I picked up the glass of sparkling water I had been holding all evening and had not touched, and I turned back to my husband, who was watching me with a flicker of the first real uncertainty I had seen on his face in years.

“Enjoy the next ten minutes,” I told him.

His hand shot out and closed around my wrist, not gently.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” I said, looking at his hand on my wrist until he became aware of it himself, “that you should listen very carefully to what the chairman is about to say.

All of it.

Especially the name at the end.