She was just present in her face and her body and the way she moved, unguarded in a way he hadn't seen yet. She read the email.
Catherine said, "I know. You told her to tell me."
I told her carrying it alone was heavier. Catherine crossed her arms, then uncrossed them, then put her hands in her pockets.
She was cycling through the postures of a woman who had run out of safe positions. Richard's attorney is claiming, "I'm in emotional crisis."
She said that losing the company is evidence I can't provide stability and and I'm not in emotional crisis. She said and her voice cracked on the last word which was its own kind of answer.
He set down the wrench. Catherine, he said.
She held up one hand. The gesture of someone who is asking for 10 seconds.
He gave her 10 seconds. She pressed her fingers to her eyes.
She breathed. She dropped her hand.
I built that company with a toddler on my hip, she said. I nursed contracts in waiting rooms and took investor calls during school plays.
I made decisions that cost me sleep for years.
And now three men on a board have decided that my vision is no longer aligned with the company's direction, which is a sentence that means, "We found someone who will do what you built, but give us more of the money, and Richard is going to use it to say I'm unstable."
She stopped. And I can't even be angry in the right way because if I'm too angry, someone uses that to be angry with me, he said.
She looked at him. What?
Right now, he said, "You've got about 4 minutes before Lily comes back outside. Be as angry as you actually are.
I won't use it against you. I won't tell anyone.
I've held fence post with you. I think I can hold this."
A pause. Then Catherine Hail, CEO, opened her mouth and said exactly what she thought about the board about Richard about 11 years in a second bedroom and every meeting she'd taken at 6:00 in the morning and every dinner she'd missed.
And every time someone had looked at her work and decided it was now their work, and she said it with a precision and a fury that was not hysterical, not irrational, but sharp and clear and completely deserved. Daniel stood there and held it.
When she finished, the yard was very quiet. "Feel better?" he asked.
"Marginally," she said. Good enough, he said.
Now, here's what I think. You've got 3 weeks until the vote.
You know that company better than anyone on that board. You know where the bodies are buried, where the value actually lives, and what the story is that would make the shareholders understand what they're actually losing.
He paused. Your attorney needs a different kind of ammunition.
She looked at him. You're a fence contractor.
I'm a man who has fought institutions for what's fair. He said the tools are different.
The fight isn't. Something moved across her face.
Something that was not quite hope but was adjacent to it. What would you do?
She said, I'd document everything I built. He said, every decision, every outcome.
I'd make it impossible to tell my story without telling my results. and then I'd find out which shareholders actually care about the company's mission, not just the profit margin, and I'd talk to them directly before the board gets to them. He picked up the wrench again.