I did it because I wanted to be loved as a wife, not studied as a bank.
And somewhere in there I gave up the one thing that had ever been only mine.
Before Grant, before any of it, I made things with my hands — bowls, vases, heavy stoneware mugs, the whole patient dirty craft of the potter’s wheel and the kiln.
I’d sold my wheel the year we poured everything into Lockridge Works.
I told myself it was temporary.
Seven years is a long temporary.
There was one more thing Grant never read, though he’d signed it: our shareholder agreement.
I had structured it myself, back when he’d have signed anything to get the money.
It protected my thirty-two percent against dilution, and it required my written consent for exactly the kind of financing round he’d just announced to the room.
Grant had built his coup on equity he was contractually unable to touch.
