What it did not have was financing. Harrison had been the bridge to the real estate and capital Sloan assumed would appear. Without that bridge, investors looked harder at the projections and asked questions she disliked. One investor wanted to know why projected membership churn was less than half the industry average.
Another asked whether sponsor revenue had signed commitments. It did not. A lender required twenty-five percent equity. Sloan had nowhere near it.
She became angrier at Eleanor each time an outside professional reached a conclusion Eleanor had reached months earlier. Harrison began to understand that his mother’s refusal had not been a refusal of his adulthood. It had been underwriting. That realization did not absolve Eleanor of everything.
She had been controlling at times. She could turn experience into authority so quickly that younger people felt their ideas had been judged before fully spoken. She had difficulty watching Harrison make mistakes without preparing a safety net he had not requested. Richard’s death had made her more protective of the company and, by extension, more protective of the son who was supposed to inherit much of its legacy.
But none of that justified what Harrison had done. Two truths could occupy the same room without canceling each other. He started seeing a therapist in October. Not because Eleanor required it.
The board did not. Claire did not. Harrison went because Lucy asked him a question one Sunday night that he could not answer. They were making grilled cheese in his townhouse kitchen after he finally moved out of Sloan’s apartment.
“Why didn’t you tell Grandma no when Sloan broke her cake?” Lucy asked. Harrison stopped with the spatula in his hand. “I did tell Sloan it was wrong.”
“After.” He looked at his daughter. She was spreading tomato soup around her bowl with a spoon, not accusing him dramatically, simply asking for chronology. “Yeah,” he said.