But this year, I’m not just hoping or waiting for the call. I’m expecting it. I’ve been at Kaplan & Gosset for seven years now. I’m thirty-six. I’m the most senior nonpartner, and I’m the best they’ve got.
There’s a knock at my door, and when it opens before I say, “Come in,” I already know who it is because there’s only one person on this planet who can get away with that sort of thing, and she knows it.
Irene Diaz steps inside and shuts the door again, her dark brown eyes expectant. “So? Did he ask?”
I give my assistant a look. “If he’d popped the question, do you think I’d be calmly sitting here?”
“Honey, honestly? I know you as well as anybody, and I don’t have the faintest clue how you react to these things.”
She’s got a point there. Irene does know me as well as anyone. Technically, she’s my assistant, and she’s a damn good one. But mostly, she’s the closest thing to family that I’ve got. Not that I tell her that. But she knows.
I hope she knows.
I glance at my watch. It’s old and delicate and does one thing and one thing only: tell the time. I refuse to get on board with those stupid step-counting monstrosities that also tell me the weather and my next period and every time one of the paralegals has a question.
This watch is my mother’s—one of the few precious things I have to remind me of a woman I barely remember. My dad said she never took it off, so I don’t either.
“Aren’t you supposed to be on your way to the airport?” I ask.
Irene’s face crumples a little, but she tries to disguise it by reaching up and adjusting her huge, oversize red glasses. “Actually, Manny and I decided to spend Christmas in the city this year!”
Her voice is bright. Way too bright.
“What are you talking about?” I say. “How many years have we been working together? You’ve never not spent Christmas in Boston with Dani and the grandkids.”
“I know. But we couldn’t make it work this year. After our cruise and the Europe trip this summer, I’m out of vacation days. We’d have had to fly back on the twenty-sixth, and it just didn’t make sense . . .”
I’m surprised by how much the words sting. I know that Irene doesn’t mean them to wound me—that they’re not even about me.
But it hurts to know that even my beloved Irene thinks so little of me that I’d let her miss Christmas with her family. That she didn’t even bother to ask.
I link my fingers and set my clasped hands on the desk, expression firm. “Irene. If I see you in the office a day before January third, you’re fired.”
She blinks. “Oh, but, Katie, I don’t have the days, and . . . HR—”
“HR, if they ask, which they won’t, will be informed that you’re working remotely, because that’s what I’ll tell them. But don’t get any crazy ideas. If I see a single email or message from you about work, you’re fired for that too.”
Stubborn as ever, Irene shakes her head. “The Hallinger case starts up first week of January. You’ll need me here to prep . . .”
I hold my hands out to the sides. “Actually, I’m all good on that. I just spoke with Jerry, and there’s a settlement on the table that for once is actually looking like a viable option. So we may just be a mess of paperwork that we can handle when you get back.”
Irene looks rightfully confused at my mention of settling. “But you never—”
I shrug. “The client hasn’t made any decisions yet, but no point in you hovering nearby while we wait.”
This is, of course, an outright lie. Irene is quite right; I never settle. And if I did, it wouldn’t be this case. My client is a small-time family company that the massive Hallinger conglomerate is trying to take out at the knees with a nonsensical patent suit.
I’ll take Jerry’s BS offer to my client because I have to. But I don’t expect them to accept because I sure as hell won’t recommend that they do.
Irene gazes at me steadily, and I realize she knows every thought going through my head, knows that I’m lying through my teeth.
She smiles. “Thank you.”
I smile back. “You’re welcome.”
It’s the least I can do for this woman. Irene is . . . how can I put this? A gift. She was the longtime assistant of the attorney who had this office before me. When he retired to Vermont the same month I started, Irene was packing up her desk, planning to follow her former boss’s steps into retirement.
Irene took one look at me, twenty-seven, newly orphaned, and as furious at the world as I was broken by it, and began unpacking her box.
She’s been my assistant ever since, playing the part of mother, friend, secretary, and cheerleader.
Though, dear as she is to me, at this time of year, I’m more aware that like family is not quite the same as actual family. Come Christmas morning, she’ll be where she belongs—with her daughter’s family in Boston, watching her grandkids tear into their Santa haul.
And I’ll be right where I belong—in the swanky apartment I’ve worked very hard to be able to afford, in the peace and quiet that was the consequence of all that hard work. Sometimes it feels like a reward; other times a painful trade-off.
Mostly, I try not to think about it.
Irene has an annoying way of reading my thoughts, and she seems to do so now because her eyes are narrowed behind her thick glasses.
“Come with me.” It’s more order than request, one that I hear every December, and because I’m used to it, I shake my head almost before she’s done speaking.
I smile to placate her. “I’m all set with my holiday plans, but thank you as always for the invite.”
“Plans.” She makes a dismissive sniff. “To be by yourself? Christmas isn’t meant to be spent alone.”
“Christmas isn’t meant to be a lot of things, but they happen anyway.” I generally soften my tone around Irene, but right now I let just enough of an edge slip in to let her know the conversation is over.
I appreciate Irene’s Christmas offer—I really do. But I don’t know how to explain that spending time with her family would only highlight my own lack of family.
Irene is probably right. Christmas isn’t meant to be spent alone. But it’s like I said before, life is a series of choices.
I have to learn to live with mine.
SIX
TOM
December 23, 11:31 a.m.
“Honey, tell me that you’re holding the ring bag carefully? With two hands.”
“Nope. Just idly twirling it by the very tip of my pinky finger, dangling it out into the street,” I tell my mother. “Is that a bad idea?”
She lets out a suffering sigh into the phone. “Everyone’s cocky about these things until they’ve been pickpocketed, Tommy.”
I smile. It’s been a while since I’ve heard this particular lecture. Or that particular nickname.
“Now, see, this would be the perfect time for that money belt I got you for your birthday!” she continues. “I know those reviews said that the chafing can cause hair loss on the abdomen, but if you think about it, it’s really a small price to pay for peace of mind and security of your valuables. And speaking of hair loss, in that last picture you sent, I noticed a little thinning at your temples. I talked to my hairdresser, and she gave me these drops to give to you . . .”