by Julie James
The judge considered this, and then looked at the other attorney. “Any response to that, counselor?”
Five minutes later, Victoria walked out of the judge’s chambers and smiled at her client, who’d been waiting anxiously in the courtroom.
She felt good about today’s victory—if one could call it that. In her line of work, there were seldom any true “winners,” particularly when children were involved. But that didn’t stop her from always doing her best to ensure that her clients’ interests were protected as much as possible throughout the divorce process.
She’d been fortunate in her career. In the beginning, she’d simply been in the right place at the right time: about six months after opening her firm, a former law school classmate passed along her name to a woman, someone in her book club, who was looking for a divorce lawyer. That woman turned out to be the wife of an extremely wealthy riverboat casino owner who had done some very un-husbandly things with eighteen-year-old prostitutes in his casino hotel. When the wife walked away from the divorce nearly fifty million dollars richer in a high-profile case with significant local media attention, Victoria Slade & Associates instantly became one of the go-to family law firms for Chicago’s rich and famous.
Because of her success, Victoria now had the luxury of being selective in the cases she took on. Her clientele tended to be mostly women, although not always. Regardless of gender, she believed that her primary responsibility as their lawyer was to help her clients feel empowered during the divorce process. She was blunt and didn’t sugarcoat, and she asked each prospective client the same question during their initial meeting: “What do you need in order to move on from this marriage and start building your new life?” If the answer was something she thought she could deliver, she took them on as a client.
And then she fought like hell to get the job done.
After returning from court, the rest of Victoria’s workday was spent bouncing between meetings with her associates, and on phone calls with either clients or opposing counsel. She left the office around six o’clock—early for her. But she’d been trying to shake a headache all afternoon and figured the best way to do that was to set the laptop and cell phone aside, pour herself a glass of wine, and have a long, relaxing bath.
Per usual, she avoided the subway, opting for a cab home instead. It began to pour about a mile from her building, but fortunately she had her umbrella as she darted from the cab into the small lobby. She grabbed her mail, flipping through it as she rode the elevator up to the fourth floor.
When she stepped out of the elevator, she saw someone at the end of the hallway—a woman leaning against the door to Ford’s condo. In her midtwenties, with shoulder-length, light brown hair, she wiped her eyes, obviously crying, as she pushed a baby stroller back and forth.
Oh, boy. What now?
Ever since her run-in with Ford at the coffee shop, a nagging voice in the back of Victoria’s head had been asking whether she had, perhaps, rushed to judgment about her new neighbor and whatever situations, frisky or non-frisky, he had going on with the women she’d seen coming and going from his condo. But now here they were, just two days later, and the guy had a crying woman with a baby on his doorstep.
At this rate, they were going to have to set up a damn number dispenser and a waiting area outside unit 4F.
The younger woman’s eyes were puffy and her cheeks blotched. She tucked a lock of hair behind one ear, appearing embarrassed by her obvious state of distress as Victoria approached.
“Sorry. I’m just waiting for my brother to get home.” She cleared her throat and peered down at the stroller, continuing to push back and forth.
Oh. She was Ford’s sister. Victoria had assumed . . . Well, whatever. She paused in front of her door, keys in hand, and watched as the younger woman brushed away more tears.
Just keep moving. It’s a family matter. She’d paid the price once for sticking her nose into Ford’s business, with that little press-and-crane routine of his. She wasn’t about to do it again.
She put her key into the lock, just as the other woman sniffed and did that shaky-inhale thing people did when trying to stop crying.
Aw, hell.
She stuffed the mail into her briefcase and walked over. “I’m Victoria. Ford’s neighbor. I don’t mean to intrude . . . but are you okay?”
The woman looked her over. “Are you Owen’s girlfriend?”
“No, Owen moved out. I’m renting his place for the summer.”
“Oh.” The woman cleared her throat. “I’m Nicole.” She gestured to Ford’s door, as if feeling a need to explain. “My brother’s on his way. He texted and said he got stuck in traffic. I guess he was on the south side, doing an interview for work.”
“Ah,” Victoria said, as if this information made sense. In truth, she had no clue what Ford did for a living. They hadn’t gotten that far in their brief, mostly insult-based exchanges.
She watched as Nicole continued pushing the baby stroller back and forth.
“If I stop moving, she wakes up,” Nicole explained. “The only time I can get her to nap is when she’s in the stroller.” She blinked back more tears, and tried to cover with a more lighthearted tone. “Sorry. I’m a little sleep-deprived.”
Victoria stepped around so she could peek inside the stroller. She was far from an expert on babies, but guessed this one to be somewhere around four months old. Wrapped in a pink and lime green blanket, and with a little bit of dark brown fuzz on her head, she slept with a pacifier in her mouth. “She’s adorable. What’s her name?”
“Zoe.”
“That’s pretty.” Victoria gestured to her front door, the words coming out of her mouth before she even thought about them. “You’re welcome to wait inside my place until your brother gets home.” She nearly thunked herself on the head—For Pete’s sake, Slade, what happened to minding your own business? Really, she didn’t need to be getting involved with whatever the problem was here.
“Oh, no,” Nicole said. “That’s nice of you to offer. But we’re okay out here. I wouldn’t want to impose.”
Back and forth with the stroller.
And more sniffles.
Victoria sighed to herself, thinking about the quiet evening she’d envisioned, the glass of wine and the hot, relaxing bath she’d had planned. “Are you sure you don’t want to come in and sit down?” She went for a joke. “Because I’m getting exhausted just watching you push that thing.”
Nicole hesitated. “Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind . . . actually, it would be nice to sit down for a few minutes.” She managed a slight smile in return. “Thank you.”
“Of course. It’s not a problem.” Victoria let them inside her condo, holding the door open so Nicole could get in with the stroller. She shut the door quietly, being mindful of the sleeping baby. “Make yourself comfortable. Can I get you something to drink? I have Diet Coke, water, iced tea . . .”
“A glass of water would be nice, thanks.”
Victoria headed into the kitchen, and set her umbrella and briefcase off to the side. Watching as Nicole took a seat on the living room couch, she cracked open a bottled water and poured it into a glass with ice.
Okay . . . a little awkward here, having a perfect stranger—with a baby—in her home. A crying stranger, no less. Not exactly sure what to say, she set the glass of water on the coffee table in front of Nicole, and then smiled as she sat down in the chair next to the couch.
Nicole continued to push the stroller back and forth across the hardwood floors. “Thanks. I should probably text my brother to let him know that I’m here.”
Victoria wondered how that message would go over, seeing how she and Ford were hardly on the most neighborly of terms. With one hand, Nicole pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket. “Would you mind pushing the stroller while I type?”
“Oh. Sure.” Victoria took hold of the handle and slowly pushed it back and forth, imitating Nicole’s pace. She peered down at Zoe, all nestled i
n her blanket next to some giraffe toy that was clipped to the side of the stroller.
If anyone had told her that she would be rocking a baby to sleep in her condo today, she would’ve said they really needed to cut back on the hallucinogenic drugs. Not that she had anything against babies, but if she went down that road at all, they weren’t in the schedule for another good four or five years.
Soak it up while you can, girls, she told her hormones.
Nicole finished typing and then looked around the loft. “This is a nice place.” She checked out Victoria’s suit. “Are you a lawyer?”
Victoria smiled. “Is it that obvious?”
“My brother’s best friend is a lawyer. You remind me a little of her. What kind of law do you practice?” Nicole’s phone buzzed with a new text message. She checked it, then looked up at Victoria quizzically. “You said your name is Victoria, right?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what I told Ford. He seems really surprised that I’m with you.” She typed a quick reply to her brother. “‘Yes, your neighbor, Victoria,’” she typed, in a tone that was equal parts annoyance, mocking, and affection. Then she put her phone down and gestured to the stroller. “Thanks. I can push again.” She took over from Victoria, then brushed her hair off her face with one hand. “Sorry, you were saying something about your law practice?”
“I’m a family lawyer. I run my own firm, actually.”
Nicole paused, then reached for her glass of water. “Huh. That’s interesting. So . . . do you handle child support cases, then?”
“Child support is certainly part of a lot of my cases, yes.”
Nicole leaned forward in her chair. “How does that work in situations where the mother and father were never married? Say, hypothetically speaking, that a woman wants to collect child support from the guy who got her pregnant. What does she have to do?”
Victoria glanced down at Nicole’s left hand. No ring. “Well, first she would file a petition for child support. Assuming we’re talking about someone who lives in Illinois”—and, given Nicole’s very interested look, Victoria had a sneaking suspicion they were—“there are guidelines for what the father will pay, based on his income and the number of children. She’d want to make sure he’s being truthful in his financial disclosures and not hiding anything. Also, she can request separate contributions toward the child’s education, medical expenses, and extracurricular activities.”
“I didn’t realize you could ask for those kinds of things.”
“A good lawyer would help with all of that. As well as any custody and visitation issues that might arise.”
Nicole’s eyes darted toward Zoe. “Custody?”
Victoria treaded delicately here. “I’m not sure what the situation is between the mother and father in this particular hypothetical, but if you ask a man to support a child financially, he very well may want to be a part of that child’s life.”
“Right. Or . . . maybe he won’t care at all.” Tears welled up in Nicole’s eyes again.
Victoria went out on a limb. “Nicole, we’re not really talking about a hypothetical here, are we?”
After a moment’s hesitation, the other woman shook her head. “I shouldn’t be bothering you with this—I don’t even know you. It’s just that you mentioned you’re a family lawyer, and lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about these things. It’s what I planned to talk to Ford about tonight, actually.” Her lip began to tremble. “I’m just not doing so well, raising Zoe all by myself.”
That confession out of the way, her words began to flow faster. “I didn’t know how expensive everything would be—the diapers, the formula, not to mention day care. I mean, I’m already back at work, because my job doesn’t have paid maternity leave, and I’m barely getting by. So I’m picking up extra work, giving private guitar lessons to kids in the evenings and on weekends, but that cuts into the little time I have with Zoe, and I feel like I barely see her, and I’m always so exhausted when I do see her that I find myself counting the minutes until her nap or her bedtime. And I feel so horrible admitting that, but it’s true and . . .” She shook her head, trailing off.
The family lawyer in Victoria felt compelled to ask, “So you’ve tried making arrangements with Zoe’s father? And he’s refused to take on any financial responsibility?”
Nicole bit her lip. “Well, here’s the thing: I don’t exactly know who Zoe’s father is.”
Oh. “Meaning, there’s more than one guy who could’ve gotten you pregnant?”
“No, it’s definitely the one guy. I just don’t know who he is.” Nicole blushed. “It was a one-night stand. My girlfriends and I went out for my twenty-fifth birthday, and I got really buzzed. I started talking to this guy and one thing led to another and we went back to my place, and—surprise!—a few weeks later I realized I was pregnant. Which is crazy, because I know we used a condom. But maybe there was a second time, or the thing slipped, I don’t know. ‘User error.’ That’s what my OB called it.” She glanced over at Zoe. “I thought about not keeping the baby, but . . . I just felt this bond with her from the moment I found out I was pregnant. And it’s not like I thought being a single mom was going to be easy.” She looked at Victoria with tired eyes. “But I didn’t realize it would be this hard, you know?”
The words took Victoria back to a memory of her own mother, lying in a hospital bed looking tired and frail.
I just didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know it would be so hard.
“So, what’s the plan here?” she asked Nicole, rather bluntly. “You asked me about child support payments, but I’m thinking you need to know who the father is first. Courts are sort of sticklers about that.”
“Well, I do know his name,” Nicole said. “Peter Sutter. Hopefully with that, I can find him somehow. That’s why I want to talk to Ford. He’s an investigative reporter—he has access to all sorts of people-search databases and stuff. I figure he can help me find Peter Sutter, then . . . I’ll just tell him about Zoe and demand that he help out financially. She’s his responsibility, too—it takes two people to make a baby, after all.” She said this without hesitation, as if the whole plan was settled.
Right.
From both personal and professional experience, Victoria had a slightly more realistic view of things.
“And when, assuming you can find this Peter Sutter, he tells you to take a hike—what then?” she asked Nicole. “When he refuses to take the paternity test, because he doesn’t remember you, or because he doesn’t want to be a dad, or because he’s married with three kids and he was cheating on his wife when he hooked up with you and doesn’t want to get busted—what happens after that? Or maybe you do manage to prove that he’s the father, but then he lawyers up and fights back against every child support payment, because he’s a deadbeat, or because he doesn’t think he should have to pay his whole life for one ‘mistake,’ or because he’s some rich asshole who thinks you’re a gold digger who’s after his money. The point is, Nicole, this guy could be anyone, he could be broke, or just a selfish jerk who doesn’t care one bit about his responsibilities. And it may be a long time before you see any money from him—if you do find him—which means you can’t count on this man to solve your problems. You are going to have to find some way to do this on your own. I know it’s tough being a single mother, but you are all your daughter has, the only person she can depend on, and she needs you to be there. She needs to know, no matter whatever else is going in her world, that you can do this. So you’re just going to have to suck it up, pull it together, and figure out how you’re going to make this work even if you never get one dime from the guy.”
Nicole blinked in surprise.
Victoria paused, equally surprised.
Oh, shit.
That whole speech had just spilled out, way too vehemently. Realizing she needed to say something fast, she pointed, covering. “And that is exactly the kind of tough-love speech I would give you if I was the lawyer handling your c
ase.”
Nicole looked confused for a moment, and then she broke into a wide smile. “Wait—you want to take on my case?”
Uh-oh. “Well, I said if I was the—”
“This is so great!” Nicole clapped her hands in excitement.
Before Victoria could clarify the misunderstanding, Zoe woke up with a start. She opened her eyes, looked around the room for a second, then spit out her pacifier and let out an indignant wail.
“Oops. Sweetie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up.” Nicole made a face at Victoria as she reached into the stroller. “Duh. That was dumb of me.” She scooped up Zoe and held her against her chest and shoulder, rubbing the baby’s back with a Shh.
Zoe kept right on howling.
“She’s probably hungry.” Looking flustered, Nicole began digging around in a diaper bag strapped to the stroller handle while balancing Zoe with one arm. She pulled out a bottle and a yellow packet of formula.
“Would you mind taking her for a minute while I mix this?” she asked Victoria.
Little Zoe, with her red, scrunched-up face, looked less than enthused about this idea. Still, it wasn’t like Victoria could refuse. “Of course.” Naturally, she could hold a baby for a few minutes. She used to babysit back in high school; it wasn’t as though she’d never held an infant before. Just . . . not in a really long time.
Nicole’s left hand was full so she couldn’t just plunk Zoe into Victoria’s arms, so Victoria reached over and semi-awkwardly lifted the baby into her lap.
Okay. That wasn’t too bad. She could do this.
“Hi,” she said, smiling down at Zoe.
Zoe let out a yell of outrage.
Nicole rushed over to the sink to fill the baby bottle with water. Victoria tried bouncing, and then some rocking. She even cooed, “Mommy will be right back,” but nothing worked; Zoe was in a mighty pissed-off mood and apparently determined to let everyone in the building know it.
Nicole dumped the formula into the bottle and shook it—by this point Zoe had worked herself into a full-fledged fit, rather like a wailing police siren—then hurried back to Victoria and scooped the baby up. She settled Zoe on her lap, plunked the bottle into Zoe’s mouth, and literally mid-howl the crying just stopped.