Page 50 of The CEO’s Assistant

"No."

Jo laughed. "One more thing and then I'll let you go." She shuffled some papers. "Renwick and Sable want to know whether you intend to legally go after the associate for the leak. They'd like it in writing that you won't."

"I’ll leave her alone. There’s no need anymore."

"That's generous."

"It isn't. She's only two years out of law school, and I bet she'll never make a mistake that big again."

"All right." A pause on the line, longer than the others. "For what it's worth, I'd have taken good care of it. The firm."

"I know you would. That's why I chose you over everyone else."

She set the receiver down. She had been sitting forward the whole call, and she made herself recline.

Then she got up and went to the cabinet by the window for the succession file, because the next thing to do was write the role she was giving herself, and she wanted the current organizational chart in front of her while she did it. The file was thick, and she took it back to the desk. About a third of the way into the material, she came across Lauren's development plan.

She had signed off on it in February. Eighteen months of milestones, board exposure in the second quarter, the civic portfolio widened in the third quarter, the whole infrastructure division hers by the following spring. Beside the twelve-month line, she had written “too slow” in the margin and pushed the date up by a quarter. You did not give a woman a timeline and then move the dates up for being too slow. Not when you had already sold the firm. She wanted it to mean she had never really been leaving, but it might only mean she was in the habit of driving a tight ship.

At half past six, she put the file back in the cabinet, took her coat off the back of the door, and went down to the garage.

Cordelia had written Wren’s address on the back of a meeting agenda at four o'clock and folded it into her coat pocket. In the car, she took it out and put it in her maps app, even though she had already memorized it by heart. She sat with the key in her hand before she started the engine. She drove east into a part of the city she wasn’t entirely familiar with. Narrow streets, cars parked tight along both sides, older buildings of three and four floors with their windows open to the warm evening. Two women were sitting out on a stoop with a bag of takeout between them, and one of them laughed and put her head back against the railing.

She parked two blocks away and walked. Wren’s building was the third on the left, with a maple out front and four steps up to the door. There were six buzzers in a brass plate, the names on little cards behind a plastic window, most of them typed. The fourth one down said W. DAVIES in blue ink, in small handwriting. She pressed it. Nothing happened for long enough that she started wondering what she would do if nobody answered. Then the speaker clicked.

"Hello?"

"Hi. It's Cordelia."

There was a long pause. Cordelia stood on the step and listened to Wren’s breathing through the speaker and couldn’t remember the last time she had waited on a sidewalk waiting to be let inside. Eventually, the door buzzed and unlocked, and Cordelia pushed open the door. The hallway inside smelled of somebody's dinner and old wood. She climbed two flights of stairs and saw Wren already standing in her own doorway on the landing with the door open just wide enough to stand in.

She was in a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves half-pushed up and her hair down. In the light from the apartment, she looked thinner than she had a month ago. Cordelia had noticed that before and had never once asked her about it.

"Is something wrong at the office?"

It was a reasonable question. Cordelia had never once shown up anywhere in Wren's life for any other reason. "No. Nothing's wrong at the office."

Wren waited without pressing more.

"Can I say something? I'd rather say it here than at the office."

"Yes.”

"I was going to disappear," Cordelia said.

Wren's face didn't change.

"Not step back or hand over or any of the other words I've been using since October. When the handover was finished, I was going to send a letter to every board I belong to and disconnect my phone and go somewhere where nobody knew me. I wasn't going to tell anyone, not even Remy. That was the plan…until Saturday."

"I already knew some of that," Wren said. "Remy worked most of it out."

"I know she did."

"So why are you here?"

"Because I'm not doing it. I killed the sale this afternoon. I called Jo Ferrante and told her I'm not selling the company."

Something crossed Wren's face and Cordelia couldn't read it.