Mary listened to her without interrupting, for once, because she had never heard Judy talk about herself this way.
“I finally found my niche, too. I wrote three briefs for the Supreme Court last year, a petition for certiorari, and two amicus briefs, which is probably more than any associate in any big firm. And the cases come from all over the country, on the sexiest legal issues ever. Important issues. Voting rights. Election funding. Intellectual property. Antitrust. Environmental cases.”
“Wow,” Mary said, because she hadn’t realized, too busy with her own work.
“Right? It’s great. I know I look great on paper. I’m the girl behind the scenes and I love that. I just want to be left alone to write and research.” Judy smiled briefly. “I told Bennie she should think of me as her brain-in-a-jar. That’s my niche.”
“But I don’t attract that kind of work. That’s the problem, right?”
“It kind of is.” Judy heaved a big sigh, then slumped against the wooden back of the bench. “I love what I do and I don’t want to stop. And I know you love what you do, and believe me, I don’t think one type of practice is better than the other—”
“—I know—”
“—I’m not a legal snob—”
“—I know you’re not, it’s not that—”
“Not at all.” Judy’s lower lip buckled. “But I don’t know if I should go with you, if you leave. You also work more hours than I do and you have to go at a moment’s notice, like you’re on call all the time. I like my own schedule and I want time to paint—and guess what, I didn’t even get to tell you, I bought a loom.”
“A loom, like, for weaving things?” Mary smiled. Judy was so cute, always finding new things to do, like weaving things that you could buy already woven.
“Exactly, it’s so much fun! There’s so much to learn. It comes next week. The only bad thing is it’s going to take up my whole bedroom. I’m never going to get another boyfriend. I don’t have room for sex.”
“So weave something. A blanket.”
“A sex blanket!”
Mary smiled. “Or do it standing up.”
“Whoa, Mare!” Judy’s eyes flared in fake shock. “You’re married.”
“Hey, it happens.”
“How often?”
“Once, until I fell down,” Mary admitted, and they both laughed.
Judy’s smile faded. “So I don’t know if I’d be happy doing what you do. I don’t know if I should come with you, if you go. Are you going?”
“I think so,” Mary had to admit, though she couldn’t believe it herself.
“Oh no.” Judy’s eyes glistened. “I’m not crying.”
“Don’t, or I will. We’re still friends, that’s the key thing. We can still see each other every day.”
“Right.” Judy wiped her eyes, flushing under her fair skin.
“Probably more than we do now. We’ll make a point of it. Lunch, right here, like always.”
“Totally.” Judy nodded. “They say that after a divorce, the dad sees the kid more.”
“Right.” Mary forced a smile because Judy was trying to cheer them both up. “And you can always come with me, but no pressure.”
“I know, thanks. I can always come with you, but I have to think about it. Can I think about it?”
“Of course.” Mary felt heartbroken, and it was even worse to know that she had nobody but herself to blame. She was breaking her own heart. And Judy’s.
Suddenly Mary’s cell phone pinged with an incoming text, and she pulled it out of her bag and checked the screen. The text was from Simon, and it read:
Can you come to the hospital? No emergency but ASAP.
Mary rose instantly. “I’d better go,” she said, concerned.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Bennie lowered the car window, traveling the winding roads through the proverbial rolling hills of Pennsylvania, which really existed, dense with woods and underbrush this time of year. She’d texted Declan that she was driving out to see him, and he’d texted her back a heart emoji because he’d turned into a big mushball, which she secretly loved.
Wind blew through the open window, messing up her hair and buffeting her eardrums, a not-entirely-pleasant sensation, but at least it was fresh air. It felt good to be outside in summer, not boxed in, climate-controlled, bounded by concrete and skyscrapers. She realized she hadn’t had a vacation in years, and there were plenty of days at work when she never felt the sun, at either end of the day. Now it warmed the skin of her left forearm, resting on the side of the car, and she had to put down her visor, even with sunglasses.
She inhaled a lungful and smelled the heavy sweetness of wild honeysuckle mounded by the roadside, then brush roses that bordered people’s front yards as she passed through one small town after the next, each with colonial clapboard houses set right at the curbside, having been constructed in an era when the only thing on the road was a horse and buggy.
An hour passed, and Bennie reached Voxburg, a former mining town that held a post office, a middle school, a medium-sized office park, and an enclave of old and new homes, including the converted Victorian in which Declan rented the first floor for his law firm. It was on the far side of town, set at the top of the hill, and she pulled off the road onto its gravel driveway and traveled upward, catching sight of the place, which was lovely.
The house was a true Painted Lady, three stories of crisp white clapboard, navy-blue curlicue trim on its eaves, and a slate roof with a pointed turret in one corner, which Declan took for his own office. Bennie’s favorite feature of the house was its magnificent wraparound porch, with an old-fashioned porch swing. She reached the end of the driveway, parked next to a few other cars belonging to the dental offices on the other floors, then cut the ignition.
“Perfect timing!” Declan came through the screen door with a grin, holding two bottles of Rolling Rock by the necks.
Bennie got out of the car, her mood improving. Declan Mitchell was good-looking in a way that had never attracted her before; clean-cut with conventionally handsome features and dark hair that he kept unfashionably short. He was dressed as casually as he ever got, in a blue Oxford shirt with khakis and loafers with white socks. Declan had been a state trooper with the mounted division when she’d met him, on the other side of a case that had changed her life. They’d lost track of each other, then reconnected after he’d become a lawyer, but he still carried himself like a cop, coming off taller and less fun than he actually was. She’d fallen in love with him the first time she saw him kiss his horse.
Bennie walked to the porch. “Did you see me coming?”
“The advantage of the high ground.” Declan grinned. “I was waiting for you. I sat at the window like a dog, panting and panting.”
“Sure you were.” Bennie crossed the crunchy gravel.
“How good to see you, babe!” Declan opened his arms, wrapped them around her, and gave her a big hug, and even though she felt the cold beer bottles on her back, she wasn’t complaining.
“I missed you. It’s been, what, three weeks?”
“Tell me about it. It’s killing me.” Declan leaned over, kissing her gently, once, then again. “Oh, man. I love you.”
“I love you too.” Bennie reached out and rubbed his back, feeling her world gradually fall back into place.
“Come sit down and have a cold beer. You look like you need it.” Declan kept an arm around her, and they walked together to the porch swing, sitting down.
“I do. I’m glad you were here.” Bennie accepted the Rolling Rock and took a quick sip, which tasted delicious. She scanned the bucolic setting, a hilltop surrounded by woods, and it felt cooler this high, with a gentle breeze. Declan moved his arm around the back of the porch swing, and she felt herself relax against it like a pillow, taking another sip of beer.
“I’m glad I was too. Harrisburg drives me up the wall. I’m glad that deal’s over.”
“How’s the family?” Bennie asked, which u
sed to be a touchy question. They had met on a criminal case, when she defended a man who had been charged with murdering Declan’s ne’er-do-well nephew. Bennie had proved her client innocent, but Declan’s attachment to his sister and her children were part of the reason their romance was long-distance.
“They’re all doing well. My sister’s clean and sober, and the kids are doing great. They’re both at a daytime baseball camp, which is cute. I go to the games.” Declan took a swig of beer. “So tell me what’s going on. I’m happy to see you but I want to hear the deal.”
“It’s a long story.”
“I got time, and the whole left side of my body feels good.” Declan smiled down at her.
“Okay, here we go.” Bennie filled him in, telling him the whole story from yesterday afternoon, since he’d been out of town and they kept missing each other, trying to connect on the phone, but failing.
“I hate to have her leave. It’s been fun, and we all get along so well. It’s actually the best situation.”
“That’s nice. Sorry you have to lose it.”
“Me, too, but that’s not the only problem.”
“You can’t afford to lose her, can you?” Declan cocked his head.
“No. To be precise, I have the fees coming in, but the problem is cash flow.” Bennie hated to admit it. “I don’t think she realizes that, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s my problem and I have to deal with it.”
“Break it down for me.” Declan rubbed her shoulder on the back of the swing.
“Right now, she pays half of the overhead. Payroll. Insurance, equipment rental, like the duplicating machines. Office supplies. All the other costs.”
“Your payroll must be a killer. Four lawyers, the receptionist.”
“It is.” Bennie knew he would understand. He had a solo practice, like she used to. “I’ll have to sit down with our accountant and go over the numbers, but I doubt I can stay in my offices if she leaves. I might have to move and start all over again.”
Declan frowned slightly. “But you used to cover the overhead before by yourself. You just made her partner recently, right?”
“Yes.”
“So what happened in the interim?”
“I shifted my practice. I assumed that we’d be together longer than a year, so I changed the cases I took.” Bennie had thought it over on the way here, trying to sort it out. “Since I had help with the overhead, finally, I was able to take bigger cases that raise my profile—but they last longer. You know how litigation can be. The bigger the case, the longer it takes to get through the court system. Most are in the public interest, a lot of high-profile work on important issues.”
“But it doesn’t keep the lights turned on.” Declan nodded. “You thought you had the backup.”
“Exactly, and now I don’t.”
“It’s like the rug gets pulled out from under you.”
“Right.” Bennie felt her heart ease. It made her feel better to be so completely understood, even if it didn’t change the situation any. She had never really believed that could be true, but it was, happily. Love was a good thing.
“I’ll tell you one thing. If I weren’t so happy with you sitting here, I’d drive to Philly and open a can on that Nate character.” Declan looked at her sideways. “But you wouldn’t like that, would you?”
“On the contrary, not a bad idea,” Bennie shot back, and they both laughed.
“How could you go for a guy like that? Temporary insanity?”
“Just about.” Bennie smiled. “Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, you gotta make plans if Mary decides to go.”
“Right.” Bennie sighed, trying to resign herself to the next step. “I guess I have to call the accountant.”
“If you want, we can crunch some numbers right now. I know you hate math. I’ll help you. Do you keep those records in your laptop, like in Excel?”
“Yes, but I left without it.”
“You left without work?” Declan’s eyes flared open, comically.
“I know, I jumped in the car to see you. I was uncharacteristically spontaneous.”
“Is that another word for horny?”
“Come to think of it, yes,” Bennie answered, and they both laughed again.
“Hell, I’m done for the day if you want to go home. Or we can go upstairs and play with the laughing gas. The dentist tells me he does nitrous with the hygienist. Wanna give it a go?”
“Um, no.” Bennie took another swig of beer, which tasted better and better. Or maybe she stopped tasting it altogether.
“Or, I have another proposition,” Declan said, after a moment.
“What?” Bennie asked, enjoying herself.
“How about you and me go into business together?”
“Wait, what?” Bennie wasn’t sure she’d heard him right.
“You heard me. Partners. You and me. It could happen.”
“How can it happen?” Bennie asked, incredulous. “You’re here and I’m there.”
Declan’s expression grew serious. “If we want to make it happen, we could make it happen. I could fill in the blank for you, the one that Mary’s leaving. I could take on half of your overhead.”
“Why, when your practice is here, almost three hours away? You can’t move your practice. What about your client base?”
“Granted, I wouldn’t move. But I could open a second office.”
“You could?” Bennie tried to process the information. “Were you thinking about doing that?”
“I wasn’t, not completely. But I was trying to think about ways to get together down the line. With you.” Declan frowned. “This whole long-distance thing, it’s hard. It gets old. I’d like to see you more than once a month. We play telephone ping-pong all the time, like last night.”
“I know.” Bennie felt the same way. She’d been trying to get in touch with him, but they kept missing each other.
“So maybe the time is right to take expansion more seriously. I practice state law. I can do that in Philadelphia.”
“You, in the city? What about the farm?” Bennie knew Declan loved his horse farm, a pretty A-frame in the country with a barn for his two horses.
“I keep it. I live there. I’ll get the kid down the street to take care of the horses when I’m away. When I come to visit you, I’ll do a case, and maybe I’ll use it as an excuse to come see you.” Declan smiled at her, and Bennie smiled back, but felt uncertain.
“I’m just surprised. I didn’t know you were thinking this.”
“I was. I plan ahead, long-term.”
“Could you afford it?”
“I’m pretty sure I could. I can ballpark your expenses. They’re not that much different from mine, even accounting for a higher cost of living.” Declan shrugged. “I’ve been practicing for almost ten years now. You know I live cheap. I’ve got a lot of capital. My overhead is unbelievably low. I don’t even use a secretary anymore. I use an answering service.”
“Hmm.” Bennie mulled it over, but her doubts began to surface. “You wouldn’t be doing this if Mary hadn’t left, would you?”
“Well, no,” Declan answered, after a moment.
“So you’re just trying to help me.”
“Well, yes of course. I can help you.”
“I don’t know, honey. It’s a lot to ask, and I would never ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t, I offered it.”
“But what if it’s a burden? What if it doesn’t work out, what if you don’t want to practice in Philadelphia, what if we start fussing over money, or over space, or over Xerox machines?”
Declan smiled wryly. “I’d let you have the Xerox machine. You can have custody of the Xerox machine.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
“It would worry me. It’s risky.” Bennie knew from experience, but she wasn’t about to fill him in. Many years ago, she’d been in business with a bo
yfriend, and mixing business and pleasure hadn’t turned out to be a brilliant idea.
“I’m willing to take the risk. I think we can deal. We give it a shot. If it doesn’t work, we undo it.”
“I don’t know, I’m not sure.” Bennie used to think she was good at taking risk until she met Declan. “Let me think it over.”
“That means no.” Declan took another sip of beer.
“Not necessarily,” Bennie told him, but deep inside, she knew it did. “Okay, you’re right. It does mean no.”
“Alternatively I could lend you the money. I can stake you for six months, even longer. You could ramp up in that time.”
“Aw, thanks, but no. I would never take your money. I really appreciate your offering though.” Bennie swallowed hard, feeling a rush of love for him. She rested her head back against his arm.
“I mean it. I’m not just saying it. You can pay it back when you want to. No rush.”
“Thank you, but no.” Bennie nudged his knee. “Finish that beer, will you?”
“Then what?” Declan smiled. “The laughing gas?”
“No,” Bennie told him. “Home.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mary sat waiting for Simon, who’d texted he’d be right in. The lounge was empty, so she assumed that her and Simon’s families had either gone home or were downstairs in the cafeteria having lunch. If so, she hoped the hospital had enough baked ziti. She’d given up trying to read her email on her phone because she was too preoccupied. Suddenly she spotted Simon hurrying toward the lounge, and he caught her eye, tugging down his surgical mask to reveal a stricken expression.
Mary pocketed her phone and went to him as soon as he entered the room. “What’s the matter?” she asked, hugging him briefly. “It’s not Rachel, is it?”
“No, that’s why I said ‘no emergency’ in the text. You’re not going to believe this. Todd and OpenSpace are suing me now—for two million dollars.”
Mary couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “What are you talking about?”
“They’re saying I defamed him and the company. It’s lies, total lies!” Simon’s eyes were round with fear. “Mary, I don’t know what to do. What do I do? Where am I going to get two million bucks?”