Page 38 of The CEO’s Assistant

"Do you know what that fund is actually for?"

"Acquisitions."

"That's what it says on the paperwork." Constance looked at the wall across from them. "You'd have liked her, I think. Eleanor. She was very calm and completely immovable, which is a terrible combination in a meeting."

"No one's ever told me what she was like at work."

"No, you wouldn't have." Constance let that sit. "In 2011, a collector down in Salem died and her whole estate went to auction. There was a little bronze statue in it. A woman putting her boot on. Not pretty either. She's got her mouth open, and she's about to fall over. Eleanor stood in front of it for an hour just staring, then she came back here and asked the board for eleven thousand dollars to buy it. They told her no, saying it wasn't up to the collection's standard. What they meant was that none of them had heard of the sculptor and two of them thought it was unattractive."

"I’m guessing she didn’t let it go?"

"No.” Constance turned her glasses over in her hands and smiled. “She asked twice more, and they declined every time. It’s now sitting on my auction table tonight, actually. Somebody else bought it at that sale, and it came back here at a hundred and forty thousand dollars. So what the fund actually does is make sure that the next time a curator in this building sees something and knows what it is, she doesn't have to stand in front of nine women who don't know anything about art and ask permission."

Wren didn't move. She'd been in Cordelia's house, in her bed. She recognized the twitch Cordelia's mouth did when she was about to say something she'd regret, and she knew the sound Cordelia made when she was falling asleep. Cordelia had talked about Eleanor at the coast, but that was Cordelia's Eleanor, the one who lived in that house. But nobody told her about the other sides of the woman. She sat on the bench and wanted this stranger to keep going. That was the shameful part for Wren.

"It isn't a memorial," Constance said. "I hate memorials. I'm not naming a garden bench after her." She put her hands on her knees. "I'm putting her name on the one thing that would have stopped it happening to her. And I wanted her wife recognized while I did it."

"I understand that."

"Do you? I've had fourteen months of board meetings to get this through, and I'd quite like to enjoy myself tonight."

"You can still enjoy it," Wren said. "Just… don't make her stand up and perform for these people."

Constance turned her head and looked at her properly for the first time all evening. Wren didn't look away and didn't let her face reveal anything.

"How long have you worked for her?"

"Since April."

Constance's eyebrows went up a little. "Hm." She stood. "All right, then."

"All right?"

"I'll cut it. I'll say her name and I'll say the fund and then I'll move on." She folded her glasses. "She's already approved the whole thing, if that's what you were worried about. I wrote to her in April. She wrote back confirming it and asked me to keep the amount off the program, which I did."

Wren was still sitting on the bench. "April," she said.

"The fifteenth, thereabouts. It's in the file." Constance was already at the door. "She's known this was coming since the spring. She's a very hard woman to do anything nice for." She stopped with her hand on the frame. "I'll tell her you caught it, since I clearly wasn't going to."

"Don't."

Constance turned around.

"Don't tell her," Wren said, her voice softer now.

Constance looked at her a little longer than was comfortable. "Fine," she said. "Twelve minutes til dinner."

She went out, and Wren sat where she was. Cordelia had known since April. She'd known this morning. She'd known in the car. And she hadn't said a word about any of it. Not to Wren, who had built the evening. Not last week, not this week, not at the coast. She stood up and straightened the cards on the clipboard, giving her hands something to do while she processed the information she’d been told. Then she went back out to the floor and called dinner.

Wren ate half a roll standing at the staff station while three hundred and four people found their seats. Table four filled in. Remy took the empty chair without being asked, said something to the woman on her left, and got a laugh out of her.

A few minutes before nine, Remy came along the back wall with two glasses and set one down on the staff station.

"I'm working."

"It's water," Remy said.

Wren thanked her and didn't pick it up. Remy stayed where she was. She turned and leaned against the end of the table with her back to the room, which was something she'd got from Cordelia, and looked out at the tables.