She spent the rest of Monday performing her usual work. At four-thirty she took a rag to a brass handrail on the executive floor and watched employees pass with the faces of people who had already heard rumors about their jobs. By six, the building had emptied enough for her to hear the air system turning on above the ceiling. She gathered her belongings, locked the basement cabinet, and carried the briefcase home beneath her coat.
At her kitchen table she read the amended ownership certification Judith had delivered by courier. The company records had been checked against trustee documents, the stock ledger, and the original founder agreement. There was no question that she controlled fifty-one percent of the voting shares, though the scope of her immediate authority still depended on proper corporate procedure. The distinction mattered; Thomas had taught her never to promise a machine could do something until the testing proved it.
Before bed she opened a box containing the handwritten notes from the company's earliest years. On the first page, in Thomas's untidy handwriting, was a sentence he had repeated whenever an investor suggested cutting wages to make the numbers look better: A company is only as sound as the people who have to live with its decisions. Otis read it twice and tucked the page inside her briefcase.
At five the next morning, she woke without an alarm. She ironed her blue jacket, polished her comfortable shoes, and made herself breakfast. Then she put on her cleaning uniform over the jacket, as she had decided to do the night before. There was work to finish before ten, and she intended to finish it.
Tuesday morning arrived clear and cool. Otis entered the building at her usual time, greeted Dennis beside the loading entrance, and collected a mop with a newly replaced handle. She cleaned the main corridor, emptied wastebaskets, and made sure a young employee named Charlotte, who was struggling to maneuver a heavy cleaning machine, knew how to adjust the handle to protect her back. When Charlotte thanked her, Otis smiled and asked about her little boy's first day of kindergarten. Life was still occurring in a hundred ordinary ways, even as the company prepared to change hundreds of them.
At eight, Judith called to say the independent trustee had confirmed Otis's ownership and the relevant voting arrangements in writing. The company secretary, Clara Morrison, had acknowledged receipt of a request for an urgent shareholder review of the proposed workforce reduction. Chairperson Eleanor Finch had been notified as well. Judith would be present on the premises before the board meeting began, though she warned Otis that Ryan might try to exclude them or challenge the procedure.
"Let him," Otis said. "He has always enjoyed explaining rules to people he thinks don't know them."
By nine-thirty, executives began gathering behind the boardroom's frosted doors. Logan carried a presentation binder thick enough to suggest that four hundred dismissals were a complicated but inescapable scientific conclusion. Patricia Wilson arrived carrying two legal pads and a look of exhaustion. Ryan walked through the corridor laughing into his phone, apparently delighted with something a consultant had told him about his quarterly figures.