Who Could Sign As Me

"Who could sign as me?"

I asked it of a flip phone the size of a bar of soap. Ozzie had pressed it into my hand at the back of the terminal, said nothing, and gone to stand at the door of the office.

Miriam Tesch, our chief financial officer, answered on the second ring from somewhere with children shrieking. A door closed, and the noise stopped.

"I've been trying to reach you since this afternoon. Trevor told me your phone was off."

"He has it in his pocket."

A pause. "Tessa, the consent came through the trust portal with a valid token. It's flawless. Bellwether's lawyer checked the seal himself before the alert went out."

"Who holds a token?"

"You. And anyone you delegated for the annual filings."

I sat on a stack of ticket-roll boxes. "I delegated nobody."

"There's a delegation on file. March third. Your signature. Outside counsel, Neil Baxendale."

March. Trevor had slid a stack of papers across our kitchen island and tapped the yellow flags with his pen. Sign where it's flagged, Tess. Annual housekeeping. I had signed eleven pages standing up with a cup of tea in my other hand and read not one.

He had told me so an hour ago, on the stairs, and he was right. That was the worst of it.

"That one is real," I said.

"Yes. This consent isn't. But the token makes it look as real as the tide." Miriam dropped her voice. "Class C units carry enough votes to outweigh almost anyone, unless the anti-dilution shield is waived by the beneficial owner. That's what your forged page does. On Monday it lets Dockside take a great deal of the company for very little."

"And if I stop it?"

"There's one signature that ends this, and it's yours. I can have the papers at your kitchen table tonight."

Through the dirty window, the Sea Lantern's bow was lit against the dusk. My husband's name stood on her funnel in gold leaf.

"Not tonight."

"Tessa."

"If I sign tonight, Neil deletes every file he owns. Monday he walks into the Harbor Room and presents that page to fourteen people. I want him doing it with everything in his hands."

"And if you're wrong?"

"Then I lose more than a marriage."

Miriam did not argue. She was a woman who had audited three of my father's harbors and never once raised her voice.

Beyond the door, the band was still playing. Beyond the glass, my husband was smiling for a photographer with my phone in his pocket. I had one signature that could finish him, and one weekend to decide whether I wanted it to.