“We can discuss it in the morning when you are rested,” she said, reaching across the table to touch the back of my hand. “Your health is far more important than Julian’s little accounting errors. You know how your blood pressure rises when you worry about the ledger.”
“It is not a small error,” I said, my pauses growing longer as a strange, heavy dullness settled behind my eyes.
“Drink your soup, Ethan,” she murmured, her nails tapping twice against her water glass. “It will help you sleep. You need your strength for the board meeting.”
“I will,” I said, swallowing a spoonful of the warm broth.
At eight o’clock, the yellow headlights of a truck swept across the front parlor windows, cutting through the darkness of the front yard. I walked out onto the porch, the cold late-autumn air pressing against my face as I stood under the pale porch light.
My brother Owen was already walking up the stone steps, his heavy work jacket unzipped. He stopped three steps below me, his boots resting on the cold concrete as he shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“You need to listen to me, Ethan,” Owen said, his voice flat and blunt. “The board is talking about calling an emergency session before the fifteenth.”
I leaned against the heavy oak doorpost, rubbing my left temple where the dull ache had returned with a vengeance.
“You are not a member of the board, Owen,” I said, my voice slow and measured. “And you do not belong on this property after what happened at the family estate meeting.”
“Julian called me because he is terrified you are going to let this company slide into bankruptcy,” Owen said, his blunt, short sentences cutting through the quiet night air. “He says there are holes in the ledger. He says you are not responding to his warnings.”
