The Boardroom Rehearsal

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By nine the next morning, Nico had learned that his brother apologized to chairs.

"Not literally," Celeste said. "He checks behind him before he sits. He doesn't pull the chair out with his foot."

"That chair has never had to get out of a moving boat."

She did not laugh. They were alone in a meeting room overlooking the commercial harbor, with six empty cups arranged beside a pot of coffee. At the far end of the table, a little brass plate said Lucien Laurent.

Nico had turned it facedown.

The night had produced no answer from his brother's phone. The officers had taken the broken strap away for examination. Nobody had told Nico what the dark mark was, and he had stopped asking his aunt to guess. At half past seven, she had offered him breakfast and a car to the office, as though the second could be made an ordinary part of the first.

Now she stood at the head of the table, rehearsing the entrance she wanted him to make.

"Don't fill a silence because you think it's your job. Lucien waits."

"I've noticed."

"This isn't an accusation."

"It sounds like a career description."

Nico walked back to the door. The suit was comfortable in a way he disliked. Nothing tugged, nothing scratched, nothing reminded him that the clothes belonged to somebody else. Only his own boots, which he had refused to replace, made a disagreeable sound against the polished floor.

"Again?" Celeste asked.

"Who exactly am I practicing for?"

"Adrien will join us. He needs to see whether this is possible."

"Does Adrien know who I am?"

"He knows Lucien has a twin."

Nico put a hand on the door handle. "That wasn't what I asked."

Celeste looked at the inverted nameplate.

"I haven't discussed you with him."

The room changed around that small sentence. Until then, Nico had thought of the exercise as a distasteful family arrangement, still confined to people who had agreed to it. His aunt was already preparing to move it beyond that boundary.

"Then tell him."

"I need to know whether he notices."

"And if he doesn't?"

Her answer was interrupted by a knock.

Adrien Vale entered without waiting. He was shorter than Nico remembered from the funeral, or perhaps simply nearer. His gray hair was cut close at the temples, and he carried no papers. Nico had spent a lifetime distrusting men who arrived at practical problems without anything in their hands.

"Lucien."

Vale sounded irritated, not relieved.

"Your aunt said you wanted to speak before the others arrived. We could have done it yesterday."

Nico looked at Celeste. She held his gaze for a moment too long.

"We are preparing for Friday," she said.

Vale took a chair. He did not ask where Lucien had been. Perhaps he had not been told that Lucien was missing. Perhaps he thought the absence was another habit an executive assistant would explain. Nico could not tell which possibility he preferred.

He stayed beside the door.

"Sit down," Celeste said.

He pulled out the chair with his hand.

Vale smiled at something on his phone, then set it facedown. "Pelagos wants a clear indication that the family supports the timetable."

"The family is reviewing it," Celeste said.

"The family has been reviewing it for weeks."

Nico looked through the glass. Below, a tug pushed against the side of a freighter. Its engine worked hard enough to wrinkle the water behind it. There were people down there with no reason to care whether the family had mastered the correct expression for a meeting.

Vale slid a single sheet toward him.

"This would simplify things."

At the bottom was a line for Lucien's signature.

Nico did not touch the pen.

"What is it?"

"Confirmation that the revised data-room list can circulate. You asked for the supplier annexes. They're there."

Celeste leaned forward. "Not now, Adrien."

"It takes a second."

Nico kept his hands beneath the table. The left palm, with its burn, rested against the unmarked right. His brother's name waited above the blank line.

"Then it can wait another second."

Vale looked up sharply. The phrase had come out in Nico's own voice.

"Something wrong with the list?"

"I haven't read it."

"You read it on Sunday."

The clock on the wall made a soft mechanical noise. Nico heard it because nobody else was speaking.

"The copy in front of me," he said.

Vale's attention moved from Nico to Celeste and back. It did not become suspicion all at once. It became interest, which seemed worse.

The door opened again. A woman in a navy work jacket stood on the threshold, a folder tucked beneath one arm. Her shoes had damp pale marks around their soles. She had come from somewhere people walked on wet concrete.

"You wanted the vessel notes," she said to Celeste.

"Amara. Yes. Come in."

The woman looked at Nico. Her expression scarcely moved, but she stopped with one hand still on the door.

"Good morning."

He nodded.

She took the chair nearest the window and put the folder down, not beside Vale's sheet but several inches away from it.

"Amara Bell," Celeste said unnecessarily. "Fleet compliance."

Nico could not tell whether the introduction was for him or for the room. Amara looked at Celeste, and for the first time that morning his aunt appeared to regret a sentence immediately after saying it.

Vale tapped his phone. "The Mistral Crown is still on for this afternoon?"

"Subject to the captain's checks," Amara said.

"Of course. Lucien, did you speak to Rosa about the return load?"

Nico felt the shape of a prepared answer opening in front of him. He could say yes. Ask for a reminder. Give the kind of confident, useless sentence he had heard from customers who wanted an engine repaired without admitting they had ignored its warning light.

Instead he asked, "Which return load?"

Vale's thumb stopped moving.

"The one you asked me about on Sunday."

Amara opened her folder.

"What did he ask?" Nico said.

He heard the mistake before the room reacted. Not what did I ask. He.

Celeste's teaspoon struck the rim of a cup.

"What did the captain ask," she said quickly. "That's what Lucien means."

Amara looked at the facedown nameplate.

Nico could feel the cost of letting his aunt rescue him. It was no longer a suit or a walk into an office. Somebody had asked a question about a working vessel, and the person with the right to answer was missing.

"I need to read the vessel notes," he said.

Vale leaned back. "Then read them. We can't keep delaying normal business because one return consignment has acquired a dramatic reputation."

"Nobody has delayed the vessel," Amara said. "Its captain makes the departure decision."

Nico looked at her. She was not helping him. She was correcting the room.

Celeste stood. "Thank you, Adrien. We'll come back to the circulation sheet."

Vale took his phone, leaving the unsigned page exactly where it was.

At the door he turned. "Friday doesn't move simply because we dislike the questions."

After he left, Nico pushed the sheet away.

"I said no signatures."

"And you didn't sign," Celeste said.

"That isn't the whole of what happened."

Amara closed her folder. "I agree."

Both Laurents turned toward her.

She addressed Nico. "If you want to understand the return load, you can come down to the planning office. I'll show you what the crew actually recorded."

"I would like that."

"Then leave the pen here."

He looked at the little brass plate again. In the window behind it, his reflection sat beneath the company's name.

He had not signed anything. He had still allowed a man to call him Lucien.

His phone vibrated against his leg. A message from Sami contained a photograph of Mrs. Sorel at the tiller, smiling reluctantly, followed by a question about Thursday's repair bookings.

Nico began to type that he would be back by then. His thumb hovered over the last word.

He erased it and wrote that he didn't know. He asked Sami to move his customers rather than leave them waiting for a promise he could not keep.

The reply came while Celeste was gathering the untouched cups.

I can move two. The third needs another workshop. I'll tell him honestly.

Nico looked from the message to the unsigned sheet. In one room, uncertainty had become a reason to pretend. At the quay, it was simply information somebody needed in order to do his job.

He thanked Sami. The small act of using his own name on the message steadied him.

When he followed Amara out, Nico left the plate facedown.