Adrian left around ten that night, and after he was gone I sat at the kitchen table for a
while longer with the two cold coffee cups between us and thought about the specific
quality of an evening that had contained that much and still managed to end with someone
smiling.
It was, I thought again, a very good place to be.
The board vote came through formally the following week.
Not dramatically. Not with a ceremony or a speech or any of the theater that the preceding
months might have seemed to call for. Just a document on my desk one Thursday morning,
signed and stamped and entirely official, stating that Ava Bennett’s restructuring plan had
been formally approved by the Blackwood Industries board with an eight to three majority,
the three dissenting votes being the compromised b
