JULIAN

She came into the study at eleven-forty.

I had been waiting for her to come, in the specific and unhurried way of a man who had known this morning was coming for several weeks and had made no plan for it beyond the single and essential decision he had made in January when Richard had told him the board resignations were the beginning of the end and the timeline was a matter of months.

The decision had been simple.

She was not going to read about it on her phone alone.

Everything else, the how and the when and the specific content of the conversation that would follow the...