With Meridian Capital’s backing, we restructured the debt, cleared the poisoned vendor accounts, cut out the rot, and, within two quarters, recorded the most profitable stretch the company had seen in six years.

The thing my stepmother swore she was destroying the company to save, it turned out, only needed her gone to thrive.

I did not do all of that alone.

Evelyn Reed agreed to stay on, and to chair the board’s new Governance Committee, so that the company would always have, at its center, at least one person who could not be bought — the thing my father had wanted, restored.

And the board, when the dust had settled, when they saw who had actually saved the company and how, did the thing that six months earlier would have been unthinkable.