“Em” I scoff with amused surprise. “You look fantastic.”
“Oh, this old thing?” Her eyes skim down at her outfit. “It’s nothing special. Just a little something I picked up on a whim last weekend.” She dusts some lint off her new navy blue suit, and I have to admit: my eyes follow.
Her outfit is phenomenal.
The pencil skirt is a perfect fit for her darkened blue blazer. The lapels of her jacket look crisp around the color of a lily-white blouse, and her jewelry is of modest and impeccable taste.
She looks effortlessly clean. Minimal but chic. It’s a feat few businesswomen are capable of pulling off, and she’s done it with style. A grace that’s respectable and feminine and she looks like…she looks like…
I set down my coffee mug.
She looks like me. I swallow harshly.
“Emily, this…outfit…” I comment stiltedly.
She throws her hands out. “Okay, so I might have taken a few cues from you in terms of fashion, but…”
“A few?” I start to laugh. “Emily, if I weren’t a redhead, you would be my clone.”
She winces, shifting on her feet. “It’s that bad, isn’t it? I figured if I was going to act like a lawyer, I needed to look like one.”
“No,” I giggled. “It’s not bad. You look amazing, actually, as…well, me. And I must admit that this was exactly the kind of laugh I needed this morning.”
“You laugh,” she leans in. “But I’m serious.” Her tone takes a dip, lowering. “You have no idea how much you’ve inspired me.”
I point at my own chest. “Me?”
“Yeah, you.” Emily plants her hands on her hips. “I’ve seen the change in you over the last few weeks. And I love it. I used to think that we women couldn’t have it all. That life was always going to stomp a mudhole in our Manolos. But I see you…venturing out. Smiling more. Letting go…like you did on the Rockefeller ice.”
Emotion scratches my throat as Emily goes on.
“I think you’re brave. And chic. And adventurous. And bad-ass,” she laughs. “And if this,” she waves at me, “is what a strong career woman is, then I know this is what I want to be.”
My eyes grow watery, my mouth going instantly dry. I bow my head.
I wish I could tell Emily that I can take all the credit for this “career woman” she sees in front of her. But I’d be lying.
I was half that woman. And was incomplete. But the love of a strong man—a man like Heath—finished the half-painted picture of who Violet Keats was.
I’ve felt like a masterpiece the second I truly let his love into my life. I glance back up at Emily, clearing my emotion-clogged throat.
“Fine,” I exhale finally, “Miss CUNY law school. You can certainly help.”
She smiles. “I’m going to help you nail this Chris Jackson asshole…” I raise a finger, and she stops me. “And, please, don’t pretend you’re not going to go after him. You may have fooled everybody else at the firm. But don’t insult my intelligence.”
Her smirk spreads wider, and I have no recourse but to shake my head, starting the tedious process of rearranging the files on my desk. Feeling light for the first time since I woke up, I let the warmth of the laughter with Emily run over me.
“Just one rule: No excessive laughing. I won’t be much of an ‘inspiring lawyer’ with pee in my pants, now, will I?”
I could tell the chuckles run their course when Emily suddenly coughs from above me. I look at her still standing there.
“You might want to reconsider the ‘laughing’ part you were talking about…” She trails off, and I bit my lip at the frown on her face.
What? my body questions. What was it?
I don’t get to ask anything before Emily, solid wall of secrets that she is, starts rambling.
“So, a man called late on Friday when you weren’t here,” she begins. “And he was polite and funny. He asked for you and when I said you weren’t here, he told me that I was the next best thing and so I told him that I wasn’t. That I was just a secretary and he mentioned that if more secretaries sounded like me, then he should definitely get one and when we laughed, he started saying that…”
“Emily,” I interrupt. “I’m growing gray hair over here. Please.”
“Okay, okay.” She expelled a quick breath. “So, before he got off the phone, I asked if I could take his name and number down and when he gave it to me, I realized why he sounded so familiar. His voice. The inflection.”
She licks her lips.
“He said…he was Fitzgerald Sparrow.”
I swear I feel my heart drop through my ass.
“He said,” Emily maintains, “that if you didn’t speak with him soon, then the firm was in serious trouble. That someone was going to reveal everything he knew about us. Everything he knows about you, too. So, he asked that you call him…” She fiddles with her fingers. “As soon as possible.”
I blink. I think I stared at Emily so long that she started to get uncomfortable. My eyes shift to the TV located on the far wall, and again, I get those familiar pangs. The ones I have every time a Chris Jackson report comes on television. My brain tunes in.
Focus shifting, I stare at the image of Chris Jackson in a suit crossing the screen, his entourage in tow. With Fitzgerald’s call in the back of my mind, a memory starts to form, and the memory turns solid the second I set that same damned clip they’ve been running of crooked Jackson among the crowd.
Emily turns to stone beside me. She waves a hand in front of me to break my trance, and when she does, I lose it, jumping ten feet into the air from my chair, grabbing everything that I set out just minutes prior.
I snatch my purse from the edge of the desk.
“Violet, are you okay?” She leans in closer. “Do you need…” Her brow furrows. “Do you need some help or something?”
“Yes,” I replied, still scrambling and scraping to grab my shit. “I need some things. I need lots and lots of things.” I finally looked up at her. “Including you.”
I marched for the door.
“Me?” She gapes, watching me scuttle like a chicken with its head cut off. “Vi, we just got into the office. Your coffee’s not even cold, and we have a million things on the schedule today.” She clasps both hands upon her chest. “What on earth could I do?”
I step past her, heading out of my office.
“You can help me get the hell out of here, Emily. And grab your purse.” I glance back at her, still speed walking with the fury of Hell within my heels. “Because we won’t be coming back.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
HEATH
Monday
Christmas Eve
I learned the lessons of love and hate a long time ago. Twenty years ago, to be exact.
I was eight.
Love was a fairytale, a story more unbelievable than the Boogeyman in those days. There was very little of it in my household, and what little that did exist, only survived in the small bonds between me and my equally unloved siblings, a ragtag group of dreamers, drug addicts and money-chasers.