Chapter 2 - Two Different Emergencies
At seven the next morning I was in Maya's office with a bruised cheek and a stack of documents I had barely slept beside.
Maya had brought bagels. I couldn't get one down. Her legal assistant, Nora, placed a small box of tissues near me and kept her eyes on her computer. That kindness was almost worse than the staring I'd expected.
“The assault report is yours,” Maya said. “The police will decide how to investigate. The store's footage may be important, but don't assume we can have it handed over this morning. We'll send a preservation demand and make the request through the appropriate process.”
“Can Nathan delete it?”
“He can try. Trying might have consequences. That's why we move quickly.”
She slid the supposed proxy toward me inside a clear sleeve. I had found a copy behind a folder marked INSURANCE in the last box of my mother's workshop records. The date was July 14, the previous summer. The signature was almost perfect. I had stared at it so long that the wrongness seemed to move around the page.
“I was in Portland from July twelfth through the sixteenth,” I said. “Aunt Louise has photographs. There are airline records.”
“We'll collect them. But an alibi doesn't tell us who made this document or how it reached the corporate files.”
“Celeste.”
“You have reasons to suspect her. That's different from proof.”
I looked away. Maya was right, and I hated how much effort it took to hear it.
The shareholder arrangement was something my mother had established before she died. I already owned a forty-two percent economic interest in Vale Atelier, but the voting rights were held in trust until my twenty-ninth birthday. Nathan owned twenty-eight percent after he and I had helped finance the company's retail expansion. The remaining thirty percent belonged to Aunt Louise and several longtime employees. Major asset sales required at least two-thirds approval under the company's governing documents. Nathan's twenty-eight percent couldn't carry the sale. Adding my forty-two could.
Maya tapped the margin of the proxy. “It doesn't transfer ownership. It claims to grant him your vote once those rights vest. It's still serious, and if he presents it as valid, we'll challenge it.”
“I told him I was taking half his shares.”
“That isn't something I can just collect tomorrow,” she said. “We can assert your marital-property claims in a divorce. We haven't established what interest you have in his stock, and we don't know what a court would decide.”
“It made him afraid.”
“I know. Don't mistake fear for a confession.”
She had me sign a notice disputing the proxy, requesting a pause on its use and preservation of the related records. We sent copies to the company secretary, the other voting holders, and Nathan's counsel. Then she arranged to speak with the sale's prospective buyer through its attorney. No miracle order, no dramatic announcement. Just the beginning of a paper trail I wished had never been necessary.
I stepped outside at lunch and called the workshop manager, Ben Carter. He had worked under my mother for nineteen years and knew the sound of every machine before he knew the make.
“There's a rumor the doors are closing Friday,” he said before I could ask.
“Nothing's decided.”
“That's not what Nathan told the casting team.”
My stomach tightened. “What did he tell them?”
“That the buyer would keep the brand and move production to New Jersey. He told them it was good news. Lena asked if there'd be jobs for the people who can't move. He said they should be grateful they got this far.”
I looked down at the sidewalk, wet from an overnight cleaning truck. “I'm coming over.”
“Emma, your face—”
“I know what my face looks like.”
At Vale Atelier, the soldering stations smelled of flux and hot metal. The shop occupied the second floor of a narrow old building in the garment district. My mother loved its uneven windows and complained about its plumbing every winter. I'd spent my childhood on a stool in the break room, eating crackers and drawing enormous necklaces no one would ever wear.
Lena Cho, the youngest bench jeweler, was polishing a gold pendant when I arrived. Her gaze went to my cheek and away again. Ben brought me tea in a mug with a chipped red handle.
“Do you know whether we still have jobs?” Lena asked.
I could have told her yes. I wanted to.
“I know Nathan can't make that decision alone,” I said. “I'm challenging the document he's relying on. But I don't know what happens next.”
“Then please tell us before somebody tells us by rumor.”
She wasn't accusing me of the assault or the forgery. She was asking not to be treated like a piece of furniture in my family's dispute. The distinction hurt.
I promised I'd return the next day with whatever I could honestly share. Ben walked me to the workroom where my mother had kept her drawings. Three empty hooks hung above a bench. He pointed at them.
“Celeste came by Saturday,” he said. “Said Nathan had asked her to collect the old Night Orchard patterns for a catalog.”
Night Orchard was my mother's most recognized design, a constellation of small leaves and dark stones that looked different in daylight. She'd made the first prototype while I sat beside her, naming the little shapes after stars.
“What did she take?”
“Samples, maybe. I've asked inventory to check. I didn't think I'd have to ask permission to let her in. She worked here once.”
“Don't touch anything else in the cabinet,” I said too sharply.
Ben's jaw tightened. “I've kept this place running while you and Nathan argued about storefronts. You don't need to tell me how to lock a cabinet.”
He walked away before I could apologize.
I stood in the workroom and realized that Nathan had not simply created a fight over shares. He had made everyone afraid of doing their ordinary jobs.
That evening I called Ruth again. She told me the Vermont repair shop had a public number, and that the man known as Martin Ellis came in on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She had never visited him herself; the picture came from a retired supplier who had recognized the jacket.
“He may not want to talk,” Ruth warned.
“Neither did Nathan.”
“Emma. Those are not the same thing.”
“No,” I said. “One of them hit me. The other let me hold a funeral.”
May you like
I hung up before she could answer. Then I booked a train for Vermont on Wednesday morning, even though Wednesday was also the day the workshop staff expected me back.
The first person I'd promised honesty to was about to learn that I could disappear from the room as easily as the people who had hurt me.
