I wondered if he could feel her watching him.

Fifteen minutes stretched into forty-five. The board’s legal counsel, a thin man named Patterson I’d never met, spent the whole time on his phone with various firms.

I sat alone at the end of the table. Jonathan Woods brought me a glass of water. Margaret Coleman patted my shoulder as she passed.

Harold and Josephine huddled in the corner, their whispered argument growing more and more heated.

Finally, Patterson came back to the table and whispered in Robert Hunter’s ear. Hunter’s expression flickered. Surprise. Then resignation.

“Please take your seats,” he said.