The girl at the Teterboro counter set my boarding pass on the marble and kept two fingers on it.

“Mrs. Prescott,” she said. “Mr. Prescott asked me to hold this one for Jasmine.”

I looked at the seat number. 1A. The forward leather seat, the one I had taken on every flight since my father bought the plane.

Aaron came up beside me with his coat over his arm. “Jasmine needs the prime seat,” he said. “Files.”

“Files?” I said back.

He did not hear the question in it. “She is organizing the vendor material for Friday. It cannot wait until we land.”

I tapped my wedding ring against the marble. Once. Twice.

“You know,” I said, “the plane was not bought for vendor material.”

He smiled at the girl behind the counter, the way he smiled at reception desks and cameras. “The company owns the plane, Alyssa.”

“The holding company,” I said.

That should have stopped him. It did not.

He picked up the boarding pass and handed it to me. “Seat 2A is still leather. We can talk about logistics when we land.”

He walked toward the security door without checking to see if I followed.

I had signed the trust papers in my father’s library when I was thirty-five.

I had voted those shares by proxy for twenty-seven years.

Aaron had spent most of those years telling banquet rooms how he built Prescott Technologies from a rented office and a good idea.

The good idea had come in thirteen blue folders.

The rented office had been paid for by my father.

I followed him anyway.

That was my habit back then.

At the gate, the young man checking passports asked Aaron if he wanted his usual coffee.

“Black,” Aaron said.

“And whatever Mrs.

Prescott takes.”

“Nothing,” I said.

The young man looked at me as if I had refused a gift.

We walked out to the jet.