The Vow of the Night Ledger

Two hundred years of Rees precedent. Odile Marchetti-Rees has been the daylight signatory of Night Ledger Holdings for twelve years, and on Sundays, with her consent given once at a wedding and never renegotiated, she is also her husband's dinner. She is fine. She has been fine for twelve years. Then she opens the wrong filing cabinet and finds her own death certificate, pre-filed with the mortuary, as a contingency. Under it, in the same drawer: a perpetual irrevocable consent instrument with her signature. A codicil to the marriage stripping her shares on separation. A new investment vehicle with somebody else's name on it. Odile does not scream. She files an accounting petition with the Elders' Court, a proceeding nobody has brought against Lysander Rees in two centuries. On Sunday, he asks. She has to decide.