…fifty-one percent of the company?”
The music kept playing but no one was dancing. Forty guests watched my husband read the page in his hands for the third time.
Fifteen years ago, Richard’s business was being sued by a former client. His lawyer advised him to move his shares out of his name to protect them, temporarily. Richard didn’t want to give them to his partner, Tom. So he transferred fifty-one percent to me and signed whatever the lawyer put in front of him. The lawsuit was dismissed two years later. Richard forgot all about the shares.
I didn’t. I’d been the one doing the books ever since.
“This was supposed to be temporary,” Richard said, his voice shaking.
“There’s nothing in there that says temporary,” Tom said. He was still reading over his shoulder. “There’s nothing in there about transferring it back either. She owns the controlling interest. She’s owned it for fifteen years.”
Richard’s coworker, Vanessa, slid her chair a few inches away from him.
I could have ended it there. I almost did. Then Richard said, loudly enough for everyone to hear, “She doesn’t even know what to do with a company.”
So I told them.
I told them about the nights I’d spent fixing the books after he made reckless purchases. The supplier contracts I had renegotiated while he was on golf trips. The tax audit I had handled while he was in Cancun. And the expense reports I had been quietly reviewing for the past year, which included hotel rooms, dinners and a weekend in Napa — all charged to the company, all with Vanessa.
Tom took off his glasses. “That’s company money, Richard.”
The next week, I called a shareholders’ meeting. Tom and I were the only shareholders who needed to vote. We voted to remove Richard as CEO and to appoint Tom in his place. Vanessa resigned before anyone could ask her to.
I filed for divorce the same month. In the settlement, I kept my fifty-one percent. Richard kept his forty-nine, without a salary or a title.
Our three children were at the party that night. My oldest daughter told me afterward that she’d always thought I just stayed home. “I had no idea you were running everything,” she said.
“That was the idea,” I said. “The best managers make it look like nothing is happening.”
I took a seat on the board this year. At my first meeting, Tom raised his glass. “To the woman who did absolutely nothing for twenty years,” he said. Everyone laughed. This time, I laughed with them.
