by Ali Vali
Roxanne smiled and nodded before stepping back to her desk.
Tully focused on her kids. “How about you two go into the conference room, fire up the computers, and do your homework.”
“Can I have your paralegals do my research for my paper?” Bailey asked.
“Can you pay them a hundred and fifty dollars an hour?”
“Like you’re handing out that kind of allowance,” she said with her hand on her hip.
“Then you’ll be stuck doing your research all alone this time around. Save up my more-than-generous allowance and they’re all yours.”
With the kids actually talking to her and having work to keep her mind off things, Tully started to feel her world right a little. She had to be a successful parent and lawyer; Jessica had left her no alternative.
Chapter Six
“Tully Badeaux,” Tully said, holding out her hand first to the young woman, then to her husband.
“Elijah and Simone Hebert, ma’am.” Elijah gave a slight nod.
“My daddy always told me if you’re going to trust me with something important, you’re going to have to use my first name. Please call me Tully.” She escorted the couple to the leather sofa in her office, taking the seat across from them. “Now, what can I do for you?”
“We talked to Roxanne,” Simone started. “Her mama and mine go way back, and she told us you could help us.”
“Just take all the time you need and tell me what the problem is.”
“Elijah and me, we’re simple people who wanted more than anything to have a family. We’ve been sweethearts since the third grade.”
Elijah sat quietly next to his wife and held her hand. After telling the first part of the story, Simone paused and swallowed like she had a lump in her throat.
“We got married right out of high school and decided to wait a couple of years on those kids we wanted.” Yanking a tissue out of her pocket, she held it to her mouth and shook her head, rocking back and forth as if some ailment had possessed her.
“Sorry, Tully, this is just hard for us,” Elijah said, moving closer and putting his arm around his wife. “You want me to finish, baby?”
Because Simone didn’t respond verbally or physically, he just started talking. “We were saving for a house, and those first couple of years were good fishing seasons. I know Gaston, your daddy. Always has been good to me, giving me tips, and taught me to get the best price for my catch, so Simone and me did good.”
“If there’s one thing Gaston Badeaux knows, it’s getting a good price for shrimp.” Tully stood up and took off her jacket. “Would you like to take a break before we go on? I really don’t mind, and I want to make this as easy on you as possible.”
“I figure the sooner we get this story told, the sooner you can start working on our case.”
Tully rested the legal pad on her lap and picked up her pen. The next part had to be what was making Simone cry quietly into her husband’s shoulder. “Just tell me if you need to stop.”
“Four years ago, we bought our house and Simone got pregnant. A man couldn’t have asked for more blessings, but I was wrong. When they laid that baby in my arms, I knew my life was rich even if my bank account didn’t agree.” His voice got softer, but he fought through the emotions. “We named her Evangeline and she was just beautiful.”
“Do you have a picture of her?” Tully asked.
After the few minutes it took him to pull out his wallet and flip through the collection he carried with him, his eyes seemed clearer.
“She’s beautiful.”
“Thank you. Right after she was born they told Simone she couldn’t have any more kids, but we were okay with that. Our dream had been to have a big family, but God had seen fit to give us just the one.”
“Was it a health risk for her to get pregnant again?” Tully was taking copious notes.
“The doctor said something about her pressure and her womb being really thin.”
It seemed rather strange to be talking about Simone like she wasn’t there, but she did appear to be somewhere else, probably someplace where the pain wasn’t crippling and she could hang on to the last shred of her sanity.
“I know my questions may sound strange, but I don’t want to put you through this more times than I have to.”
“It’s okay, we understand.” He wiped his face and brought Simone closer. “Things were great at first, but then right after her third birthday Evangeline got sick and we just thought it was the flu. Turned out she had bone cancer, and everyone told us to take her to New Orleans for treatment at Children’s Hospital. The doctors there didn’t sound real hopeful at first, but she responded well to the chemo they were giving her. She was a fighter like her mama.”
“From the way you’re talking, I understand Evangeline passed away from her disease.”
Elijah stared at her blankly like someone who heard the words but didn’t want to process them. “She died, but not from her cancer. She was in a lot of pain and they were having trouble keeping the IV in, so they told us it would be better to get something called a port.” Big tears started to fall down his face, but he kept talking. “It was simple, they said, but she died in recovery. It was an accident, they said, but she was bleeding and no one noticed.”
“What do you mean exactly by ‘she was bleeding’?”
“When they let us see her, her stomach was swollen, and this nurse finally told me that it was her blood. She was bleeding inside, and it didn’t have nowhere to go.”
“Elijah, I don’t mean to interrupt you, but could you hold on a minute.” Tully held up a finger, stood, and walked to her desk. “Roxanne, please step in and bring Jo and Frank.”
“You’re not going to take our case?” Simone’s voice sounded raspy from nonuse.
“The death of a child isn’t an easy thing to cope with, and while telling your story will most probably get easier with time, there’s no reason for you to suffer needlessly. Josephine Newmyer and Frank Tobias are my best associates and will be part of my team if we go forward.”
As if finding a new source of inner strength, Simone sat up and stared Tully down with her brown eyes. “My little girl was sick, but she deserved better than she got. That woman killed her, and I want to hear her say it. This ain’t about the money.”
“Ma’am…” Tully started as the door opened and the people she’d invited entered. “If there’s a case here, whoever is at fault will do more than just admit it, and it’ll be more than just about the money.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s simple. What was your daughter’s life worth? What would she have become if given the opportunity to do so? To begin, how would you answer those questions? Then what’s the answer to why her life was cut short?”
Roxanne and the others sat down as they watched Tully weave her spell. She might have been born a fisherman’s daughter, thought Roxanne, but Tully was smart and personable, unlike many other attorneys she had encountered. Her boss’s ability to make her clients trust her integrity made all the difference in most instances.
Trials were usually won or lost not by the superior mind, but by who could reach the twelve people who mattered most. Tully had a way of getting into the hearts and minds of a jury like no one else Roxanne had ever seen work a courtroom. From her first trial, juries had warmed to her easy manner, razor-sharp wit, and warm smile and joined Tully’s fight to vindicate her clients.
“Simone, lawsuits are more than just about money, at least for me. I went to medical school before law school, so I know what it’s like to have to face people’s expectations and hopes when it comes to their health.” Tully sat again and looked Simone in the eye. “When you or your loved one is sick, you have to trust the person in the lab coat to make you better. I fight hard against those who betray that trust.
“So I try to prove they were wrong so convincingly that the district attorney has no choice but to pick up the torch and prosecute the offender. If that can’t happen, t
hen having to pay a lot of money makes the hospital be more careful the next time they hire personnel.”
While Simone and Elijah nodded in approval, Tully got the others up to speed and had Elijah finish his story.
He described how they had seen their daughter in the recovery room after her surgery, minutes after she’d died. When he was done he sat back and waited, seeming to expect yet another disappointment.
“Rox, you have copies of the file for everyone?” Tully asked. She’d heard their side, so now it was time to fill in the gaps and try to separate grief from fact.
On the first line of the surgical report, flashing like a neon sign, was the name Dr. Kara Nicolas: Jessica’s new lover and Evangeline Hebert’s surgeon. Tully sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.
“What?” Roxanne asked.
“We may have a problem.” This was the first time her personal life had bled so profusely into her work.
“I checked the file, Tully. Jessica’s not involved at all.” Roxanne was about to flip to the pages again when Tully put her hand up.
“Her name isn’t in there, that’s not the problem.” She turned her attention to her potential new clients since she knew her staff would keep her business confidential. “For me to be your attorney, you have to trust me just like those doctors I talked about.”
“You haven’t called us crazy yet, so I don’t see a problem,” Elijah said.
Tully started with her sexual orientation, which made Elijah shrug. She moved on to Jessica and where she worked, and again he shrugged.
“Believe me,” Tully said, “I’m not boring you with all this to see how open-minded you are.”
“You can sleep with sheep for all I care, just as long as you hand me that bitch’s head on a plate.”
“I want to thank all of you for being nice enough not to mention my face.” Tully pointed to all the bruising. “Yesterday I filed assault charges against Dr. Nicolas.”
“She beat you up?” Simone asked.
“Her face looks worse, believe me. We had a little disagreement yesterday when I found out that my partner of many years is having an affair with her.”
The two associates didn’t show any emotion.
“If you have a problem with that fact I can certainly recommend another attorney for you.”
“Do you believe us?” Elijah asked. “That Evangeline didn’t have to die so soon, I mean.”
“I believe you have a good case, yes.”
“Then I think, if Simone agrees with me”—Elijah turned to his wife, who nodded—“that we want you. You believe in us and you’ve got your own reasons to bring Dr. Nicolas down.”
“Rox, get on the phone and drop all the charges I filed yesterday.” Tully didn’t raise her head from the file in her hand as she circled names and underlined facts. Before long she handed it to Josephine to kick-start her team’s research. “Then get all the necessary paperwork for the Heberts to sign.”
“When do we start?” Simone asked.
“Tully started the moment you walked in here,” Roxanne said. “If you come with me, Frank and his guys will go through everything with you again so we can get your story into our files.”
“It’s important for you not to talk to anyone from the hospital or Dr. Nicolas’s office without one of us present,” Tully advised, moving to her desk to get some cards and handing them to Simone and Elijah. “Here are all the numbers you need to get in touch with me, night or day.”
Simone held it to her chest like it was a winning lotto ticket. “Tully, thank you.”
“I’ve done this for years, but I can’t imagine any other case that’ll satisfy me more to win.”
Chapter Seven
“Mom, can we go to lunch?” Ralph asked, and Tully lifted her head up from the file she was reading. The kids had stayed in the law library for the morning, and Tully had spent the time in her office starting on the Hebert case.
“What are you in the mood for?”
“A sandwich from Maspero’s. Bailey said she voted for that too.”
“Maspero’s it is, then.”
When they went to get Bailey and one of her paralegals handed Bailey a stack of papers, Tully looked at her watch, held up four fingers, and mouthed, “Four hundred dollars.”
Libby was leaving work as they stepped out of the building, so both kids immediately flagged her down and invited her to join them.
“Are you sure?” Libby asked Tully. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“These guys are in charge today, so if they asked, I suggest you accept.”
When Tully put her arm up for a cab, Libby had other ideas. “Come on, Counselor, it’s only ten blocks. Let’s walk.”
“Yeah, Mom,” Bailey added.
Tully mentally calculated the time such a trek would keep her out of the office, but weighed the lost work against how open her kids were to the idea. The peace wasn’t going to last, her future fights with Jessica would guarantee that, so she decided to enjoy it as long as she could. Taking the heavy book bag from Libby, she waved everyone down the street, but by the time they reached the restaurant in the French Quarter, she was sweating and craving a cigarette.
“Explain to me why walking sounded so good to everyone?”
Bailey and Ralph took turns slapping her lightly on the stomach and laughing. “The extra set of tires, Mom. We gotta work on that,” Bailey said. “And you can’t puff in here, so chill.”
Tully could feel her ears get hot and knew her face was boiled-crawfish red from the teasing, especially when the kids went in and left her on the sidewalk with Libby. “I raised two comedians, huh?”
“Maybe they’re just concerned about you. It’s good to have someone care enough to look out for you, so don’t worry about it.”
Something in the last statement made Tully stop Libby from going in. “You okay?”
“Just stuff you don’t have to worry about.”
“This morning someone told me she was a great listener. That offer cuts both ways, you know. I’m not only a great listener, but a pretty good problem solver too.”
“With what you make, Tully, I’d certainly hope so,” Libby teased.
“Yeah, but I do my best work when it’s pro bono. I only put on my problem-solving hat and cape when the case is important to me.”
Ralph stuck his head out one of the open doorways. “Are you coming in?”
“They’re waiting,” Libby said.
“You fed them well this morning, so they won’t starve.”
“It’s too long a story to get into now, Tully, and you’re busy later, I’m sure.”
Tully opened the door to appease Ralph, but stopped Libby from going in. “I made a deal with Bailey and it’s working out great for me, so I have a proposition for you too.”
“Gosh, Tully, you’re propositioning me?”
Her ears got even hotter as Libby put her hand on Tully’s stomach, but the sudden heat had nothing to do with the extra weight she was carrying. “Uh-huh, funny girl. After lunch why don’t you come back to the office with me and the kids and tell me what’s bothering you.”
“And what are you going to tell me?”
“If we have time, I’ll recap the last twenty-four hours for you.”
Throughout lunch Tully sat back with her burger, enjoying how Libby got her kids to open up. After the tremendous changes in their life they should have been sullen and depressed. However, Libby spoke their language.
As they walked back to Tully’s office, Libby kept them talking while Tully gave her staff directions over the phone. They had worked through lunch and already gone over the file once after finishing the Heberts’ statements. Now they were compiling their separate files so that Tully could use her medical background to decipher and add to them.
Libby and Bailey window-shopped along the way, but Ralph hung back and turned to Tully every so often as if willing to wait her out. “Just leave them on my desk if they’re done and tell the team we’ll mee
t later this afternoon.” Tully cut her phone conversation short so that Ralph could talk to her.
“Big case, huh?”
“Could be, but the guessing part of my brain tells me that’s not what you want to talk about.”
Suddenly the hot-pink sweater set in the window of the boutique they were passing seemed to fascinate him. “I’m sorry I screamed at you yesterday,” he said just above a whisper.
“You don’t have to apologize, buddy.” She stepped closer to him, not wanting anyone to overhear them. “When you protect your mother or your sister, you’re just being the kid I hope I’m doing a good job of raising.”
“Even if it’s you I’m screaming at?”
“Even then. Just as long as you know I’m going to tell you when you’re wrong about something.” She stopped and turned him so they were facing each other. “No matter how upsetting any situation is in life, I hope you realize I’d never hit your mom or you.”
“I know that. Why didn’t you tell me I was wrong yesterday? Right away, I mean?”
“Because I was in shock. It won’t rank as one of my most stellar memories, so I’m sorry for not explaining better.”
“Are you okay now?”
From the corner of her eye she saw Libby and Bailey start walking again, so she jerked her head in their direction to get Ralph moving. “Not yet, but it has nothing to do with you or your sister. Your mother and I were together a long time, and it’ll take time for me to be okay with the reality that we’re not anymore.”
“Are you mad at her?”
“Yes, I am,” she said with no further elaboration.
“Me too.” Ralph looked toward the windows again. “But I’m madder at myself for making you feel bad about what happened. That was my bad.”
“You did what you thought was right in your heart, and that’s what counts. Don’t ever apologize for standing up for the people you love.”
When they arrived at the building Libby rode up with them, with Tully still carrying her book bag.
“Mom, we’re going back and I’m going to finish my term paper,” Bailey said. “We’re not going home real late, right?”