“Daniel Shea.”
“What did he get arrested for?” She tried to keep her voice as neutral as possible. Wednesday night meant that whatever Danny had done, it had been some time after he left her apartment.
“He tried to attack some young woman walking her dog in Prospect Park. It was a little dog—one of those wiener dogs, but I guess it had a ferocious bark and a mean bite, so Shea only got so far, and then he gave up and ran. But the cops caught up with him about a block away, and the girl identified him on the spot. She was pretty freaked out—her shirt was torn halfway off—and the dog went apeshit when he saw him.”
Liana felt whatever remaining energy she had drain out of her.
How could I have been such a fool? And if this is really who Danny is, why did he let me go?
Randy was still talking, and she tried to focus on what he was saying.
“I spoke with Ava Wellington before I reached you, and she said she feels pretty good that the conviction will stick this time.”
“Why’s that?” Liana asked. She knew this kind of conversation was probably improper, not that she could possibly represent Danny again, but she couldn’t resist getting the inside scoop. It was why she had befriended Randy, who had pretty loose lips, in the first place.
“Well, apparently this guy kept a journal.”
Oh God, Danny. I gave you that journal as an escape, and you used it to hang yourself.
“He was quite prolific,” Randy said, “and an introspective type. Ava said he wrote a lot about becoming obsessed with women and the internal struggle he feels between his chivalrous self, which loves women and wants to take care of them, and his impulsive self, which just can’t take no for an answer.” Randy’s voice was thick with sarcasm, but she recognized truth in Danny’s painful revelations.
It’s that yin and yang, but here it’s just Danny vs. Danny. And nobody wins.
Liana felt dizzy and put her head down on her desk, cradling the phone in the crook of her arm.
“Anyway, Ava says she thinks a lot of his journal entries will come in under the hearsay exception for admissions against penal interest. She’s confident she’ll find a way for the jury to know about this stuff.”
When Liana was silent for a minute, Randy asked, “Hey, Liana, you still there?”
“Yes.”
Randy was quiet for a moment too, and Liana could feel that he was weighing what he would say next. Finally, he continued: “Turns out this Shea also had some imagination, Liana.”
She tried not to panic. “Why do you say that, Randy?”
“Well, let’s just say there was quite a lot about you in his journal, and some of it was downright racy. But I guess a lot of these guys must have a pretty active fantasy life about their female attorneys, right?”
“I think that’s probably a safe bet,” Liana said.
“Well, don’t worry. Ava said none of that stuff about you would come in, because it isn’t really relevant to the crime he’s charged with. I just thought you’d want to know. So look out for the article on Monday; it should be on the front page of the Journal. I’ll do my best to keep your name out of it. We’re even now, Liana.”
“Thanks so much, Randy. Yes, we’re even now.”
But I’m not playing this game anymore.
On Monday morning, Bobby was back in his chair, and the Law Journal was faceup on Liana’s desk.
MAN ARRESTED IN PROSPECT PARK, CHARGED WITH ATTEMPTED SEXUAL ASSAULT
Suspect had recently been released after rape conviction was overturned on a technicality
By Randy Napoli
Liana skimmed through the article, her heart beating frantically. True to his word, Randy had not mentioned Liana by name, although anyone in the least bit interested could pull up on the Internet that she had been the attorney of record on appeal. The article was thorough and evenhanded; Randy was a good journalist, if a bit of a busybody.
“Tough break,” Bobby said. He looked at Liana for so long that she felt forced to return his gaze, and then he spoke to her so quietly she could hardly hear him, even though his head was only inches from hers.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t tell Gerry the things I heard and saw.”
She knew immediately that Bobby already had ratted her out and that her fears about him had been founded from the start. She was pretty certain he hadn’t been a fly on the wall in her apartment that night with Danny, and some of what Bobby probably thought he “knew” was pure conjecture. But he was familiar enough with the facts of the case to know that Liana’s visit to Danny in prison had been unnecessary, and he had seen her with Danny in the courtroom in Brooklyn. The chemistry between them had been hard to miss. Unless Bobby was totally clueless, he likely had figured out that she had gone somewhere with Danny after court the day he was released when she didn’t come straight back to the office. Had Bobby seen any of the ripped up letters or her handwritten correspondence to Danny? Had he worked out whom Liana had taken to the Mets game or heard about the kiss cam appearance? She didn’t know, but Bobby was snarky enough to have put two and two together, and he’d served her up on a silver platter to Gerry.
“You know what, Bobby, you go ahead,” Liana said. “It will save me the trouble.”
Once she had made the decision to leave, Liana saw no point in prolonging her departure. She spent the next several hours packing up the few personal items she kept at work. She wrapped in newspaper the framed picture of herself and Jakob at the farewell dinner for the summer associates the year they had met, the one of herself, Katie, and Charlotte at Charlotte’s wedding, the picture of her parents in their season ticketholder seats at Shea Stadium, and the one of her and Deb at an office bowling party, when Deb was still healthy and strong. She put in a box her Yale Law School mug and the Mickey Mouse ears that Tony had brought back for her from Orlando two years before.
It’s amazing how quickly you can dismantle what took so long to put together.
She took down the newspaper clippings from her bulletin board—articles Randy had written in the New York Law Journal about cases she had won: “Mental history of accuser admissible at trial,” “New trial ordered where juror expressed racial bias,” “Assault conviction overturned where People did not prove that teenager shared mental culpability of other perps,” and others. Of course, many more cases had been lost, the clients serving out their long prison terms, but that was the nature of the beast. She wished now that she had lost Danny Shea’s appeal and spared his new victim the trauma of being attacked in a place and at a time she undoubtedly thought was safe. But she had been doing her job. She felt a wave of relief that, in a few moments, it would no longer be her job to do.
She was taking in the view of the Freedom Tower one last time when Franny knocked lightly on her door.
“Wow, you’re almost all packed up,” she said. “May I come in?”
“Of course,” Liana said. She motioned to Bobby’s chair, but Franny remained standing.
“I’m too antsy to sit,” she said, pacing a little, her hands in loose fists at her side. “It’s so sad in here without Deb.”
Liana perched on her desk, giving Franny time to put her thoughts together.
“I can’t believe you’re quitting,” she blurted out. “None of us can. What kind of a message are you sending? About our work and our clients? What about the rest of us?”
Liana took her time to respond, understanding that Franny’s question was heartfelt and that her answer mattered.
“I was wrong when I tried to convince myself that you can do this job with just the law on your side. I understand now that you have to believe that you’re somehow helping to repair the world, one client at a time. It’s a noble way to practice law, Franny. It just isn’t right for me anymore.”
Before Liana could register what was happening, Franny had wrapped her in a tight embrace. “I know you’ll find another way soon, Liana. We’re all rooting for you.” Then she walked quickly out of th
e office.
When she was done cleaning up and writing short memos on each of her cases that would need to be reassigned, Liana headed down the long hallway to the Boss’s corner office, past the mail room where Deb had spent her last hours at work hanging with “the guys.” Liana rehearsed the various ways she might explain to Gerry why she had decided to quit. When she stepped into his office, Liana could tell that he was expecting her. At that moment, all her legal training and all her ability to make eloquent arguments failed her. Liana looked at Gerry and said, echoing her favorite Mets announcer, “I’m outta here.”
CHAPTER 25
The first two weeks that Liana spent at home, unattached and unemployed, were brutal. She took long steaming hot showers, trying to cleanse herself of everything she’d been through and hoping for the insights that would let her move on. She stayed in her pajamas all day and barely ate. She didn’t answer the phone, except to speak with her mother, who’d gathered that something was profoundly wrong but who hadn’t grasped the extent of Liana’s misery. She watched the clock and was amazed at how long a day could be. She slept at odd hours, sometimes like a rock and sometimes tossing and turning, unable to find comfort even in that escape.
Both Charlotte and Katie telephoned Liana repeatedly, but she didn’t take their calls. They left lengthy messages on alternating days, monologues on her answering machine, keeping her in the loop. Charlotte had confirmed that she was, indeed, expecting twins. She and Howard had purchased the one-bedroom adjacent to theirs in the Bromley, and they were in the process of doing construction to join the two apartments into one fabulous one. And Katie and Rob were still going strong. They’d discussed moving in together but decided to wait until the fall, to make sure that it still seemed like a good idea after the summer vacation they were taking in Provence.
And, of course, Jakob was no longer a part of her life. She had told him flatly that his love was not enough.
I have made a terrible, terrible mistake.
When June inevitably arrived, Liana started to surface, slowly, taking baby steps toward getting a foothold on whatever awaited her. She was still moping around her apartment one afternoon—but was at least showered, dressed, and watching General Hospital—when the buzzer from the outside door sounded. Forgetting for a moment that she was unavailable, she pressed the intercom button.
“Fedex delivery. Please come down to the lobby to sign for a package.” The slightly accented voice was familiar but somehow muffled. Liana rarely shopped online or had things sent to her building for precisely the reason that she had no doorman and no one to sign for anything, but she was curious. She put on some flip-flops and went downstairs. When the door of the elevator opened, she came face to face with Marta, decked out in her Lulu Lemon bright green workout gear, flanked on one side by an enormously pregnant and somewhat out of breath Charlotte and on the other by Katie, dressed to kill in a red Armani suit and tapping her foot, impatient to get back to work but happy to see her friend.
“It’s so good to see you all. But what’re you doing here?” Liana hugged each woman in turn, taking extra care with Charlotte.
If Liana was all dark rain clouds, Marta was blazing hot sunshine, and there was no way to avoid her exuberant warmth. “We’re doing an intervention,” Marta said, her Czech inflection now liberally poking through. “You’ve been in that stuffy apartment way too long. It isn’t healthy. It’s time to get moving.”
Liana looked at her, aghast. “You guys, I couldn’t possibly work out now. Every muscle in my body is atrophied. And I haven’t eaten anything remotely healthy in weeks; I’m surviving on Double Stuf Oreos.”
“Do I look capable of exercise?” Charlotte said, holding her stomach with her hands as though she were afraid the bottom might fall out at any moment. Or the babies.
“We weren’t thinking about working out, Liana,” Marta said with a mischievous smile.
Liana thought for a moment. “Oh, no, I’m not going pole dancing!”
Katie put an end to the guessing game, as the clock was ticking away on her lunch hour. “We were actually thinking something more on the order of ice cream sundaes. What do you say?”
“I say you’re good friends,” Liana sighed. They walked to the 16 Handles around the corner on Amsterdam, stopping every so often to let Charlotte regroup, and filled the largest cups with three flavors of frozen yogurt and five or six different toppings. They sat down in a booth, and, between spoonfuls, Liana poured out her heart to friends.
“I’m still not ready to get married,” Liana said, “but I love Jakob. I screwed up. And I learned from Deb’s death that you don’t always have all the time in the world to make things right.”
They all nodded sympathetically, and then Katie let loose.
“Liana, you threw away the kind of love that most people are never lucky enough to experience in their whole lifetime, a love that you stumbled upon when you weren’t mature enough to recognize it.” When Liana opened her mouth to protest, Katie waved her off. “And why? Because Jakob didn’t follow you around like an obsessed, lovesick puppy. He adores you, but he also has a life and goals and a career he finds rewarding, even if it isn’t the sort of law you think highly of or a corporate culture you can handle. He’s not some hopeless romantic like you are—you need to appreciate him for who he is.”
When Liana’s eyes welled up with tears, Charlotte’s followed, her hormones running wild in a prematernal onslaught. She took Liana’s hand in hers. “Liana, we’re not saying Jakob is perfect. Nobody is. But you took him for granted.”
Then Marta addressed the elephant in the frozen yogurt store. “And it doesn’t matter what happened or what could have happened or what you wished had happened with that Shea person. You lost your mind for a little while. That’s over now. If you regret your decision, you need to get Jakob back. It might be too late, but you won’t know if you don’t try.”
Liana knew that her friends were right, and she wanted nothing more in the world than to fix things with Jakob. But a debilitating weariness had overtaken her, and she couldn’t imagine how it would ever happen.
“How will I do it? I need to show him that I’m not the same woman who left him standing on that bridge,” Liana said, pain washing over her as she pictured Jakob that night.
“Something will present itself to you as a way to prove your love. Keep your eyes open. Promise you will be patient. When it happens, you’ll know.” Marta’s voice had gotten that faraway foggy sound she sometimes adopted; she had a mystical bent that surfaced occasionally and that Liana found hard to tolerate. Katie rolled her eyes. But Liana had nothing to lose.
“I promise,” she said.
Later, sitting on her couch in her silent apartment, the rabbi’s words came back to her. When you give up believing you are in control and ask for help sincerely, God will hear your prayers. Liana closed her eyes and prayed, hoping this time the answer wasn’t “no.”
Days passed. Liana looked for signs everywhere—anything that might give her a clue about how to make her way back to Jakob. She left her apartment more often to roam the neighborhood, in case her inspiration didn’t know how to find her on her couch in front of the television. But no epiphany came. She was beginning to think Marta’s approach was faulty. She was beginning to lose hope.
Then something happened. Just as Liana was contemplating throwing in the towel, she discovered that when she stopped looking for the grand revelation—that ah-ha! moment that would change everything—other smaller gestures seeped in through the crevices of her armor.
One afternoon, Steven emailed Liana: Max has started a summer program for three-year-olds at the JCC across the street from you; if you want to visit with him, I’ll put your name on the list so security will know it’s okay.
She immediately emailed back. Meet you both at pickup tomorrow.
At half past noon the next day, Liana walked slowly through the sliding glass doors into the facility—the noise of the children was deaf
ening, and she was nearly run over by the parents, mostly moms, in their trendy workout clothes, pushing their Maclaren strollers toward the exit. Steven waved at her from across the room, where he was standing with another dad, laughing over some mutual observation about the women around them. Liana was happy to see Steven smiling—it had been a long time.
“Hi,” she said, giving him a quick hug and shaking hands with Gus, Steven’s new comrade in arms. “Where’s Max?”
Before she knew it, Max had his arms around her legs, squeezing so hard she thought she might fall over.
“Hey, buddy!” Liana said. “I brought you something.” She handed him a hastily wrapped package, flat and hard. “It’s a basketball,” she said, straight-faced.
“It’s not a basketball!” Max yelled and began to wail.
“Oh, no! No, I’m sorry!” Liana said, trying not to laugh. She’d forgotten how literal Max was and how difficult it could sometimes be to get the interaction just right. “Open it, cutie,” she said.
Max ripped the paper off, revealing a shiny new hardcover book, Everyone Poops. Liana sank down onto the sticky linoleum floor, sat “criss-cross applesauce,” and scooped Max into her lap. They flipped the pages, ignoring the din, Max laughing uproariously at the large elephant pooping large poop and the tiny mouse pooping tiny poop and everything in between.
“We were doing great on the toilet training for a little while,” Steven commented, a little defensively. “Then it kind of took a back seat, if you know what I mean. And the stress the little guy has been under certainly hasn’t helped.”
“I didn’t even know that’s what the book was about!” Liana admitted. “I just liked the title!” She gave Max another squeeze. She thought back to when Deb was transitioning him out of his crib and wished with all her heart that she could have dealt with the parental milestone of toilet training too. But Max was lucky to have Steven.
When the atrium was almost empty, Liana said to Steven, “Can we do this again? Maybe sometime you could come to my apartment after camp? I make a mean mac and cheese.” She lifted Max up as high as her biceps would allow after her hiatus from Marta and handed him over to his father.
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