by Violet Paige
“Mrs. Foley, wait just a second.” I walked around behind her and stuck my head out the door. Meg was writing down the name of the women as they walked into the lobby.
“Meg,” I called her toward me.
“What is it?”
“This is going to take a while.”
Her eyes darted with panic. “But we have all these clients and no Addie.”
“I know. I know. But I can’t rush through this. Will you please field these the best you can? Take as much information down for me and then I’ll have a brief prepared at least when I sit down with them.”
“We are never leaving today are we?”
“Do they have cots in this place?” I joked.
“Don’t ever say that out loud or someone will order them.”
“I’ll do my best, but you’re right. It’s going to be a long day.”
I closed the office door, thankful I had the office to myself today so I could discuss this case without other clients walking in and out.
I smiled at her. “Ok. Mrs. Foley, let’s get started from the beginning and I’ll see how I can help you get your job back.”
“You can call me Lana,” she said. “It seems strange for you to keep saying ‘Mrs. Foley’.”
I nodded. “All right, Lana.” I resumed taking notes.
“And I never said I wanted my job back.”
“But you want some kind of compensation?”
“Yes. Of course.” Her eyebrows pinched together.
“What is the name of the company?”
“Company?”
“Yes. Where did you work?”
She cleared her throat. “In the Senate.”
I blinked. “As in Congress? The U.S. Senate?”
“That’s right.”
I pressed my elbows into the planes of my desk. I felt my stomach turn as I asked the next question.
“And your boss? Who is it?”
Lana sighed. “Todd Mitcherson.”
“Senator Mitcherson?” My voice cracked.
“I take it you know him.” She stared at me blankly.
“He’s a U.S. senator.” I tried to keep my words steady. Keep the judgment off my lips. Keep it hidden that I knew exactly who he was. The man Preston worked for.
“Yes. He is. And he shouldn’t have fired me.”
“I think I need you to start at the beginning. The very beginning.”
There was a weariness that had settled into my shoulders. It ran deep between the tissue, twisting the tendons with snaps of fatigue. They ached from all angles. I lugged my messenger bag over my arm and started down the stairs outside the clinic. If I rushed, I could make the last shuttle back to the Metro.
I didn’t like walking on campus at night by myself, but I held my phone firmly in my hand and trudged forward. It reminded me of all the seminars I’d attended in college. The ones where safety officers would fill an auditorium with girls and tell us how to avoid an unwanted attack. As if there was any other kind. They would tell us to always walk together. Check in with your buddy. If you saw someone suspicious, don’t make eye contact. It was a freshman requirement for all girls to attend, but I didn’t remember any seminars for the guys. Something about how not to attack women. Keep you dicks in your pants and your hands to yourself. I scowled, marching forward. I didn’t want to miss that bus.
Mrs. Foley was the first of twenty women I saw today. Twenty. I used to go an entire week at the private practice without seeing that many clients.
I hustled toward the stop at the corner feeling part super woman and part exhausted.
The driver nodded without smiling as I climbed onboard and took the first seat. I was a little nervous walking through the Metro station at night alone, but I was only one stop away from our neighborhood. Women in the city did this all the time.
I thought about the women today. What they dealt with. The decisions they made they had brought them to my office. The faith they had put in people who let them down. It was overwhelming and infuriating. There weren’t enough of us fighting to help them. Today I had worked with twenty, but if Addie had been there, we would have helped forty. And if one more attorney had been added to the clinic it would have been sixty. There was no stopping the hemorrhage.
My fingers touched the top of the metal bar, hanging from the train’s ceiling and I forgot about the women and remembered my ride with Vaughn last night. I smiled to myself. I liked how he steadied me with his strength.
He had the kind of presence I’d never seen in another man. He was comfortable in his own skin. He was confident in his decisions. That voice. Those eyes. He had me upside down.
I skirted off the Metro and scampered up the stairs quickly and onto the sidewalk. I liked being above ground and within sight of home.
Where did Vaughn get that confidence? How did he stroll through life, making his own wake?
I pulled my phone from my bag and tapped his number. I was completely sober and impulsive. It almost made me giggle.
I wanted to hear his voice. I wanted to thank him for what he showed me last night. For talking. For living in the quiet with me. For everything.
I took the stairs to the third floor while I waited for him to answer. By the time I reached the top level it had gone to voicemail. I felt the frown crinkle on my face when I heard the rehearsed message.
“You’ve reached Vaughn. Leave a message.”
I hung up. I couldn’t think of putting anything together that didn’t sound lame. He also didn’t seem like the kind of man who bothered with voicemail.
I turned the key in the lock and dropped my bag on the floor.
“You’re home!” Greer squealed from the kitchen. She was stirring a pot of canned spaghetti sauce with a wooden spoon.
“You’re home.” I looked around for Preston. I didn’t know if I could hide the awkwardness I now felt, knowing his boss was involved in an unplanned pregnancy with my client. I couldn’t discuss it with him or Greer.
“Can you believe a night before nine o’clock? I’m making dinner. Want some?”
I nodded. “Yes, please. I’m so hungry.”
I reached for a plate as she heaped it with noodles and sauce.
“There’s shredded cheese in the fridge.”
I grabbed the bag and dumped a generous amount on my dish. “Deck?” I asked.
“Yes. The lights are already on.”
We walked outside and sat at the small bistro table.
“Wait,” Greer ran inside. “I forgot the wine.” She returned with a bottle of red and two glasses.
“I need that,” I groaned.
“Bad day?” she asked.
“Exhausting day. But I think a good day.” I twirled the pasta on my fork. “Thanks for dinner.”
“No problem. I was starving. We seriously needed to go to the grocery store.”
I was too busy stuffing my mouth to agree.
“I feel like I haven’t seen you in two days. What’s going on at the capitol?”
She sighed. “Everything is on hold.”
“What do you mean by everything?” I poured two huge goblets to the top for us.
“The senators on the committee can’t agree on a contract. They are at each other’s throats. No one is budging.”
“What kind of contract is it? Am I allowed to ask that?”
She smiled. “Are you going to sell my secret intelligence information?”
I tilted my head. “To the highest bidder.” I grinned.
“It’s a weapons contract. We’re outsourcing it of course. There are five private companies in the running for it right now. The committee has to choose one before they can push budget numbers forward to the Senate for final approval.”
I nodded. “Wow. Sounds intense.”
“It is.” She took a sip of wine. “And I’ve been working my ass off for them, researching plant locations, how many workers would be involved, what kind of contracts the companies have with other countries. It is endless. I
basically have their shoe sizes in a file if someone needed that.”
I laughed. “Could come in handy if you need someone to make…” I looked at her. “What do they make?”
“Air to ground weaponry.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. It’s serious. These are billion-dollar contracts.”
My eyes lifted. “A billion dollars?”
“Many many billions. It’s the kind of money that’s inconceivable.”
She sank into her seat. “Please tell me about all the good you’re doing in the world. I need something inspiring.”
“I don’t know how inspiring I am. If I help one person, there are ten more right behind her who need even more. I can’t make a dent here.” I shook my head. “It feels like I’m spinning my wheels in that clinic.”
Greer sat forward. The weariness on her face lifted for a second. “While I’m at the Capitol working on weapons, you are out doing actual good. If you help one woman in that clinic, you’ve done something. Don’t let the numbers depress you.”
“How can they not? It’s hopeless. That’s how I felt when I left the clinic today. Hopeless.”
“Because, you have to believe in paying it forward. At least you used to.” She stared hard into my eyes. “It might not be in the same way, but for every woman you help, she’s going to turn around and pull up another woman behind her. Sometime in her life she’s going to do that.”
I felt guilt in my own cynicism. “You still think that, Pollyanna?”
She nodded. “Somebody has to. Because working with the assholes I work with will shred the humanity right out of you.”
“I need to remember that. Thank you.”
“Sure thing.” She smiled. “This is hard town to live in, but it does so much good. It’s just hard to see sometimes.”
I nodded. “I may not have figured anything else out, but I think I got that point.”
We finished dinner and the entire bottle of wine.
“Did I mention I have to finish my syllabus for class tomorrow?”
“What?” Greer laughed at the empty bottle of wine between us. “You have to work tonight?”
“How terrible would it be to show up without one on the first day?”
She started to clear the table. “Pretty terrible. Let’s clean this up and I’ll help you.”
“No. You’re already exhausted. You don’t have to do that.”
I rinsed my plate in the sink and stuck it in the dishwasher.
“How much do you have finished?” she asked.
I tried to think at what point in the semester I had stopped assigning chapters and cases. “I think I have through fall break. So really I just need to finish off November.”
She smiled. “That’s not too bad.”
“Exactly. I can finish it before bed.”
“You sure? I’m a little rusty, but I can look over some stuff for you. It might be fun to do together.”
I appreciated that she wanted to help. But I knew I could finish the work on my own, and maybe faster.
“I’m sure. It will take me an hour at most. I’ll work on it in bed until I’m done.”
She stretched her arms overhead. “If you don’t need me then I think I’m going to take a shower and go to bed. Tomorrow’s another early day.”
Greer pulled me into a big hug after we cleaned the kitchen.
“I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Me too.” I stood back and looked at my friend. “Good night.”
“Good night.” She walked to her room and closed the door.
I picked up my laptop and padded off toward my room. There really weren’t many classes left to map out. I knew if I left things vague for the last month of classes it would be ok if I added assignments as the semester progressed.
I worked through the weeks leading up to final exams and saved everything to a backup drive before closing my laptop.
I changed into an old college T-shirt, brushed my teeth, and washed my face. I was too exhausted to rinse off in the shower. I slid under the covers. My eyes burned I was so tired.
I tossed and turned. I must have awakened five times that night. Every time I looked at my phone, I knew I wasn’t checking for the time. I was looking for a missed call or text from Vaughn. It was stupid. Silly, really, but I thought I would have heard from him. I should have been worried about going into a class. Attempting my first lecture on law to a group of students. But I was hung up on a guy.
I exhaled, remembering he had even professed not to follow dating rules. He made his own rules. That was part of what was so attractive about him. He did and said what he wanted.
I thought about writing in my journal. Maybe it would help to get all of this pent-up frustration down in words. I finally rolled over at five a.m. in defeat. I wasn’t going to get any sleep like this. I couldn’t turn my brain off.
I slipped on a pair of running shoes and did something I hadn’t done since I moved to D.C. I went for a morning jog.
I headed out before the sun was fully in the sky. The buildings glowed from shimmers of early morning yellow. The whiteness of the city soaked in everything the sun painted on it.
It was gorgeous. I took in a deep breath, crossing the sidewalk and jogging around the block. I thought about what Greer said at dinner last night. There was good to do in this world. Looking at the enormity of what had been accomplished here, I felt inspired. Compelled to embrace the enormity of what lied ahead. And then I remembered. Today I had my first students.
Chapter 6
My heels echoed in the hall outside the lecture hall. I took at least four deep breaths. Public speaking wasn’t for everyone. And it was one of the reasons I had opted out of trial law. I didn’t like it.
But I had convinced myself teaching wasn’t the same as public speaking. That now seemed ludicrous faced with a class of fifty students.
I was also on trial. Everything I did was observed, recorded, and reported. My residency at American depended on my interaction with students and how they received my teaching methods. It didn’t matter that it was an introductory class. Some of the students were actually pre-law from the undergraduate level.
I only had to get through one class at a time. Today we would go over the syllabus and the schedule. I could drill down into our first cases later in the week.
“Professor Charles?”
I stopped at the door. There were two students blocking my entrance. It sounded strange to hear my name with professor tagged at the front.
“Yes?”
“We’re your mentees for the semester,” the girl explained. She had bright green eyes and her hair was pulled away from her face.
The guy beside her was slightly overweight and much taller than both of us.
“Yeah. I’m Gregory.”
“And Jessie,” she elbowed him.
“Oh. I didn’t realize you were coming to class.”
“We’re supposed to follow you everywhere. Class. The clinic. All of it.”
“All of it?” I hadn’t heard that part of the mentor program. I was surprised. And not prepared.
Jessie nodded. “We will sit in class and observe, but we can help with anything you need. Anything.”
“Oh. All right. Thank you.” I looked at each of them before walking inside.
“Nice to meet you,” they echoed behind me.
I felt unnerved. There were parts of this program that didn’t make sense to me. How was I supposed to be a mentor, when I was still getting my own footing? How could I guide and lead when I needed my own person?
Students were mumbling to each other and setting up their tablets and laptops when I walked in the room. Luckily, it was a small auditorium. I took a few seconds to unload the materials I had prepared and slow down.
I only needed a few brief seconds to frame my perspective. I remembered my first day in law school. I didn’t know the professors’ backgrounds or where they attended school. I didn’t know how old they were or how m
any years they had practiced law. Later, I found out some of them never had. It didn’t matter. I was too wrapped up in my own journey. My own reasons for being there.
And I was 99 percent sure these students had the same approach. They didn’t care about anything that had happened to me before I crossed that threshold. They had one motivation: pass law school. As long as I helped them do that, the rest was just interference.
I exhaled and smiled.
“Good morning.” I gathered the syllabi in my arms and walked toward the first row. “I’m Professor Charles. Welcome to your introductory trial class.”
I counted out the sheets and passed them to a student on the end.
“Don’t worry. The syllabus is also online, but sometimes it’s nice to have something you can reference if you need to make notes.”
I walked to the second step and counted another section.
“Let’s get started with the expectations for the semester and then you’ll have a chance to ask questions about the papers and exams.”
I walked to the front of the auditorium. Jessie and Gregory both smiled.
I realized there was something empowering about having all eyes on me. They weren’t intimidating. They were listening.
“Please look at page one.”
Chapter 7
The next week I walked into the office and Addie adjusted her glasses to the brim of her nose. It had taken her three days to return to work. She said she caught a nasty stomach bug. In those three days, I managed to set a record for the most clients seen at the clinic. Not to mention, I brought her mentees onto my team while she was out. They had no one to help them. It felt as if I were running my own law firm. A very mini-non-profit law firm. But I loved it.
Addie did not.
“Meg says you have the files on Haskins, Tate, and Bomstand.”
“Good morning.” I smiled. “Yes, I have those. Do you need them?”
“They are supposed to be my cases, so yes.”
I walked behind my desk and opened the top filing cabinet. “I thought maybe since you missed the first meetings you would be ok with me working on those. There are plenty more out there, Addie.”