The Winners' Circle

by Gail Bowen

  “Seeing your mistakes as part of the learning process is healthy,” I said. “But with Delia it goes beyond that. Last year she forgot your dad’s birthday. When I came back from my run with the dogs she was waiting on the stoop at the condo. It was five-thirty in the morning. She’d awakened in the night and remembered Zack’s birthday, and she’d driven downtown to apologize. She’d been waiting there in the dark for an hour.”

  Taylor cringed. “Alone, in that neighbourhood? She must have been desperate.”

  “She was. She needed to apologize to your dad for screwing up. She was shaking with fury at what she called her ‘stupidity and self-absorption.’ Nothing I said helped. Finally, I just put my arms around her and took her upstairs to our condo. Her body was absolutely rigid, and it was weightless – like a bird’s. After she calmed down, she seemed completely defeated, and she said, ‘It’s not easy being me.’ ”

  “Wow,” Taylor said. “That does not sound like Izzie’s mother. She never lets down her defences.”

  “I was surprised too,” I said. “When she opened up that way, I thought that Delia and I might be on the verge of real friendship. But when I offered to make us tea, she waved me off. She apologized for intruding, took out her phone, began checking her messages, and left.”

  Taylor was pensive. “That’s so sad.” She moved closer to Zack. “Does Isobel know what Delia’s father said to her?”

  Zack shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “If she doesn’t, she should. Delia should tell her what happened. Izzie’s a good person, and she wants to do the right thing, but she can’t if she doesn’t know the whole story.”

  “I’ll try talking to Delia about it,” Zack said. He yawned. “Taylor, it’s been a long day. Why don’t we all hit the sack?”

  Taylor peered closely at Zack’s face. He didn’t look like a man who’d just had a three-day weekend. “Promise you’re not going to stay up and work till midnight again.”

  “I promise,” Zack said. “Scout’s honour.” He gave our daughter a smart salute.

  Taylor’s smile was mischievous. “You were never a Boy Scout,” she said.

  Zack drew himself up and squared his shoulders. “Do you want to hear me say the Scout Promise?”

  “If Taylor doesn’t, I do,” I said.

  “In that case…” Zack had dropped his salute; now he rendered it again. His face was solemn as he began. “On my honour…”

  Taylor and I fought hard to remain straight-faced as Zack earnestly recited his commitment to God, the Queen, and the tenets of the Scout Law. When he finished with a booming declaration of the Scout Motto “Be Prepared,” my daughter and I gave into the inevitable and began to laugh. As she wiped the tears from her eyes Taylor said, “You always make me feel better, Dad.” She slid out of bed so that she could embrace Zack with both arms. “I love you so much,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  I could see that Zack was deeply moved. “I do know that, Taylor. And it means everything to me.” It was a nice moment, but when I looked into my husband’s eyes I saw a sorrow so intense I could hardly breathe, and I turned away.

  CHAPTER

  4

  The next morning when Pantera, Esme, and I got back from our run, the dogs’ water bowls were filled, the coffee was made, and Zack was showered and dressed for the day.

  I bent to kiss the top of his head. “I like the new cologne,” I said.

  “I like your scent better,” he said.

  “It’s called sweat.”

  Zack chuckled. “Way to kill a pickup line.”

  “You don’t need a pickup line. When it comes to you, I’m always available.”

  “Hold that thought,” Zack said. “Because of the holiday, the weekly city council meeting was rescheduled to today at five. It’s going to be a long day.”

  I’d just stepped out of the shower when Margot Hunter called. “I’m in need of adult conversation,” she said. “Lexi and Kai are practically perfect in every way, but since they’re both under the age of two our banter is pretty basic.”

  “I’ll be there in half an hour,” I said. “And I’ll bring my copy of The Portable Dorothy Parker – time to give those baby tongues a workout.”

  —

  The condo building that we had lived in for the previous two and a half years still had the words “COLD STORAGE” written in two-metre-high block letters on its brick exterior. Margot’s then-fiancé, Leland Hunter, a multi-millionaire developer, had owned our unit. The decor was Tuscan and the space had the flawless Old World ambience that only a decorator could create. When we moved in, I thought I would never feel comfortable in that studied elegance, but Margot’s family and mine had been through good times and not-so-good times on the fourth floor our condos shared, and that rainy morning as I waited for the security gate to lift so I could drive into the building’s underground parking area, I felt the warmth of homecoming.

  When I stepped off the elevator, Margot, her almost-two-year-old daughter, Lexi, and her eight-month-old son, Kai, were waiting. I had been in the delivery room when the babies were born, and in my eyes the children were both strikingly attractive. Lexi had wispy white-blond hair, a peaches-and-cream complexion, and cornflower-blue eyes that could cast an unnervingly penetrating gaze when she was thwarted. Kai’s biological father, Brock Poitras, was Cree, and Kai had inherited his father’s shiny black hair and tawny skin, but he also had Margot’s bright blue eyes and full lips. It was a dynamite combination.

  As soon as they spotted me, Lexi came running and Kai began struggling in his mother’s arms. As I bent to embrace Lexi, Margot’s smile was wide. “You’ve been missed,” she said.

  I stood to hug Kai and his mother. “So have you,” I said. “It’s been four whole days since I saw you.” I picked up Lexi. She was wearing grey, hooded footie-pyjamas and a gold foil-covered crown with a faux fur circlet. “Hey, you’re Max from Where the Wild Things Are,” I said.

  “I am Max,” she said.

  “And that’s the only name she responds to,” her mother said. “Right, Max?”

  Lexi nodded solemnly. “Right.”

  Margot sighed. “Well, Max, let’s go inside and have a snack. I’m sure Jo is itching for one of our special fibre-laden cookies.”

  Lexi took her cookie and sippy cup to the window seat she favoured, and Margot settled Kai in his high chair and began feeding him puréed sweet potatoes. We adults shared a pot of tea. The plate of fibre-laden cookies was between us. When I reached for one, Margot batted my hand away. “Don’t,” she whispered. “They taste like recycled cardboard. On the second shelf to the left, above the sink, there’s a baking tin filled with sugar cookies that crumble as soon as they touch your tongue.” She handed me a napkin. “Sneak over there and hide a few in this. And don’t feel guilty. You and I have eaten our share of fibre.”

  The sugar cookies were indeed guilt-inducing, but I forged ahead. “So what’s the deal with ‘Max’?” I said.

  Margot rolled her eyes. “A rookie mistake,” she said. “I took the kids shopping for Halloween costumes prematurely. Lexi put on her Max suit as soon as we got home, and she’s been in it ever since. It’s starting to get pungent, but I can’t get her to take it off.”

  “Buy her another Max suit so you can switch them,” I said.

  Margot slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand. “Hard to believe that people pay $650 an hour for my legal advice, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a different skill set,” I said. “So how was your Thanksgiving?”

  “A lot of fun. I was a tad concerned about how Wadena would react to the kids and me strolling down Main Street with my son’s gay, Aboriginal biological father who was a wide receiver for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, but apart from my old piano teacher who chucked Kai under the chin and said, ‘Hi there, Little Chief,’ people were welcoming, and even Mr. Balmer’s chin-chuck was kindly.”

  “The times they are a-changin’,” I said.

/>   “Thank God,” Margot said. “But the good things endure. We had an old-fashioned prairie Thanksgiving – turkey, perogies, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cabbage rolls, vegetables from my siblings’ gardens, and five kinds of pies. Everybody ate too much, the arguments about politics and football didn’t end in bloodshed, and not a single child cried longer than thirty seconds. A blessedly uncomplicated holiday.” Margot replaced Kai’s empty sweet potato dish with a bowl of puréed chicken and began spooning. “How was yours?”

  “Until yesterday afternoon, pretty much like yours – then it became complicated.”

  Margot’s brow knotted. “Complicated enough that we should wait until the kids go down to talk.”

  “That might be wise,” I said. I sipped my tea. “On a brighter note, Taylor showed us photos of Declan as a groomsman. Very cool.”

  “My stepson did look handsome in his black tie and tails, didn’t he?” Margot said. “But Taylor was wise to defer meeting the Hunter family. They would have taken one look at her, decided she was the next Hunter bride, and swooped in.”

  “Taylor won’t be seventeen till Remembrance Day,” I said.

  “That wouldn’t have stopped them,” Margot said. “They believe in training their women young.”

  “And the Hunters live in this century?”

  Margot tilted her head. “I’ve never been quite sure about that.”

  The shenanigans of the Hunter family would have provided Dorothy Parker with fodder for a dozen lunches at the Algonquin, and Margot and I were still having fun when we noticed the children’s eyes growing heavy. I picked up Lexi and Margot took Kai. It was nap-time.

  After Lexi was cleaned up and her crown safely stowed on her night table, I leaned over and kissed her forehead. “You’re just playing at being Max, aren’t you?” I whispered. “You’re still our sweet Lexi.”

  The hint of a smile touched her little-girl lips. “Yes. I’m Lexi,” she said. Then she narrowed her cornflower eyes and lowered her voice to a growl. “But I’m Max too.”

  When I returned to the living room, Margot was sitting in one of the wing chairs in front of the fireplace. A sewing basket was on the table beside her. Motherhood had revealed a domestic side in Margot that would not have been guessed at by the many men whose tongues lolled as she walked past them during her days as a trial lawyer.

  Her signature dagger fingernails were long gone, and she had let her hair return to its natural honey blond. Margot was forty-five years old, but that morning in jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers, hair in a loose ponytail and face innocent of makeup, she looked like the young mums I met pushing strollers on the bike path behind our house. In one hand she held a small plush toy, clearly modelled on one of the wild things Max encounters on his adventure; in the other, she held a darning needle. The stuffy was wearing a yellow-and-brown striped shirt and a broad smile. His horns were perky, but his tail was bedraggled and hanging by a thread.

  Margot began the repair job. “Okay, fill me in on your complicated Thanksgiving,” she said.

  Like me, Margot was a pragmatist. I thought she would scoff at the idea of her law partners seeking solutions for their complex problems in something akin to a group therapy session. But the meeting on the Hynds’ screen porch had stirred me, and as I talked, I tried to convey the power of the emotional currents that had swirled around us the previous morning.

  When I finished, Margot put down her work and rubbed her temples. “So Falconer Shreve’s founding partners will be gathering together to memorialize their loved ones for the Day of the Dead,” she said dryly. “There’s a certain grim irony there.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that if Falconer Shreve doesn’t rethink and restructure before the New Year, the firm just might implode.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  Margot’s nod was emphatic. “It’s that bad,” she said. She picked up the plush monster, eyed its tail critically, and then returned to her sewing. “The best and the brightest are still beating a path to our door. We pay our associates substantially more than most law firms do, and we’re a ‘quality of life’ firm. Associates are allowed to bill fewer hours than they would at most places. They don’t have to carry the dreaded FirmPhones that keep them on an electronic umbilical cord twenty-four/seven; they get reasonable vacations; and we’re family-friendly. Comparatively speaking, Falconer Shreve is a decent place to work. The problem is morale.”

  “From what you said, the associates are getting a fair deal.”

  “A fair deal for now, but when these bright young lawyers look at their future with us, they see a logjam. In the normal course of things, associates hang around for seven or eight years. If they’re not deemed partnership material by then, they’re squeezed out. If they make the cut, they’re awarded a partnership.”

  “That seems straightforward.”

  “It is, but Delia has always insisted on a two-tiered partnership model: equity partners and partners like your daughter-in-law who are non-equity.”

  “Maisie’s talked to me about her status. She says that for the time being, having less responsibility is better for her. She gets a generous fixed salary, and she doesn’t have to worry about the profits and losses of the firm or attend partners’ meetings. It’s a good arrangement for a young lawyer who’s also a young mother.”

  “True, but the key phrase in there is ‘for the time being.’ I’ve known Maisie since she articled with Ireland Leontowich. She’s ambitious. When her twins are older, she’ll want the prestige and the earning potential of being a full partner with an ownership stake in the firm.”

  “And that won’t happen?”

  “In Maisie’s case it probably will. She’s Zack’s daughter-in-law.”

  “And that makes a difference?”

  “It does to Delia. Maisie’s marriage links her to the firm’s founders.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish I were. Falconer Shreve has an enviably deep bench. We have many truly gifted non-equity partners.”

  “And they want to take the next step.”

  “Exactly, and that requires the consent of all the equity partners.”

  “And Delia won’t consent,” I said.

  Margot raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t hear that from me.”

  “Of course not. But, Margot, you made equity partner and you weren’t connected to any of them.”

  “I made it because Zack refused to back down. He really had to duke it out with Delia to get her agreement. The weird thing is Delia likes me. She knew the firm’s criminal law division needed shoring up, and she knew I was one of the two best trial lawyers in the province.”

  “But she still had to be convinced.”

  “Yes, and I’m the only equity partner in the firm who didn’t found it. I used to think the bond between the founding partners was just kind of sweet, but I don’t think that any more. The elitism is damaging the firm.”

  “I had no idea the situation was that dire,” I said.

  “Well, it is,” Margot said. “The non-equity partners know they aren’t likely to get the prestige or money they deserve. They’re not going to wait forever. And the equity partners can’t escape from office business – not even me, and I’m on maternity leave. I’m sure you’ve noticed that the founding partners are already close to flaming out. Zack included. He keeps getting roped into Falconer Shreve business. With everything he has to deal with as mayor, it’s too much.”

  “Delia must see what’s happening,” I said.

  Margot shook her head. “There are none so blind as those who will not see. I’ve been thinking about this for weeks. There’s only one solution. Delia’s partners, including me, have to confront her.”

  “An intervention?” I said.

  “Of sorts. And, Jo, we need Zack onside. He’s the only one of us Delia will really listen to.”

  “He’ll support you,” I said. “He knows there have to be changes on all fronts.”

&nbs
p; “Good, because there’s something I’d like Zack to look at.” She handed me the stuffed toy she’d been darning. “Take care of my friend here. I’ll be back in a shake of a cow’s tail.”

  When Margot returned, she was carrying a presentation folder. “Since Leland died and Peyben International landed in my lap, I’ve had a crash course in corporate management. Falconer Shreve is a mess, but it can be fixed, and I’ve put together some ideas Zack can use to convince Delia it’s time to fix it. Full disclosure – Brock and I worked together on drafting this.”

  “Where’s the firm’s human resources department in all this?” I said.

  “Having hip replacement surgery.”

  I flinched. “I’ve heard that’s excruciating. But, Margot, is there really only one person in HR?”

  “Only one person who makes the decisions,” Margot said, “And she deals primarily with the firm’s support staff. Raema Silzer is well liked, and she’s good at her job, but frankly there’s not a lot for her to do, especially given how few promotions there are among the lawyers. But she has a real gift for choosing executive assistants who are a good match for the partner they’re paired with.”

  “Finding someone for Delia must have been a challenge,” I said.

  “Apparently Raema was up to it,” Margot said. “Delia and Lorne Callow are two peas in a pod: both perfectionists, both absolutely devoted to the firm. Delia wasn’t keen on hiring a replacement in HR for the three months Raema’s on medical leave, so she added Raema’s responsibilities to Lorne’s and he’s stepped in without complaint.” Margot shrugged. “As I said, there isn’t much for him to do. Support staff is well paid, their benefits are generous, and we have on-site daycare. Our firm is a regular Sweden.”

  “But it’s not a utopia for the non-equity partners,” I said.

  “No, it isn’t. But if Falconer Shreve restructures, it will be better for them. I’ve told Brock what I know of the firm’s history, and he’s come to the conclusion that the trouble started when Lily Falconer died. She was part of every decision the firm made, including the performance assessments of the lawyers. Lily’s death was a tragedy on a personal level, but it also left a hole in the management structure of Falconer Shreve that was never really filled. Blake was in no shape to take on additional responsibilities; Kevin was in Calgary; Zack had just met you and decided to be a family man, so he couldn’t give more. Anyway, for a variety of reasons, none of the other partners was in a position to manage the firm, and Delia picked up the baton.”