A Beautiful Fall

by Chris Coppernoll

  “Just tell me where to sign up,” Emma said.

  “Emma, you can live your life any way you want, but don’t make choices and then play the role of suffering martyr,” she said. “Hey, do you have a second that I can tell you something?”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “On the subject of having a perfect life, I’m compelled to tell you it’s faith that’s given mine all its meaning and worth. We didn’t really talk about it much while you were here, but I believe my faith in Jesus Christ is the reason for everything good that’s happened in my life. It’s something I grew up with in a Christian home, but it’s also something I tested in college and for some time after. Faith in Christ is wonderful, Emma, and it’s something I want for you.”

  “You’re the second person who’s told me that today,” she said.

  “Noel?”

  “Yes, he’s really something,” Emma said, remembering their conversation in the truck that morning. “Well, I’m just trying to get through today right now. I’ve got to run to another meeting, but if you talk to Sam tonight, will you tell her I’m thinking about her?”

  “Sure. I love you, Emma.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Emma hung up the phone and glanced at the clock on the wall. She walked into the office gallery. Susan turned the corner on her way to Robert’s office.

  “Oh, Emma. There you are. Would you tell Robert that dinner will be delivered in about forty-five minutes? They know to ring the outside door when they get here.”

  “Are you heading home?” Emma asked.

  “Uh-huh. Nine to six, that’s my day. I think some of the associates are working late tonight, but I’ve got to drive home to Peabody before the snow, then my husband’s taking me to dinner. It’s our anniversary.”

  “Oh, congratulations. That’s wonderful.”

  “Twenty-four years and still going strong,” Susan said, crossing her fingers, and making her way to the front door a few steps at a time.

  “Have a great night.”

  “Thanks, you do the same.”

  “Did you say ‘snow’?” Emma called out to Susan, just before she passed through the glass doors.

  “That’s what they’re calling for.”

  Emma entered Robert’s office rubbing her forehead. Both her mind and body ached. He was sitting at his desk with notes from the NF meeting opened in front of him.

  “Dinner should be here in forty minutes or so,” she said.

  “That sounds fine. Come on in, sit down.”

  Emma took the same seat she had hours earlier, though the mood in the office was different. This morning Robert had been the senior partner, the competitive bulldog who would fight anybody who challenged the firm he’d established nearly forty years before. The NF meeting had gone well, and that mellowed him a bit. He looked reflective, relaxed, and, Emma thought, a little fatherly.

  “You were great today, Emma. That’s what I mean by teamwork,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “You can do what no one else in this firm can do, and that’s connect with people and build trust. I intuitively felt that from you the first day I interviewed you as an associate. You scored big with the Interscope win, and you helped land what might become the largest billable client in the firm’s history.”

  “It’s been a good day for the firm,” she said.

  “And a good year for the firm and a good year for you. Would you like to try and guess what your bonus will look like in December?”

  Emma just smiled and shook her head. “As funny as this may sound, I haven’t really thought about that yet.”

  “Well, I have,” Robert said, closing the NF file and reaching for a plain manila folder, much thinner, sitting on a tall stack of legal papers in the corner of his desk. He opened it with grace and flair, watching for her reaction.

  “How does $400,000 sound? Not salary,” he said. “Bonus.”

  Emma’s jaw dropped as she responded with total shock. “That’s unbelievable, Robert.”

  “No, it’s not unbelievable, Emma. And it’s not just your bonus. It’s also a glimpse into your future.”

  Emma looked confused. “I’m not following you.”

  “How long has it been since you made partner, five years? It’s time you and I talk seriously about your next promotion. Perhaps I haven’t given due diligence to what your professional aspirations might be. Have you given any thought to how high you’d like to go, Emma?”

  She wrinkled her face, adjusting to the strange turn the conversation was taking.

  “Robert, I’m having a hard time thinking about long-range planning right now, but I’ve thought about being a good lawyer, about helping clients win cases. I don’t have long-term goals.”

  Robert chuckled.

  “That’s the difference between you and me, and Colin too. I calculate everything that happens in the business world. One victory paves the way for another door of opportunity. One star player on a team might mean a trip to the championship. Do you follow?”

  “Honestly, Robert, not at all.”

  “Let me tell you about my vision,” he said, coming around to sit on the front of his desk. “Word is spreading about your big win in the Interscope case. You don’t see it, but you’re gaining a reputation as the go-to attorney specializing in insurance lawsuits. With health-care cases on the rise, Emma, we’ve struck a vein of gold. This firm has the potential to double its size in attorneys, and triple in terms of earnings. If you’re not a millionaire already, you will be by this time next year. But that’s not all, Emma. Far from it.”

  Emma listened to Robert spill his vision for the world of tomorrow, an ever-growing legal firm with a national reputation for winning health-care and insurance cases. It all lined up for Robert. He saw his vision as if it were a certainty.

  “That’s why you should give careful consideration to what you want.” He chuckled again, louder this time. “I have to tell you honestly, there was a part of me that wasn’t sure you were coming back at all.”

  “Is that what this is, Robert? A big check to make sure I stay with the firm?”

  “I’ll make it even simpler than that, Emma. It’s an informal evaluation of where I think you are in your career, and what likely scenarios there are for your future, depending on the decisions you make today. We’ve touched on what the next year will look like in your professional life. Do you want to see into the not-so-distant future?”

  “I’m listening.”

  A greedy smile appeared on Robert’s face, the same one he’d worn at the courthouse after Emma’s victory against Kenneth Blackman.

  “There’s talk about you in political circles. Emma, you may not realize it, but you’re in a grooming town. Boston has a two-hundred-year history of politics and a robust political party system. You’re a successful lawyer, young and beautiful, and developing quite a name for yourself as a champion of health-care reform. There are people who see you going further than just a partner in this firm.”

  “What do you mean, Robert?”

  “I play golf with Darrell Brown; he’s the dean of Massachusetts state politics. He’s, among other things, a political talent scout, and you’re in his purview. If he sets a political career in motion, things mysteriously fall into place.”

  “You’ve got to be joking.”

  “Hardly. An appointment as United States attorney for our district is within easy reach. Then, if you wanted to run for attorney general on issues like health care and consumer protection, you’d be a shoe-in.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re telling me I could run for public office in Massachusetts?”

  “I’m telling you that you could win, Emma. I want to keep you here another year or two, but Brown is pushing to assist your appointment to U.S. attorney. After that, the sky’s the limi
t. Congresswoman, senator, governor.”

  “And you’d be okay with losing me as partner if I presumably entered politics?”

  Robert smiled, the old competitive spirit heating up in his bones.

  “Let’s just say if you were to climb up the ranks to political office, you’d still be in a position to help your friends who helped get you there.”

  Emma couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “Go home, Emma. It’s been a long day. You don’t have to decide your destiny tonight, but remember, every decision you make affects your future.”

  Robert took a box of matches out his vest pocket and walked back behind his desk. He removed a cigar from a box and stuck one end in his mouth. “See you in the morning, Emma. Bright and early.”

  He lit the other end of his cigar, sending a swirl of ashen smoke above him in a cloud. Emma got up from her seat and left Robert at his window overlooking the city.

  o o o

  Emma called for a cab and hauled her luggage, which by now was feeling like a heavy, unwelcome shadow, back down to the street below. The temperature had dropped considerably, and although the taxicab arrived in less than five minutes, Emma was utterly numb by the time she slid inside.

  “Back Bay,” she told the driver, closing her eyes and languishing in a cab that was not just warm, but exquisitely warm. The driver whisked her away down Federal Street. The lights in the city shone bright like Christmas lights. It was almost seven o’clock, fourteen hours since she’d left her father’s house. She realized she’d been sent home before dinner arrived at the office and Emma felt completely drained. The driver had some kind of talk radio playing but pushed in another preset on the radio as he turned up Essex Street. A country song started playing. Emma couldn’t make it out.

  “Excuse me. Could you turn the radio up just a little?”

  “Sure,” he said with a heavy accent.

  The driver turned up the radio and Emma rested her head again listening to the words.

  If you ever have forever in mind

  I’ll be here and easy to find

  The taxi coursed down Boylston Street. Emma told him the address and the driver relayed it to the dispatcher.

  A minute later, the taxi pulled up to Emma’s townhouse, and she paid him through the plastic divider between the front and backseat.

  She turned the key in the front door, and pushed it open with her foot, dragging her bags inside. The house was completely dark, so she switched on the hall lights and turned off the alarm system, locking the door behind her.

  After emptying her bags and starting a load of laundry, Emma drew a hot bath. She desperately needed to soak awhile and allow the day to unwind before going downstairs to the kitchen to make a bite of dinner. As she soaked in the hot, soapy water, only one thought registered in her mind: Her world had been flipped upside down like a car on the Zipper ride at the county fair.

  Emma couldn’t come up with one detail in her work or personal life that was the same as when she’d woke up that Monday of the trial ten days earlier. She couldn’t begin to unravel and make sense of it all. Somehow her predictable ticktock world had gone haywire.

  She finished her bath, pulled the stopper out of the drain, and made her way to the kitchen wearing warm pajamas, her bathrobe, and slippers. Her hair was wrapped in a towel on top of her head.

  Ten days out of town left few choices for dinner. All the lettuce and fresh produce in the refrigerator had gone bad. Emma opened a jar of spaghetti sauce, lit the gas stove, and set a saucepan half filled with water to boil for pasta.

  Even more than the bombshell meeting with Robert, thoughts of Juneberry continuously played on a movie screen in her mind. She lifted the cordless phone in the kitchen and called the one person she wanted to speak to most.

  “Hi, Dad, it’s me. Sorry I didn’t call you earlier,” Emma said.

  “I knew you’d call when you got a chance,” he said. “So how was your first day back?”

  Emma covered the saucepan with a lid. “From one lawyer to another—it was a long day. It started with a trip to the woodshed this morning when our senior partner reprimanded me for being away longer than is allowed.”

  “That’s always a lot of fun.”

  “Yes, then I spent five hours listening to a new client confessing their sins and their troubles, and asking us how we planned to get them out of it.”

  The audacity of it made Emma laugh rather than cry. She covered her eyes for a moment with her open hand.

  “It’s clients like those that make you glad you became a lawyer,” he said in jest.

  “At the end of the day, our senior partner brought me back into his office, dangled a whole lot of dough in front of me, and intimated a powerful career in state politics could be mine if I had the ambition to chase after it.”

  “So he tempted you with money, power, and fame. What do you think he wants from you?”

  “That’s a good question. I’m not sure I know. But it wasn’t a good day for bribes, not coming off all that happened in Juneberry,” Emma said, breaking angel hair pasta and letting it fall into the boiling water.

  “Something happened to you down here, didn’t it?”

  She took a seat at the marble island in the middle of her small kitchen. “Yes, something did happen to me, but I don’t know what to do with it. It’s like there are five masked strangers, but I know they’re good. And they’re helping me in five different ways, but I don’t understand what they’re doing.”

  “But you trust them and believe in them?”

  “It was something that came to mind on the flight this morning. I thought about the image again in the taxi, but like so much else, I’m not sure what it means.”

  Emma got up from the island to stir the pasta. She unscrewed the cap from the jar of spaghetti sauce and poured half of it into another saucepan.

  “Honey, it sounds like you’ve had an exceptionally eventful day. Are you ready to hear a little feedback?”

  “Please,” she switched the phone to her other ear while she stirred the sauce.

  “Well, first, I think your senior partner is afraid of losing you. His first instinct was to lash out, but after he saw you back at work doing your job, well, he got to thinking you can attract more bees with honey, so he went to his checkbook.”

  “Yeah, I thought of that too,” she said. Her dad’s voice sounded comforting and wise.

  “Point two, I’ve had clients like the ones you’ve described. They’ll pay well, Emma, but let me tell you if you don’t know already, they’ll exact a pound of flesh from you along the way. Last, but not least, I’m intrigued by this image of five helpful strangers. It sounds like a dream to me. You weren’t dozing off were you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And you don’t know who they are?”

  “Christina, Samantha, Noel, Michael, and you.”

  “What made you say that? I thought you didn’t know who they were?”

  “I don’t know, I just thought of it, but it makes sense.” Emma lowered the heat on the spaghetti sauce. “I don’t know if it means anything, but you’ve all helped me in some way this week. Maybe it did come to me like a dream.”

  “I know this week has meant a lot to you, Emma,” Will said. “It’s meant a lot to me, too. Why don’t you get some rest tonight and maybe things will make more sense in the morning.”

  The pasta boiled inside the stainless steel pan. Emma shut off the burner, letting it sit.

  “I’m just going to have dinner and go to bed. You’re right, things will make sense in the morning.”

  “They always do,” Will told her. “And, Emma?”

  “Yeah, Dad?”

  “I love you. Good night.”

  Emma drained the pasta and moved it to a plain white
dinner plate. She added the sauce and parmesan cheese, and took her dinner to the small table in her kitchen. It was the first time she’d eaten by herself since the breakfast before the trial.

  “The trial,” Emma thought to herself. It seemed to her in a weird way that her entire day, week, and life had been a kind of trial. She twirled her pasta around a tablespoon with her dinner fork while she twirled thoughts around in her head. All trials eventually go to the jury for a verdict, she thought. Even if nothing else in my life makes any sense, there’s going to be a verdict. She started thinking about handing her life over to a jury and what kind of a verdict they’d bring back. She didn’t like the answer.

  ~ Twenty-four ~

  Yes, I admit

  I’ve got a thinking problem

  She’s always on my mind

  —DAVID BALL

  “Thinking Problem”

  The following morning, Samantha placed a kindness call to Will Madison. Samantha’s personality tilted toward melancholy, and she sensed in her spirit that if Emma’s absence had left a gap in her life, there was an even larger hole in Will’s.

  “I’m doing fine, Samantha, though I appreciate your call. Emma and I spoke last night. She’s home now, safe and sound, and I’m told my new office furnishings will be delivered sometime between the hours of 9:00 and 5:00 p.m. today, so I have plenty to keep my eye on around here.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, Will. It’s just so different not having her around this week. We all went so long without seeing her, and then she was here every day, and now she’s gone again. It takes some adjusting.”

  “You know she’d probably love for you to call her, Samantha. Just to talk, check in on her. I think the last week and a half meant a lot to Emma, and she’s just beginning to figure that out.”

  “Having her gone just feels strange to me and I can’t put my finger on why.”

  “You know she appreciates you, don’t you, Samantha? Just call her. She’d really enjoy that.”