Page 44 of The CEO’s Assistant

"That’s exactly what I thought it was."

"Yeah." Remy looked at her straight on and didn't soften it. "Okay. I want to ask you something, and I know I've got no right to. You don't owe me anything. Don't quit over it."

Wren said nothing.

"I don't mean to stay forever. I don't know what's between you and her, and I'm not asking. I just mean don't let her coping mechanism be the thing that decides whether you stay or leave." She twisted the ring again. "Because you don't know what I've watched since April. She's there. She looks at people. She laughed at something Lauren said in a hallway in May, and I stood there afterward like an idiot because I hadn't heard her laugh like that in eight years." Her voice tipped and she pulled it back. "That started when you turned up. I'm not putting anything on you; I don't even know what it is. I'm telling you my mother came back to herself this spring, and I've been so careful not to say it out loud in case it spooked her away."

"Remy…"

"I'm not telling you it's fine. It was never fine; I’ve had eight years of it not being fine.” She picked up the wine and set it down without drinking. “I’m asking as her daughter. That’s all this is. Someone you barely know, asking you not to disappear over a bad moment.”

The two women at the long table packed up their laptop and went out into the rain, sharing an umbrella. The bell chimed, and the room became quieter around them.

“I hear you,” Wren said.

“Okay.”

“I can’t promise anything. I don’t even know what I’m going to do yet.”

Remy nodded slowly and let her shoulders come down. For a second, she looked about nineteen, young and hopeful. “That’s fair. That’s more than fair.” She bumped her shoulder into Wren’s and left it there a moment, then reached over and stole a piece of bread off Wren’s plate.

They sat. Neither of them said anything more about it, and neither of them left for a while.

Wren was home by twenty past eleven. The rain had thinned to a drizzle by then, and the peonies along the harbor walk hung bent under the wet of it. She left the overhead light off and sat down in the green chair with her coat over the arm. The phone rang at half past.

"There you are," Lillian said. "I called at three and got your voicemail, which you have not once let happen. I've spent all afternoon deciding whether to be worried or annoyed."

"I was at the office. Bad day at work."

"Mm." Lillian let it sit. A chair creaked somewhere on her end. "How bad?"

"Fairly."

"All right, little bird."

Wren shut her eyes. It still caught her, that name, in Lillian's voice and not her grandmother’s, and she sat with the phone to her ear.

"You'll tell me when you're ready," Lillian said. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm eighty-two, and I've got nothing but time and a stack of overdue library books."

"I will."

"Good. And remember to eat something."

"I did, actually."

"Well then." A pause, and then something close to a laugh. "Goodnight, little bird."

The call ended. Wren sat in the dark with the phone in her lap and the drizzle sliding down the window. She stared at Cordelia’s number until the phone screen darkened, and she didn’t turn it on again. After a while, she reached behind her and pulled Millie's afghan down off the back of the chair, spread it over her knees, and left the resignation letter where it was, unsent.

21

Chapter 21: Cordelia

The trick with Jo Ferrante was to call her before she called you. Cordelia had learned that thirty years ago. She and Jo had started out in the same year, each of them usually the only woman at the negotiating table, and had done deals against, and twice together, each other since. Working with her twice had taught Cordelia that Jo forgave almost anything except being caught off guard in front of her own board. So on Monday, before anyone at Northstar could bring the news to Jo, Cordelia brought it to her herself.

Jo went quiet on the line, and then said, “All right, tell me who I need to make unhappy.”

The week was filled with calls like that one. Veronica turned up the source of the leak by Thursday, through a contact of her own: a junior associate at Renwick & Sable, Northstar's outside counsel, two years out of law school, who'd said something at a partners' dinner she'd had no business saying. From there, the information had been whispered to a reporter, as it always was eventually.