“Together?”
Ben, Stealer of Clients and Evictor of Homeless Mothers, is no one I want to work with, and I don’t think he’s ever even handled this kind of case, so why the fuck should I take direction from him? He’ll obviously make me do all the work and steal every ounce of credit.
“We’re not being given a choice, slugger,” Ben says with a sigh, scrubbing a hand over his stupidly pretty face. He does not want to work with me any more than I do him. In the two years he’s been here, he hasn’t brought me in on a case even once. “And it might amount to nothing, for all we know. We’ve got to talk to her first.”
He’ll undoubtedly find a way to screw me over, but it looks like I’m not being offered the opportunity to turn it down anyway.
I stumble, shell-shocked, from Fields’ office and take a glance at my feet to assure myself I’m actually wearing the good-luck shoes.
I am. Apparently, their luck just ran out.
It’s well after dark, and I’m only halfway through drafting a custody agreement when Ben arrives at my office door. “Knock knock,” he says.
I raise a brow. “You realize saying knock knock is redundant when you actually knock.”
He leans against the door frame. “I mostly said it to annoy you.”
“You shouldn’t have expended the effort.” I open a new document on my laptop. “You standing there is enough to annoy me.”
He takes the seat on the other side of my desk, though I don’t recall inviting him to sit.
“Gemma…” His voice is gravel wrapped in velvet; a voice made for giving orders you can’t resist.
Reluctantly, I stop to look up at him.
“Can you do this? This case could be a big deal. I need to know you’re going to bring your A game, no matter how much you hate me, or just hate men in general.”
I want to argue that I don’t hate all men, but I don’t think I could swear to it under oath. I hate more men than I don’t, I suppose.
“I always bring my A game. But I’m not telling this woman what she wants to hear, or talking her into a garbage settlement just so you can count it as a win.”
His nostrils flare. “And you think I would?”
I thought I could insult Ben in almost any way, but this, apparently, is his Achilles’ heel. “I’ve seen you in court. As I recall, you justify doing a whole lot simply to say you won.”
“And you go just as far,” he replies, his jaw tight. “The only difference is I’m able to admit it.” His eyes lock unhappily with mine for a moment before he shakes his head and climbs to his feet.
When he walks out, broad shoulders tense, I sense I’ve disappointed him. He’s acted irked by me before, but never disappointed.
I expected it to feel slightly better than it does.
4
The first time I ever set foot in a court house was for my parents’ custody hearing.
The smooth, modern walls of the LA County Courthouse are a world apart from that first one, but I still think of it every time I’m here.
When Lisa Miller, my client, goes on the stand, I think of my mother, with the shitty lawyer she could barely afford, the one who phoned in the entire case and didn’t ask her a single pertinent question. When Lisa looks at me, I give her the same smile I wish someone had given my mom while she sat there pale and terrified. It’s a smile that says: we’ve got this, you’re in good hands.
Her husband, Lee, hired Paul Sheffield, who’s made a reputation for himself by being exactly the kind of attorney my father hired—the kind who’s willing to destroy anyone and worry about the damage later. Today, though, he is evenly matched because I’m that kind of attorney too.
Someone has to be, to make sure women like my mother aren’t absolutely screwed by men who promise not to turn on them, and do it anyway.
I ask Lisa to describe what it was like, raising children with Lee. She talks about the kids’ soccer games he never attended and the time he left them at a party when they were toddlers to go sleep with a woman he’d met there. She talks about the cruel things he said to her, both privately and in public. When opposing counsel brings up her antidepressant use, the night she had too much wine with friends, I complain until I’m hoarse.
It’s what my mother’s lawyer should have done. Instead, he sat there and let her get torn apart, and he never objected to any of it.
I glance over at Lee Miller’s sagging shoulders as the case goes on, and feel a mean little spike of something in my blood. It’s not quite happiness, but it’ll have to do.
When the trial concludes, I walk outside with Lisa and discover she’s blinking back tears.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, placing a hand on her shoulder. She seemed happy a minute before. I got her everything she’d asked for.
“I’m pleased,” she says. “I am. It’s just so…final. You know he used to write me poems?”
She trails off, staring blankly at the pavement in front of her, as if this past version of them is displayed there like a puzzle. It’s inexplicable to her that the shapes could create another picture entirely.
I think of Kyle, then, walking down the hall at Stadler—broad-shouldered and square-jawed and so utterly confident—smiling that secret smile at me and me alone. For a long time, I could only see one way we’d turn out.
“One day it will all make sense,” I tell her, though I’m not sure that’s true.
Kyle was over six years ago, and I still can’t make the puzzle pieces fit.
I go straight from court to the Beverly Wilshire, where Ben and I are meeting Margaret Lawson for the first time. When I step through the large glass doors, Ben is the first thing I see, leaning against a column while he waits. He runs a finger inside his collar when he spots me, as if the mere idea of spending the next hour together makes him feel suffocated, and then his gaze drops to my heels.
I’ve noticed he looks at my heels a lot. You wear a size 13, Ben. They won’t fit. I’ve thought it a hundred times, but I’ve never said it, as it would mean admitting I know his shoe size. I know far more about Ben than I should.
“You’re early,” I tell him, not slowing my stride as I pass.
“Only you would try to make that sound like a flaw,” he mutters. “What a fun night out you must be.”
“You know what’s fun about the women you date?” I ask. “The way they all just seem to disappear after you’ve been out with them once. Someone should check into that.”
“You know what’s fun about the men you date?” he replies. “The way they don’t exist in the first place.”
I catch his smirk in my peripheral vision and pretend I haven’t seen it, wishing I could make him invisible instead. There’s nothing like the sight of his shoulders straining against his jacket to take my brain in the wrong direction.
We arrive at the restaurant to find Margaret waiting. My first impression, from a distance, is promising: she’s professionally dressed, and there’s no whiff of crazy about her—no frizzy hair, no weird pins, no cat-hair covered scarf or briefcase obscured by bumper stickers. It matters because the jury won’t be asking themselves Was this fair? They’ll be asking Would I promote this woman?