Asked whether the babies could be ‘released to the paternal grandmother pending the mother’s evaluation.'”
I held the wall.
“What did you say?”
“I said the mother was standing in front of me holding a bottle, and that I’d been doing this nineteen years, and that in nineteen years I’d never once released a baby to a grandmother who hadn’t asked its name.”
“She hasn’t?”
“Nine minutes, Mrs. Kane.
I timed it.
She looked at the monitors.
She didn’t look at the cards on the isolettes.”
Odalys handed me the bottle.
“I wrote that down too.
Everybody on this floor writes things down now.
Dr. Farouk started it.”
Day fourteen, I went home.
Not to the house — Ruth had said, “Don’t go to the house; the house is his name and he’ll use the locks the way he used the fax machine.”
To my father’s.
The one he’d left me, on Halloway Street, that Barrett had called “the little place” and never once spent a night in.
The babies came on day nineteen.
Discharged, three at once, in three car seats that a NICU nurse named Odalys had shown me how to install “the way that doesn’t hurt anybody,” and I put them in my father’s front room, in the crib he’d built for me in 1990, which I’d found in the attic, and I sat on the floor between the three of them and said their names.
“Josephine.
Marchetti.
Isabel Marchetti Kane.”
Three names.
He hadn’t asked.
Ruth came on day twenty-two.
“The special meeting’s on day thirty.
Nine a.m.
The boardroom at Kane Logistics.
Harlan’s been fighting the notice for two weeks, and a judge said, on Friday, the sentence I’m going to have framed.”
“What sentence?”
“‘Counsel, the clause is on page thirty-one of a document your client signed in the presence of a witness.
The court is not in the business of rescuing a man from the last page.'”
“And Barrett?”
“Barrett’s been trying to sell.
Twelve percent, to a fund, to raise the four million.
He can’t.
Class A blocks it.
He’s spent the last week finding out that his company can’t do anything without asking a woman he told a doctor he’d divorced.”
“Isabel, there’s one more thing.
Day thirty is also Barrett’s engagement party.”
“His what.”
“To Petra.
The ‘is it done’ woman.
His mother’s hosting.
Saturday evening.
Fifty people.
Vivienne booked it the week you were in the ICU.”
I sat with that.
“Same day as the meeting.”
“Nine a.m. and seven p.m.
Your father would’ve called that tidy.”
“Ruth.
I’d like to go to both.”
PART 4
The special meeting took eleven minutes.
Boardroom.
Kane Logistics.
Seven directors, Ruth Adler as trustee with forty-four percent of the Class A vote, Harlan Voight with a face like a man who’d read page thirty-one too late, and Barrett at the head of the table in the suit from the hallway.
And me.
Day thirty postpartum.
In a wheelchair, because Dr. Farouk had said “you can walk, but you’ll walk better on day forty,” and I’d decided to take her advice on everything.
“Article Seven,” Ruth said.
“Triggered on the fourteenth at 4:52 p.m.
The trust exercises its rights.
Motion one: removal of the chief executive.”
“Isabel — ” Barrett said.
“You can’t just — ”
“Motion two: the trust’s capital call, four million, converts to equity at the current valuation, which takes the trust’s stake from forty-four to sixty-one percent.”
“Harlan, DO something — ”
“Mr. Kane,” Harlan said, quietly, “I’d advise you to sit down.
I told you nine years ago to read Joe Marchetti’s paperwork.
You said you weren’t a details guy.”
The vote was not close.
At the door, Barrett stood, and he said the thing.
“You’ll run it into the ground.
You’ve never — ”
“Barrett.”
“What.”
“Their names are Josephine, Marchetti, and Isabel.
You’ve had thirty days.
You didn’t ask.”
“I — ”
“See you at seven.”
Vivienne Kane’s house had fifty-two guests that evening, a tent, a banner that said BARRETT & PETRA, and — because Vivienne did not do anything small — the same string quartet from my wedding.
I recognized the cellist.
He recognized me.
He stopped playing for a full bar.
