Part 2
Denise locked her wheelchair beside the parallel bars and reached for Ada’s gait belt.
“You may regret giving me permission.”
The first step barely cleared the floor. Ada cried out, furious at the effort required to move a foot she used to swing over puddles without noticing.
“Your muscles are working,” Denise said. “Breathe before you try again.”
At Marcus’s house, the email from Kadara was printed and passed around the breakfast table.
“God hasn’t forgotten this family,” his mother announced.
Lydia traced her newly printed name with one fingernail. “And Ada’s still somewhere waiting to be pushed.”
Benedict received the truck driver’s statement in September. Ada read it alone first, beside a window overlooking the pool.
The truck had entered on green. Marcus had driven through red.
For nine months, she had repeated his explanation to doctors, nurses, and herself.
Benedict found her still holding the page.
“Do you want my attorney to act?”
“Not yet.” She folded it carefully. “Get me to therapy.”
By the third month of the harder training, Denise was counting uninterrupted steps.
“Seven. Keep your eyes on that door.”
Ada reached ten and caught the rail.
Denise moved the marker farther away.
“You’re a dreadful woman,” Ada said.
“I’ve had medals engraved with worse.” She pointed. “Twenty.”
Meanwhile, Kadara requested the original hand studies behind Iskera’s proposal.
Marcus called Lydia into his office. She admitted she had thrown out the book.
“Make another set,” he said. “Use the old dates.”
Peter stood up. “That’s falsifying evidence.”
Marcus didn’t look at him. “Then don’t make mistakes.”
Ada encountered Lydia and Marcus’s mother outside a treatment room at the rehabilitation center. His mother had come for a knee appointment; Lydia carried her handbag as though escorting someone important.
“Look who’s still practicing,” Lydia said.
Ada rested her hands on her walker.
“Who pays for all this?” Marcus’s mother asked. “That gentleman must be very generous.”
Lydia smiled. “The wedding’s next month. There’ll be room for your chair.”
“Congratulations,” Ada said. “Ask him to watch the traffic lights.”
Lydia’s smile vanished.
Before she could answer, Denise wheeled between them and called security. Marcus’s mother began naming her son’s business connections. The guard held the exit door open anyway.
Afterward, Denise handed Ada her water bottle.
“You had plenty to throw back at them.”
“I need my breath for the exercises.”
Denise put the bottle down. “Good. We’re not finished.”
At the wedding reception, Marcus’s mother raised her glass to the wife her son deserved and the tower that would restore their fortunes.
Peter waited until the applause ended before leaning toward Marcus.
“The house is pledged against the loans. The bank’s notice came this morning.”
Marcus adjusted the cuff of his wedding jacket. “Look around, Peter. Does this look like a day for bad news?”
He went back onto the dance floor.
Ada’s work with her father began at a table covered in reports from Kadara’s forty companies. Benedict watched her sort a failing project’s cost estimates into three piles.
“Could you oversee the whole group?” he asked.
She kept reading. “I built his firm at a dining table.”
Benedict pulled out the chair at the head. “Try this one.”
As winter arrived, he brought her a long narrow case. Inside lay her mother’s walking cane, its polished handle worn smooth on one side.
“She used this after surgery,” he said.
Ada lifted it. The lining still held a faint trace of her mother’s perfume.
At therapy, Denise checked its height and replaced the rubber tip.
“Use it. Don’t surrender to it.”
“Six months ago, I couldn’t feel where my feet were.”
Denise tightened the collar. “Let’s see where they’ll take you in another six.”
By late spring, Ada’s days were divided between corporate papers and the measured length of the gym. On the evening before the directors’ vote, Benedict found her practicing beside the dining chairs.
“Tomorrow, they appoint you executive chair,” he said.
She stopped. “You’re certain?”
“I named Kadara for you. Ada, our first daughter. Our only child.” He straightened a chair she had passed. “It was always meant to be yours.”
During her next session, Denise marked forty meters along the gym floor.
Ada handed over the cane.
Denise’s fingers closed around it, but she said nothing until Ada had crossed the last strip of tape.
Then the coach bent forward in her chair, wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand.
“You’ll ruin your reputation,” Ada told her.
Denise laughed wetly. “Turn around. Walk back.”
The final meeting notice reached Iskera soon afterward: June 10, at its offices, with Kadara’s newly appointed chairwoman attending in person.
Marcus searched online and found announcements but no photograph.
“Five minutes,” he told Lydia. “That’s all I need with her.”
His mother set the bank’s latest letter beside his plate.
“Use four. We haven’t got room for a mistake.”
The night before the meeting, Peter delivered the replacement drawings. Their dates claimed they were four years old.
At Benedict’s house, Ada laid them beside her sketchbook. The new sheets had none of the abandoned ideas, none of the corrections that had led to the finished design.
She touched a small drawing of the tower’s turn above the water.
“I did this on our balcony. Marcus was asleep inside.”
Benedict placed the book beside her briefcase. “Take every page.”
At Iskera the following morning, Marcus stood beside the screen while Lydia sat close enough to share the compliments.
“My wife’s design,” he told Kadara’s representatives.
Peter kept his hands beneath the table.
The receptionist opened the boardroom door.
“The chairwoman is here…”
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