Harold looked at me the way he always did—like I was a stain he couldn’t quite scrub out.

“Cecily, go back to your desk. This doesn’t concern you,” he said.

“Actually,” a voice called from inside the boardroom, “it does.”

Margaret Coleman appeared in the doorway. She was seventy-two years old. Silver-haired.

She stood with the quiet authority of someone who’d been building empires while Harold was still in diapers.

“I invited her,” Margaret said. “She has standing to address the board.” She smiled at me. “Let her in,” she said.