The board meeting was called for ten o'clock. I arrived at nine, early enough to sit alone in the boardroom and gather myself. The long table gleamed. The chairs stood in their usual places, each one waiting for the man or woman who had sat in it for years. At the head of the table stood the chairman's chair, tall-backed and dark, the one Rhys had occupied for the past six years. I did not sit in it. I took my old place halfway down the table, the seat I had held since Nelson and I founded this company, and I waited.
Zane came in first. He closed the door softly behind him and gave me a small, tired smile. "You look rested," he said, which was kind of him, because I had not slept more than three hours. "I look like a woman who has been pulled out of a river," I told him, and he laughed, a short sound that seemed to surprise us both. "Rhys called me last night," he said. "He sounded like a man who had finally stopped running."
The other board members filed in one by one, their faces grave, their greetings quiet. They had all been at the hearing or had read the accounts of it by now. None of them looked at the empty chair at the head of the table for long.
Rhys arrived last, at five minutes to ten. He looked older than he had a week ago, his shoulders stooped, his hair uncombed, his suit the same one he had worn to the hearing. He did not take his seat. He stood at the end of the table, behind the chairman's chair, his hands resting on its back, and he looked at each of us in turn. When his eyes reached mine, I saw no defiance in them. I saw shame, and exhaustion, and something that might have been relief.
"I asked for this meeting," he said, his voice hoarse. "I will not take up much of your time. Yesterday, in that hearing room, I watched a woman I have known for forty years lay out the truth piece by piece, and I watched my own part in it laid bare beside hers. I sided with Landon. I believed him when he told me his mother had drowned, and I believed him when he told me she had grown confused and unreliable. I did not ask the questions I should have asked. I did not look at the books. I did not listen to Zane when he tried to warn me."
He paused, and the room was so quiet I could hear the clock ticking on the wall. "A chairman who will not ask questions is not a chairman," he went on. "He is a passenger. And a passenger has no business steering a ship. So I am resigning from the board, effective immediately. I will not wait for a vote. I will not ask you to decide my fate for me. I have decided it myself."
No one spoke. Zane looked down at his hands. I thought of all the years I had known Rhys, the dinners at our house when Nelson was alive, the long arguments about routes and fares that had always ended in laughter. I thought of how easily a good man can be led astray when he trusts the wrong voice and stops trusting his own judgement.
"Rhys," I said at last, and my voice sounded steadier than I felt. "You were wrong, and the wrong was serious. But you are here, and you are owning it, and that matters. I will not pretend the damage is small. The company was nearly lost because the board did not look closely enough. But I will not ask you to leave this room in disgrace either. You have served this company for many years, and you served it well before this."
He shook his head slowly. "Kind words do not change what happened, Theodora. I should have protected this company, and I protected a lie instead. I will go, and I will go quietly, and I will not trouble you again."
He stepped back from the chair and stood for a moment, looking at the room as if memorising it. Then he turned and walked to the door. At the threshold he stopped and looked back at me. "I am sorry," he said. "For the river, and for everything after. I hope the company finds its way back."
Then he was gone, and the door closed behind him with a soft click. The boardroom stayed silent. The chairman's chair stood empty at the head of the table, and the morning light moved slowly across the polished wood. I thought about the weight of that empty chair, and about how much work lay ahead, and about the strange, hollow feeling of a victory that had cost so much. Rhys had done the right thing at last, and it did not undo what had come before. But it was a beginning, and beginnings were what we had left. I rose, thanked the board, and told them we would meet again in two days' time, when the chair would no longer be empty.
Chapter 38
— The Chair Is Hers Again