a long table. Diane sat at the far end. Tyler stood at the head with a remote in his hand, a slideshow already glowing on the screen behind him: Hayes Maritime: The Next 100 Years.
I sat in the chair by the window. Daniel stood at the back by the door, his hands in his pockets, and didn’t say a word.
Tyler was good. I’ll give him that. Twenty minutes on growth, new routes, a partnership in Panama. He smiled at the right people. He made a joke about his grandfather that got a laugh from Diane’s side of the table.
Then Walter called the vote.
Three hands for Tyler. Three against. Just as Daniel had said.
“The majority shareholder has assigned a proxy,” Walter said, and looked at me. “Mrs. Reid?”
Tyler turned and stared. He’d heard Daniel say wife. I don’t think he’d understood what came with it until that second.
I stood up. My knees were shaking under the green satin, so I kept one hand flat on the table.
“The majority shareholder votes no.”
The room broke into noise. Diane half rose out of her chair. Tyler put down the remote.
“On what grounds?” he said. “She’s my ex. She’s doing this because I left her.”
“You didn’t leave me,” I said. “I left you. In a coat-check room.”
“And she was with my uncle before we split,” he said. “Ask her.”
“I met your uncle on the dock five minutes after I gave back your ring. Forty guests watched me walk out of that dinner alone.” I didn’t look away from him. “You weren’t one of them. You were busy.”
I opened the gray folder and slid the pages down the table, one copy to each member.
“Forty-one thousand dollars in hotel rooms and jewelry over fourteen months, charged to the company as client entertainment. The Belmond. Every Tuesday.” I looked at him. “Including last Tuesday.”
Nobody said anything.
Brooke had come up the stairs behind the others and was standing in the doorway. I watched her read the page over Walter’s shoulder. I watched her find the date. I watched her understand that last Tuesday she’d been in Atlanta.
She looked at Tyler for a long time. Then she took off the ring, his grandmother’s square diamond in its old platinum setting, and walked over and set it on the table next to his hand.
“Keep it in the family,” my sister said, and left.
The board voted six to one to put Tyler on leave pending an audit. Diane was the one. By August he’d resigned. Hayes Maritime hired a CEO from Houston who has never once called anyone babe.
Diane sent a check for thirty-eight thousand dollars to the bakery in July, with no note. I gave it to the women’s shelter on Meeting Street. They put a new roof on with it.
Brooke came into Sugar & Salt in October. She stood in the doorway for a full minute before she came in. She didn’t ask me to forgive her. She asked if she could have a slice of peach pie and just sit there. I let her. It’s a start. Maybe that’s all it will ever be. I’m okay with that.
People still ask me, usually after a second glass of wine, whether I married Daniel for love or for revenge. Whether some part of me wanted to stand in that ballroom and watch Tyler’s face.
Here’s the honest answer. I didn’t know who Daniel was when I fell in love with him. I knew he fixed my oven door with a flashlight in his teeth. I knew he still kept a blanket for a dog that was gone. Watching Tyler’s face was just dessert.
Last night I baked a small cake in the bakery kitchen after closing. Two tiers this time. Lemon and lavender. Daniel sat on the counter and ate the leftover frosting off a spatula, and when I turned around, he reached over and brushed something off my cheek.
“You’ve got flour in your hair,” he said.
“Leave it,” I told him.
He did.
