Chapter 25
— The Power of Attorney, Read Aloud
The day Octavia read the power of attorney aloud, in my flat, with Zane and Wesley present, I felt as if a weight I had carried for years had finally been lifted and laid down on the table where everyone could see it. The document had been in the locked cabinet in the company archive, in a folder marked with my name, and I had brought it home in its envelope, sealed, as it had been since the day I signed it. Octavia opened it carefully, with clean hands, and she laid it flat on the table, and she read it, word by word, slowly, so that there could be no mistake about what it said, and what it did not say. The room was quiet. Even the traffic outside seemed to pause.
It was a short document, as such things often are, and its language was plain. I, Theodora Haversham, being of sound mind, appointed my son, Landon Haversham, to make medical decisions on my behalf, if I became unable to make them myself. That was the heart of it. Medical decisions only. Decisions about treatment, about care, about where I should be looked after, if I could not speak for myself. It said nothing about money. It said nothing about property. It said nothing about the company, or the fleet, or the sale of boats. It said nothing about Alpen Trade, or invoices, or bank accounts. It was a paper signed in a sickroom, years ago, when I had been ill and frightened, and I had wanted to make sure that someone I trusted could speak to the doctors for me if I could not speak for myself. That was all it had ever been.
Octavia read the limits aloud a second time, because she wanted us all to hear them clearly. The power would take effect only if I was unable to make my own medical decisions. It would end when I recovered. It gave Landon no authority to sell anything, to sign any contract for the company, to move any money, or to act in my name in any business matter. She pointed to the clause, with her finger, and she asked Zane to read it as well, and he did, in his steady voice, and then Wesley read it, and then I read it myself, though I knew it by heart. Four readings, four voices, one meaning. Medical decisions only. No asset sales. No company business. The words were clear enough for a child to understand, and Landon, who was not a child, had understood them perfectly well when he had chosen to ignore them.
Zane explained, quietly, what this meant for the hearing. The sale of the Wachau Queen and the Vienna Star had been authorised, on paper, by Landon acting under this document. But the document had never given him that authority, which meant the sale had never been lawful. The partnership agreement, which required both founders' signatures, had also been ignored. Nelson was dead, and his signature could not be given, and I had never signed a sale. Fenella had bought boats that could not lawfully be sold, and she had returned them because she had understood that, once I had shown her the papers. The panel would see the document, and hear it read, and understand, as we had, that Landon's claim of broad authority was false. It was not a matter of interpretation. It was a matter of reading the words on the page.
Wesley asked the question that had been in all our minds. If the document was so clear, how had Landon dared to use it. Octavia answered, in her calm way, that men who commit fraud often rely on no one reading the paper closely, on the assumption that a son acting for his mother will not be questioned, on the hope that a busy office will file the sale and move on. Landon had counted on that, she said, and he had counted on me being dead, and unable to say that the paper did not mean what he claimed it meant. He had counted on the board, and on Rhys, accepting his word, and on Fenella accepting the boats without asking to see the original. He had counted on silence, and for a while, silence had served him. But silence had ended the night Kieran pulled me from the river, and now the paper would be read aloud, in Vienna, in front of a panel, and there would be no hiding from its words.
We made certified copies that afternoon, at a solicitor's office Octavia recommended, and the original was placed in a safe, with a receipt, and a note of where it was kept. I held the copies in my hands, and I thought about the day I had signed the original, in a hospital bed, with Nelson holding my hand, and a nurse witnessing my signature. I had signed it out of love and trust, believing my son would use it only if I needed him, and only for my care. I had never imagined he would use it to sell the heart of our company. That betrayal hurt, even now, after everything, more than the cold water had hurt. But the paper itself had not betrayed me. It had told the truth all along, waiting in a locked cabinet for someone to read it aloud. Octavia had read it. The hearing would hear it. And Landon would have to explain, in front of witnesses, why he had pretended it said something it did not say.