Chapter 5
The Blackwell Meridian IPO proceeded. Adrian had enough control of the narrative, enough institutional support outside my father's specific sphere, to manage the offering without my father's withdrawal being the decisive factor. The company went public. The stock opened at a number that made Adrian's investors comfortable. I watched the ticker from my office at the Hart trust, where I had been working since before the engagement, where I had always been working, at the kind of desk that belongs to a person who has been managing significant things and has not needed to announce it.
I kept the board seat for the agreed three years. I exercised it with the calm and specific attention my father had taught me to bring to any governance commitment, which meant I read every document, asked every question that the document raised, and said nothing in a meeting that was not worth the air it used. Adrian and I occupied the same boardroom table twelve times a year with the civil, precise distance of two people who understand exactly what the other is and have no remaining illusions to protect.
The diamond ring went to an auction house in November. The proceeds went to a foundation my mother had started years ago for girls' education in underfunded schools, which was where my mother would have wanted it, and which was, I thought, an accurate reflection of what the ring had actually been worth all along.
My father called me the morning after the auction closed. He asked how the figure had come in. I told him. He was quiet for a moment.
"Your mother would have said that was a fair price for a lesson," he said.
I told him I thought the lesson had come somewhat cheaper than the diamond suggested.
He laughed. I had always liked my father's laugh, which was the laugh of a man who finds accuracy amusing.
"Come to dinner Sunday," he said. "There are some people I'd like you to meet."
I said I would be there.
May you like
I set the phone down on the desk and turned back to the document I had been reviewing before he called, a quarterly report with a specific irregularity in the footnotes that I had been meaning to trace back to its source. The window in my office faced east. The morning light was coming in at the angle that meant it was not yet nine, which meant the day was full and available, and there was work to do that was worth doing, and the champagne had been excellent after all, and the city below continued its business without requiring my marriage to have been anything other than exactly what it was.
A lesson. Adequately priced.
