What Was I Thinking? (38 page)

I watched over his shoulder as he sorted out
what we needed. He pulled out a couple of thick envelopes and handed one to me.
“Looks as if Mother wrote to us.”

The safe was practically empty now and I
noticed the locket was nowhere in sight. I had a sudden thought. “Bert,” I
asked tentatively, “the locket you gave me—where did you get it?”

“It was in the safe when I arrived,” he said.
“I didn’t know how it got in there, but it had a note that said I should give
it to my true love, and had a picture of a beautiful woman in it, so I put it
back until I met my true love.”

“Oh.” I thought a moment. “Who was in the
picture? It didn’t have one when you gave it to me.”

“I’m not sure, but I think it was you.”

“You do?”

“Yes. When I saw you at that party, you looked
very familiar. That’s why I approached you. But I couldn’t place you, or why
you looked so familiar. And when I opened the locket the night I gave it to
you, there weren’t any photos in it at all. I found one of myself to put in and
brought it to you.”

“Oh, my.”

“Yes. Did you put it there, the day you took it
off?”

“I did, and I wrote you a note.”

We thought about that a while, and then set
about moving back into modern life.

We decided not to risk arrest for trespass by
going upstairs and slipped out the cellar door instead. Bert’s car wasn’t there
anymore, but it was a bright afternoon, and the world looked much as we’d left
it a year before, so we walked across the street to Wash U., found a public
phone, and called Susan to pick us up.

We had a very busy few days getting
re-established. Susan let us stay with her for a few days, and Bert set about
making nice with the university bigwigs and getting Roland House back. We had
decided we would both live there, in separate apartments, and continue
collaborating on research.

I hugged Susan a lot, called my parents, and
took a lot of hot showers. I also went shopping for clothes.

Susan’s life had improved, too, and she had
fully re-established her practice, so we had the apartment to ourselves during
the day. I tried to remember how to cook and took to having supper ready for
the three of us when she got back.

When the excitement had died down a little, I
remembered the envelope from Augusta. It was a huge pile of paperwork, with a
letter on top.

Dear Addie
,

I have named you steward of the Addams-Augusta Trust
for Human Understanding and Ethical Behavior
Between
People. I thought we should name this after ourselves, and be damned to anyone
who doesn’t approve of ladies taking an interest in society.

I hope I have properly honored the things you tried to
tell me, and that this organization is still serving its purpose when you
finally receive this letter.

I have given it a large endowment from the profits of
TAPL and only hope that there is still enough money left when it is your turn
to assume stewardship.

By the way, TAPL turned out pretty well, and your
shares should have accumulated nicely.

Sarah’s store did well also. She bought out our shares
in it and franchised. I wouldn’t be surprised if you shop there yourself.

I did launch the trust with a project to provide warm
clothing and passage home for the Igorot. I hope you approve.

Take good care of my son, and of yourself, my very
dear friend.

Your
loving almost mother-in-law,

Augusta Roland

I blinked away the tears, folded the letter
carefully back into the envelope, and went through the papers methodically.
There were a lot, all related to the A-A Trust, except for the very last one.
That was a stock certificate for forty-nine percent of Titian Ablutions
Products for Ladies.

Poor Augusta, thinking that would be worth
something. Our little company was long forgotten by now. The certificate surely
had no value except as an antique.

That was it. I would donate it to the Wash U.
project about the fair. It would be interesting to people studying the era.

I visited the university the next day and
explained what I wanted to a man in the administration building, asking him for
directions to the right department. He wasn’t sure, but he sent me off to
another building where he thought someone might know. I was passed from person
to person, until I was finally seated in a musty office in the History
Department, explaining one more time about the donation I wanted to make.

The tidy, bow-tied professor nodded gravely. “I
see why you were sent to me. My specialty is the early history of corporations.
I would be most interested to see this stock certificate.”

I pulled it out of its folder in my shoulder
bag and unfolded it. He got a
very
odd look on his face, and suggested I might want to keep it.

“Why?” I asked. “What would I do with it?”

“Well,” he said, “if it were mine, I would find
a stockbroker and ask him to find out what percentage of TAPI I owned.”

“What?” I shrieked. Looking around in
embarrassment, I lowered my voice and asked more quietly, “what? What has this
got to do with TAPI?”

He looked at me with a strange mixture of pity
and envy. “Titian changed its name in the sixties, when a new CEO thought the
name was too sissy-ish. He talked the board into changing it to one that
sounded kind of similar, but
more manly
, and one that
went well with its signature ingredient of titanium dioxide:
Titan Allied Products
International.”

I did something I’d never done before. I
fainted dead away.

* * * *

It had been decided that my new role would be
announced at the regular meeting of the top management team, so I was back in
the boardroom, dressed in a conservative suit and very little makeup on a
Monday morning. My hair had returned entirely to its natural color of dark
blonde with occasional streaks of grey, and I had it up in a French braid. The
only jewelry I wore was the old-fashioned gold watch pinned to my jacket.

Very few people paid any attention as I quietly
took a seat to Mr. Banerjee’s right, near the head of the table. There were
about twenty people in the room, mostly men, all in their best suits, and all
chattering as they settled into accustomed places around the long table. The
three women were all model-thin, heavily made up, and all much more serious
than their male colleagues.

Campbell Fraser noticed me, all right. I saw
his eyes narrow as he registered just who was sitting next to the CEO. He and
Mr. Banerjee were the only ones in the room I had ever really met. If the
others had seen me at all, it would have been when I had been wearing my costume,
at that humiliating all-hands meeting more than a year ago. True, we might have
crossed paths in the lobby at some point, but it was rare for any employee to
meet the executives from other divisions.

Mr. Banerjee saw the direction of my gaze, and
leaned over to whisper. “It’s not usual for a department manager to attend
these—just division heads, you understand—but I invited Fraser because of your
previous association. I thought you might appreciate a familiar face.”

I nodded, turning to smile blandly at him. How
kind. Oblivious and completely wrong, but quite clearly intended as a kind
gesture.

Mr. Banerjee cleared his throat, and just like
that, the meeting came to order. With all faces turned to him, he summarized
the situation. “I’m not sure how many of you were aware that we had an
emergency meeting of the board last week,” he began.

Oblivious again.
Didn’t
anybody
at the top know how closely their actions were watched by
everyone in the whole hierarchy? No one enlightened him. There were a few
slight nods, but mostly noncommittal half smiles, and he went on without
pausing.

“We had just been apprised of the identity of a
major stockholder and needed to meet with this person to agree on a path
forward. Some of you may have been aware of the large block of shares held in
trust for an unnamed person.”

I looked around the room. A few nods, but most
people seemed surprised.

“I’m not surprised if most of you did not. It
has not been discussed since the company’s very first merger many years ago. At
that time, it was announced that forty-nine percent of the shares could not be
sold, as they were held in trust, and the recipient of the trust would not be
named until far in the future.”

He smiled a little here, and went on. “Well,
the future arrived, as it does, and the recipient received notice of her
ownership just recently.”

At the word “her,” a few eyes flickered toward
me.

“So the board met with her, to be introduced,
and to decide on the path forward. She had no interest in selling her shares,
or in silent partnership. Although this impacted us hard, we were impressed
with her ideas, her knowledge, and her commitment to the future. Hopefully you
will all be as impressed as we on the board are. She has most graciously
allowed me to stay on as president, as well as her advisor on matters of
management, but she will be taking her rightful place as our new CEO.

“Ladies and gentlemen,
your
new CEO, Jane Addams-Hull.” He rose, turned toward me, and began clapping.

After a moment’s pause, they all clapped
mechanically, looking at me.

I stood and looked around, registering each
face before starting to speak. They were all tense, but otherwise, expressions
varied. Some were simply astonished, some baffled, some barely suppressing
sneers, and Campbell seemed torn between a sneer and outright fear. Hm. Too bad
I was too fine a person for revenge.

When it was quiet, I began my new role. “Right,
then,” I said. “There will have to be some changes.”

*The End*

About the Author

What Was I Thinking
is
Ellen Gragg’s first novel. She began her writing
career as a journalist, writing features and theater reviews for newspapers and
national magazines. While attending college at Washington University in St.
Louis she first became interested in the rich history of the city, particularly
the period surrounding the famous 1904 World's Fair.

Ellen began writing
novels in her spare time while working as a consultant in the agricultural and
pharmaceutical industries and writing about everything from crop dusting to FDA
regulatory compliance. After flipping channels on TV and watching a romantic
comedy heroine choose to cast off her modern life in favor of her beau's for
all the wrong reasons, the seeds of
What Was I
Thinking?
began
to take root.

Ellen resides in the
Midwest with her husband, two cats, and the occasional stray dog.

http://www.ellengragg.com

Sweet Cravings
Publishing

www.sweetcravingspublishing.com