CHAPTER NINE
Six weeks prior…
Rain had turned the restaurant windows into sheets of black glass. You could barely see the cars on the road in front of the restaurant, let alone anyone getting out of them.
The dining room overlooked the harbor, though the water beyond the panes had disappeared beneath the storm, leaving only the occasional smear of a passing mast light.
Hollis Burton sat beneath a brass lamp at a corner table, his broad hands arranged on either side of an untouched glass of bourbon.
Across from him, Dorothy Martin watched rain gather and slide down the glass.
She was old but she still cleaned up good.
Of course, so was he. He knew he still looked good for his age and the suit he wore spoke of a man who liked the finer things.
Like designer suits and watches, thirty-year-old bourbon, and restaurants with two-hundred-dollar entrees.
She had set her purse on the chair beside her but left her raincoat on. It remained buttoned to her throat, a dark green slicker severe against the white linen and silverware.
“You know why I asked you here,” Hollis said.
Dorothy gave no answer. A waiter approached, saw something in Hollis’s face, and quietly turned toward another table.
“The shares,” Hollis said. “I need you to sell them to me.”
She lowered her gaze to the candle between them, its flame bending whenever the air-conditioning stirred.
“I am not asking for charity,” he continued. “I will pay a fair price. Better than fair.”
Dorothy folded her napkin once, then again, making the edges meet with exacting care.
“The board is panicking,” Hollis said. “They see a weak quarter and think the world is ending. If they force a sale, they will carve Burton Drilling into pieces.”
Still she said nothing.
He leaned forward. The lamp drew hollows beneath his eyes and sharpened the deep lines around his mouth.
“This is my father’s company,” he said. “Our name is on every rig, every boat, every contract. You cannot sit there and watch strangers take it from me.”
Dorothy looked at him then, her expression composed and unreadable.
“Help me save it,” he said.
The words sounded smaller than he intended. For an instant, the old force left his voice, and what remained was close enough to pleading that he hated her for hearing it.
“Sell me enough to take the majority,” he said. “Once I have control, I can stop the board. I can refinance the debt. I can bring the new wells online.”
Dorothy’s fingertip traced a faint water ring beside her glass.
“You said the same thing about Platform Nine,” she said at last. His jaw tightened.
“Platform Nine has nothing to do with this.”
“It has everything to do with this.” Her voice was quiet, almost lost beneath the rain. “Every risk becomes an emergency, and every emergency becomes a reason I must trust you again and I can’t find a reason to trust you, Hollis. Give me one.”
“Because I know this business,” Hollis said. “You never did.” Dorothy did not flinch.
“I know enough to understand that I cannot invest in your schemes and dreams any longer.”
Silence spread between them, cold and deliberate.
“When the time is right, I will sell,” she said. “But not now. Not to rescue you from choices you made.” Color rose along Hollis’s neck.
“You sanctimonious old fool.”
Dorothy sat very still, but her hand closed around the folded napkin.
“You have lived off that company while pretending you were above it,” he said. “You took the dividends, kept the houses, and let me carry every burden our father left behind.”
“The houses were sold ages ago. But you already know that. I carried burdens too,” she said.
“No. You ran from them. You have always been weak, Dorothy, and now you are hiding spite behind caution because it is the only power you have left.”
The candle flame shuddered as someone opened the kitchen door, and for a moment Hollis’s shadow climbed the wall behind him.
“You will regret this,” he said. “When the company falls, when the name is stripped off the rigs, remember that you could have stopped it.”
“Perhaps,” Dorothy said. “But I will not be frightened into saving you.”
Hollis drove his fist into the table. Glasses jumped, silverware rang, and the bourbon spilled in a dark wave across the white cloth.
Every face in the restaurant turned toward them, but Hollis saw only Dorothy, pale and motionless beyond the ruin of the table.
He rose, snatched his coat from the empty chair, and walked out without looking back, leaving the door to slam against the storm and Dorothy alone with the dying candle.