Chapter 10 - The Price of Leaving
Maya placed Nathan's offer on the table between us. I read it twice. It treated the disputed proxy as something to be resolved through agreement rather than evidence, and it tied my cooperation with the sale to personal financial terms. Maya explained what the provisions appeared to mean and which ones she would never recommend accepting as written.
“He thinks you'll choose an easy exit,” she said.
“Would it be easy?”
“Financially, parts of it might be. Emotionally and legally, we'd have to examine a great deal. And your vote isn't only about your marriage. It affects everyone else who holds shares and works there.”
I turned the paper over. “Is it terrible that I want to take it?”
“No. You're exhausted, Emma. You're allowed to notice when an option would make your own life simpler. You're also allowed to reject it.”
I wanted to ask what my mother would have done. The question had become a trap. My mother had preserved the workshop with courage and with lies. I would have to choose without converting her memory into instructions.
That afternoon, I walked through the retail store's public entrance with Maya, not to confront Nathan but to collect my personal effects from a small office we had used when the company first expanded. Nathan had agreed through counsel to allow the visit at an arranged time. The place smelled of polished wood and expensive perfume.
The employee who had looked away during the assault was at the counter. Her name tag read ALICE. Her eyes flickered toward my healing bruise.
“Do you need anything?” she asked quietly.
“Just the boxes in the back.”
Maya went with the manager to verify the inventory of my belongings. I stood beside a display where my mother's work had once appeared for a seasonal collection. Alice lowered her voice.
“I told the police what I saw,” she said.
I turned. “You did?”
“They contacted me. I told them both times he hit you. I didn't know if it would get me fired.”
“Thank you,” I said. “You don't owe me an explanation.”
“I should have helped you.”
“I couldn't think clearly either.”
Alice reached beneath the counter and straightened an empty ring stand. “He keeps asking everybody to agree you came in threatening him. I've never heard you raise your voice in here.”
“Did you sign anything?”
“No.” She swallowed. “I need my job. I'm still not signing.”
She returned to a customer before I could say more. I understood that her choice might cost her in ways a wealthy customer's argument never would. She had made it anyway.
My boxes held a few books, a cracked mug, a pair of shoes, and the photograph of Nathan and me taken when he opened the store.
The manager read a checklist aloud, and Maya verified each item as it went into the box. A year earlier I would have been embarrassed to have anyone supervise me collecting my own belongings. That afternoon it was a relief. I didn't have to negotiate each object or wonder whether a missing photograph would become an accusation later.
I nearly asked about the wedding ring. It had been left on the counter where Nathan had stood over me. Maya had already requested that it be preserved as part of the incident record if available. I didn't need it back to know what I'd done with it. I let the question stay unasked. In the picture, his hand rested at my waist. I remembered spending the previous night helping him label shelves because the contractors hadn't finished. I'd been proud of us, of the absurd fatigue and cheap takeout, of his excitement.
People always asked afterward whether there had been signs. There had been signs of ambition, impatience, tenderness, selfishness. None of them was a neat explanation for two slaps. I would not retroactively rewrite every good memory as a performance. That would give Nathan ownership of those memories too.
As we carried the boxes out, Nathan emerged from his office. Maya stepped between us without making it a spectacle.
“Emma,” he said. “You should take the settlement. I'm trying to make this end with some dignity.”
“I don't want to discuss it here.”
“It's not going to get better. Larkspur can walk away. Arden can cancel. My loans come due whether you're angry at me or not.”
“You could have told me about the debt.”
“You'd have turned it into another debate about your mother.”
“Maybe. But you didn't give me the chance.”
He looked at the box in my arms, then at my face. “I wasn't myself that day.”
“You hit me.”
“I know. I'm sorry.”
I had wanted those words so badly a week earlier. In the showroom now, they sounded like something he'd learned to say when the numbers weren't going his way.
“Tell that to the investigator,” I said. “And stop asking your employees to lie.”
For a moment, he seemed about to argue. Then he turned and disappeared down the hall.
Back at Maya's office, I rejected the offer. I asked her to communicate that I would consider a fair separation and a properly documented business proposal, but I would not withdraw the challenge to a signature I had never given.
She sent the response. The sale vote was less than twenty-four hours away.
At six, Louise called. She had spoken with the other minority shareholders. Some were frightened enough to favor a sale; others felt betrayed by Nathan's treatment of the staff. Louise reminded me that they owned their votes, just as I owned mine when the trust released them on Friday.
“Don't make them into your mother's soldiers,” she said. “They're allowed to care about their futures.”
I promised to listen. Then I went to the workshop for the night shift and helped pack Arden's first shipment. The boxes sat ready beside the loading door at one in the morning.
Lena signed off on the quality sheet and handed me the clipboard.
“Happy early birthday,” she said. “I hope tomorrow isn't awful.”
May you like
“I'd settle for honest,” I answered.
At midnight my phone displayed the date of my birth. The rights my mother had placed out of reach when I was younger had finally become mine to exercise. I felt no sudden power. I only felt the responsibility of choosing what to do with them.
