by L. D. Davis
This particular night, however, after picking Lucas up, he came into the kitchen where I was preparing his dinner. He watched me for almost a full minute before he said anything.
Finally, he took a deep breath and said “I need a huge favor.”
I looked at him expectantly. He rarely asked me to do anything for him, and usually only did so out of desperation.
“My office is a mess,” he said with resignation. “It’s so disorganized and we’re incredibly busy. My receptionist…well, she’s just a receptionist. I need someone to come in and get us organized and on track.”
I nearly dropped the spatula I was holding. I couldn’t hide the skepticism written on my face. “You’re asking me?”
“Yes, I am. You’re a very good office manager. I wish I had thought to ask you sooner.”
My guess was that he had thought about it before, but didn’t want to ask me. So, he probably was asking out of sheer desperation.
I didn’t know anything about Luke’s firm except that he and three other attorneys worked there. I had never even set foot in the place, and he never talked to me about work. Because he never talked to me.
“I can try.” I turned my attention back to my cooking. “When?”
There was a moment of hesitation and then “Tomorrow.”
I gaped at him. “What am I supposed to do with Lucas?”
“Lena will take him,” he said. He clearly had it all figured out already.
This was it. The time had come where I would have to part with my child for hours a day while I worked, except I didn’t expect it to come so soon. I was financially stable, didn’t need to earn a living, and I would have been able to stay at home with Lucas until he was ready for school. But Luke’s success had a direct impact on Lucas. So, I had to bite the bullet.
Not to mention, I still felt like I owed Luke for all I had done to him. I felt like I’d never stop owing him, but if I could do anything, anything at all to make it up to him, I had to do it.
“I’ll do it,” I said quietly after a few moments.
He let out a breath he must had been holding for a while. I think he thought I would say no.
“Thank you so much,” he gushed. “I know you will be a big, big help.”
“I hope so.”
“You will be. I know it,” he said confidently. “Hey, at least this gets you out of the house for a little while. Maybe this will be good for you. You haven’t been yourself.” He tried to sound casual when he said it, but I still knew Luke well enough to know that there was so much more underneath his words.
Careful to keep my eyes down on the task at hand, I said “I haven’t been myself in two years.”
“Look,” he sighed. “I know I haven’t made things any easier. I guess I didn’t realize how bad things are here until Lena brought it to my attention.”
Forgetting to keep my eyes cast down, I looked at him for clarification. When I was with Lena, I never discussed Luke unless Lucas was involved. I was curious to know what she said.
“She said it was like a tomb in here, that unless we’re talking to or about Lucas we don’t talk at all. She said that even when we’re at family functions, I barely acknowledge you.”
Well, that was true, but I was already used to simply being the part of the background that happened to have food sacks attached to her chest for his son.
Luke watched me for some kind of reaction. He answered Lucas’s babble, but was otherwise quiet until I spoke.
Again, I tried to focus on the stove before I burned something. “What else did Lena say?”
When he spoke again, his voice was softer, not much softer, but it was considerably less hardened than what I had become accustomed to.
“She said that she thinks you’re depressed and that you think you deserve how I treat you, and that you’re still beating yourself up. I guess I didn’t stop to think about it before today, or I just looked the other way, but I suppose she’s right, on all accounts. I argued with her at first, but she got really pushy, as only a big sister can do.”
I said nothing. I turned the stove off and started to clean up some of the mess while I waited for the white wine sauce I made to thicken up. I couldn’t look at him. Did he expect me to look at him? Did he expect me to admit that his sister was right? Because Lena was indeed right about me, but after months of silence and coldness, what did he expect me to say?
“I’m really looking at you for the first time since the day I met Lucas,” he said. “Em, you just seem…hollow. Like everything that makes you who you are is missing.”
I snapped, just a tiny bit. A little breakage in my composure.
“Who am I really?” I asked, scrubbing a pan with more force than necessary. “The woman who steals another woman’s man? Am I the woman who cheats a good man out of everything he deserves? Or am I the woman who lets herself be used and abused? Maybe I’m the woman who keeps a child from his loving father. That’s who I am, Luke. You’re not missing anything great.”
Luke stood there staring at me with his mouth hanging open, oblivious to Lucas’s slobbery hands on his face.
“Don’t look so surprised,” I said quietly. “You said yourself that you were wrong about who I am.”
He tried to argue, sputtered out words and half sentences for a full minute before giving up, but what argument did he have? I simply used his own words—not against him, but against myself. What more was there to say?
I took Lucas from his arms.
“I’ll put him down for bed,” I murmured. “Enjoy your dinner.”
The following morning, our discussion from the previous night was temporarily forgotten. There was a lot of rushing around before piling Lucas, his stuff, and ourselves into Luke’s car. He wanted to get into the office early, so I didn’t have a lot of time to say goodbye to the baby. I had to suck it up, make it quick, and leave.
In the car, Luke gave me some information about his firm. There were four attorneys, one receptionist, and one paralegal. They had nearly three-hundred open cases, and had to start turning people away because they weren’t organized enough. There were boxes of papers that needed to be filed, equipment that still had not been set up, and the office looked a little trashy.
I also found out my brother Emmet was strongly considering moving to Chicago to join the firm. I wasn’t sure how I felt hearing it from Luke opposed to hearing it from Emmet, but then again, my brother had been virtually ignoring me for years.
Nothing Luke said could truly prepare me for the mess that was Kessler and Keane, Attorneys at Law. The first thing I noted was that the receptionist’s desk was nowhere near the front door where the clients needed to be received. There were only two disgusting looking folding chairs for clients to wait in, and a little, dirty table for coffee. I assumed that the coffee inside of the carafe had been there for some time.
The main office area behind where reception should have been looked so bad, that it seriously hurt my feelings. Files were stacked in piles on the floor and on top of mismatched, ancient looking filing cabinets. The fax machine was set up on a rickety looking tray table. There was a copying machine that looked older than me, not plugged in, and pulled away from the wall, with the maintenance door wide open. The ugly desks that were in the room seemed to be dropped at random when they brought them in, and no one bothered to reposition them. Unused computers, another fax machine, and other electronics sat in a corner with layers of dust on them. The carpet looked scary, the walls dreary, and some of the blinds were broken.
I stood in the center of the room, turning in slow circles, looking at the disaster. I was offended by the state of the office. The administrative goddess inside of me recoiled.
“I tried to warn you,” Luke said.
I shot him a look and he quickly looked away.
Steven, the Keane of the business, stood on the other side of me with a cup of Starbucks coffee, looking bored.
“Luke said you can fix this shit,” he yawned.
“Money is a little tight right now,” Luke answered, running his fingers through his hair. “We’re basically working for nothing.”
“This place looks terrible,” I said to the men. “It’s disgusting. I don’t know how you manage to have any clients.”
Luke suppressed a smile. “Please, tell us how you really feel.”
I narrowed my eyes at him and then at Steve. Luke bowed his head, Steve shrugged.
The door opened and a young woman in her early twenties with blue and green streaks in her black, large, Amy Winehouse hairdo, greeted us with the enthusiasm of a rock before taking her seat at what I assumed was the reception desk. She was dressed in a black mini skirt over black fishnet stockings and wore black high heeled combat boots. Her tiny black tee shirt revealed a chest full of ink and there were no less than five piercings on her face. Heavy black eye makeup and purple lipstick completed her ensemble. She sat at the desk, chomping on a large wad of gum and texting away on her phone.
I looked at Luke and Steven with a look that said “Is this real life?”
“We’ve tried to talk to her about her…style,” Steven murmured. “She’s my sister’s kid, so she just thinks that we’re just picking on her.”
“I don’t care whose kid she is,” I responded back in a harsh whisper, looking from one partner to the other. “This is your office. Is that—” I gestured to the girl. “How you want your business represented?”
“Look,” Luke interjected. “Kace is working well below her pay grade right now, and that’s the only reason we can even afford her.”
“What does she get paid to do?” I asked, my whisper loud with disbelief. “Whatever it is she is supposed to be doing, I am quite sure, after only a few minutes of standing in this pit, that she does not do it.”
I didn’t wait for either of them to respond before marching across the room. Luke wanted me to get his office in order. I had to start somewhere, so I started with Steven’s niece. I heard the door open again, but I was already approaching the girl, and quite frankly I was afraid to see what other kind of employees Kessler and Keane had hired.
After dealing with the so-called receptionist, I began what felt like an impossible task of getting the firm in order. As I worked, I realized that I needed this. I loved being a full time mom, and I didn’t mind taking care of Luke’s apartment and cooking and all of that, but I needed a piece of my old life back. Not the terrible pieces, but the good pieces, the pieces that made me the woman I was before I screwed things up. I still felt depressed, an immense sadness and full of regrets, but for a little while I was able to set it aside and focus on something else. For a little while, I was at peace.
By the time the lunch hour rolled in, Kacey and I had accomplished a lot. We did the best we could with what we had to set up a proper reception area for clients and some of the equipment was set up or moved around for maximum efficiency. We managed to put a tiny, tiny dent in a very big job.
“This looks great,” Luke grinned, looking around.
“We still have a very long way to go, and your files are a mess. I have Kacey fixing some of it, but it’s going to take a while.”
I looked around the room, assessing what still needed to be done, and how much more I could accomplish in a day.
“I have to be in court in a little while,” Luke said. “I’ll be back to get you around five.”
“No,” I waved him off. “Just get Lucas and go home. I will be fine getting back.”
He started to say something, but the door opened and two people hauling files walked in, bickering. Luke interrupted them for introductions. Lanna was the firm’s fourth and youngest attorney – I had met third, Jordan, earlier in the day. Craig was K&K’s only paralegal. They were both pleasant when introduced and complimented me on the work I did so far. After some small talk, Lanna closed herself into her office and Craig plopped down at a desk near Kacey.
“Don’t work too late,” Luke said and smiled at me before walking out the door.
I stood there for a minute. He had smiled at me more than once. After weeks and weeks of barely acknowledging me, this should have been refreshing, but instead it was unnerving. I didn’t allow myself to think about it much longer though. I still had a ton of work to do.
When I got back to Luke’s that night, the dinner I had made the night before was on the table and Lucas was bathed and ready for bed. I eagerly took him from his father and covered him in kisses. I had never been away from him for such a long period of time.
“Mommy missed you so much!” I cooed at him. He smiled and laughed, showing off his three teeth. “Aww, your breath smells like string beans!”
“My mom made you another apple pie,” Luke said, hovering nearby. “She said it’s a gift for returning to work.”
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that your mother wants me to stay fat.” I still had the extra pounds of baby weight that refused to go away.
“You’re not fat, but if you don’t want the pie, I will gladly take it off your hands.”
“Touch my pie and I’ll break your fingers. Lucas, say night-night to daddy,”
“Dah dah dah dah dah!” Lucas squealed at Luke, scrunching up his face.
After getting Lucas to sleep, I peeled out of my work clothes, took a quick shower, and then put on some warm pajamas. Luke had just reheated dinner again and was bringing it back to the table. We almost never ate together. I almost didn’t sit down.
“Are you ready to quit yet?” he asked after sitting down.
“I was ready to quit when I walked in the door.”
“Sorry,” he said. He looked a little embarrassed, and I didn’t blame him. “There just hasn’t been time to set up.”
“Kacey and Craig both could have been helping with that.”
“Maybe so,” Luke said. “But in Craig’s defense, he’s one paralegal working for four attorneys.”
“Fair enough. I think Kacey worked more today than the total time she’s been with you.”
“I guess Steve and I should have handled her better. I think she thought this would be a free ride because Steve’s her uncle.”
“You can’t afford free loaders. I think she will work out though. I need to ask you if it’s okay that I hire a cleaning company to come in and clean three nights a week.”
“I can’t afford it.”
“I can,” I offered. “I’ll pay for it.”
“No, I can’t let you do that.”
“And I want to hire a few more people,” I added. “You need at least one more paralegal.”
Luke looked at me and patiently said. “There’s no money for that.”
“There’s my money.”
“No,” he shook his head. “I won’t do that.”
“Let’s be frank,” I said, between bites of food. “If your firm doesn’t get its shit together, you’re going to drown. Chicago is full of other small firms that already have their shit together and that’s where the clients will go. I can even help you bring in upscale clientele, but you have to have your shit together first.”
“I know your family is well off, but do you personally have that kind of money? I doubt it.”
“You don’t know that. We’ve never discussed my finances before.”
“So, let’s discuss them.”
I looked at my wrist. I was wearing only a small fraction of the assets I actually had.
“I am a trust fund baby,” I started. “I’ve been getting an ‘allowance’ dumped into an account every four months since I was eighteen. My parents paid for my education, my car, and all of my needs until I got out of college. I’ve always worked and saved most of what I earned. My family doesn’t flaunt their wealth, and unless you looked a little deeper, you probably didn’t know that we not only have our one ‘plantation’ in Louisiana, but several spread out in other states. Your cotton undershirt probably originated on one
of my family’s farms. My father is highly invested in oil and a couple of other resources. The bar I love so much? It’s mine. I own it, and it does well.
“When Donya was modeling, she paid me to handle her finances. Then other models paid me to handle their finances. When I first started working at Sterling, I bought stock as soon as I could. I sold it soon after I left, and they were doing extremely well.”
I paused before divulging the next bit of information. I wasn’t sure how Luke would feel about it.
“I also left with…with compensation.”
“Like a severance package?” he asked, unable to hide his shocked expression from all that I told him.
“Something like that.” I hesitated. “Walter Sterling paid me out of his own pocket to go away.”
What I didn’t add was that half of the money was Jessyca’s, because it would only further complicate our awkward conversation. Besides, he just needed an idea of how much money I had, not exactly where it had come from.
“Are you fucking serious?” Luke roared. “You took a bribe?” He looked shocked that even I could be so stupid.
“Yep. I was going to return it, but after…after what happened before I left Jersey, I decided to keep it. I haven’t touched any of it.”
“What happened?” He leaned forward.
I wasn’t ready to go there with him, so I gently shook my head.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” I said. “My point is, I want to help you and I’m perfectly capable of helping you. You should let me.”
We sat in silence for a long time. Luke stared at his empty plate, tapping it with his fork. Every now and then he would look at me with the same thoughtful expression.
“A loan,” he said finally. “Everything you spend, I pay back, with interest.”
“No interest.”
“With interest,” he said firmly.
“One percent.”
“Eight percent.”
“Two and a half,” I countered.
“Seven and a half.”
“Four.”
“Six and three quarters.”
“Five percent is the highest I’ll allow,” I said firmly. “You’re being ridiculous.”