CHAPTER TWELVE
Bennie stood at her office window, trying to collect her thoughts. Her view faced north, an orientation she favored because it was upward, onward, straight ahead. But she didn’t feel that way right now. Things had happened so fast, and she didn’t know how everything had come undone. In a single day, she had lost a partner—and a major client—but that didn’t matter. Which, right there, was a revolution in her own priorities, turning them topsy-turvy.
Bennie’s restless gaze flitted to the skyscrapers, all of them sleek monoliths of mirrors. If she looked hard enough, she wondered if she could see herself, a bewildered woman standing at a window. Her cell phone rang in her purse, but she let it go to voicemail. There were stacks of correspondence on the desk and email filing into her inbox. There were calls to return and briefs to write, but she had come to a total standstill. And suddenly she realized why.
She felt hurt. Loss. Bewilderment. She was having an emotional reaction at the office.
Bennie smiled to herself, since that was practically against federal law, or at the very least, the first time it had ever happened. Not that she was an android, because she had Actual Human Emotions, but she tried to compartmentalize them at work. It was necessary when you were the boss, and she had to separate herself from the associates, way back when she had hired Mary and Judy. But since then they had worked so many cases together and gone on so many adventures, that she had come to feel closer to them, without realizing it until now.
Bennie swallowed hard. She didn’t understand why Mary felt so strongly about keeping the case, but Mary was tied up with her family, her friends, and her community, connecting so easily to people that she could chat up a parking meter. Bennie was nothing like that, nor did she envy it; she was a loner, an only child raised by a single mother who suffered from depression. She never knew her father, had never even met him until it was far too late. She relied on herself and had made her life into what she wanted it to be, gloriously on her own.
She looked at the mirrored skyscrapers, her thoughts racing. No one but her knew how much hard work it had taken, how often she had acted unafraid when she was in fact afraid, how much fighting, kicking, and clawing the law could be, day after day, year after year. Her law firm had finally reached its pinnacle, and she’d earned her success, then she’d even found Declan, who was a great man even by her incredibly picky standards. But she had just been thrown for a loop.
Bennie wondered if she should have done anything differently with Mary, but she wouldn’t have changed it. She could have told Mary that Dumbarton had fired her, but that would’ve only made Mary feel worse. The last thing Bennie wanted to do was guilt her into staying. Bennie couldn’t control whether Mary stayed or left. If she thought about it—really thought about it hard—the only thing she really wanted was for Mary to do what was right for her.
It struck her as an epiphany, and it lightened Bennie’s heart and gave her a sense of direction, if not northward, then close. Because she could help Mary get what she wanted, and that’s what a friend would do. Evidently she had become Mary’s friend, whether anybody knew it or not. And the only thing that stood in the way of Mary getting what she wanted was Nate.
Bennie turned around, went to her desk, and opened the envelope, sliding out the letter and skimming it again. Her gaze dropped to Nate’s signature, noting that he had signed it as an original, pressing hard on the ballpoint pen, probably angry as hell. It didn’t get more personal than that, and she knew he was trying to get back at her for not wanting to get involved with him again, even if he never acknowledged that to himself. This wasn’t only about sex, this was about power, and even so, she had a job to do. It was overreaching for him to bring Mary before a disciplinary committee, and Bennie didn’t want to take the chance that some crotchety judge would level sanctions against Mary, maybe even suspending her license to practice and leaving a lifetime blemish on her record.
Bennie still had one move left. She reached into her purse, dug at her phone, and just to confirm her suspicion, scrolled to missed calls. NATE LENCE, read the entry, which was what she had thought. He was playing a game, upping the ante. She had only one way to up the ante on him. She didn’t know if it would work, but she had to try. She pressed Redial and waited for him to answer, standing at her desk.
“Are you mad at me?” Nate asked, his tone light.
“Withdraw that letter you sent to DiNunzio.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a terrible thing to do to my partner.”
“She made her own bed.”
Bennie didn’t think his choice of words was coincidental. “If you don’t withdraw that letter, our friendship is over.”
Nate fell silent a minute. “Oh, come on.”
“I’m letting you know. Withdraw that letter or forget my name.”
“I have a counter-offer. You don’t have to take the case for OpenSpace and you can have all the Dumbarton work back. But I’m not withdrawing the letter.”
“I was never going to take the case for OpenSpace and I don’t want to work for Dumbarton any longer. The only thing that’s on the table is our friendship, such as it is. And if you don’t withdraw that letter, I’m gone for good.”
“So you’re making this personal.”
“You made it personal. You attacked my partner to hurt me. You don’t care about a small-stakes discrimination case in a sub. You showed up at OpenSpace to see me, or to fluster me. But no matter. Yes, I’m making it personal.” Bennie kept her tone even, because she was speaking from strength, though oddly, she had almost no leverage. Except that leverage was a state of mind. So was power.
“You always say business is never personal.”
“I was wrong.” Bennie remembered she had said the same thing to Mary. “Are you going to withdraw the letter or not?”
“Come on, Bennie. You’re making too much of this.” Nate chuckled softly. “Why make such a big deal? This is litigation, that’s all.”
“This isn’t litigation, this is life. Evidently, they intersect. I didn’t realize how hollow you had become as a person. We both know that I’m the only person in your world who tells you the truth. Maybe because we go back, maybe because of who we are. That doesn’t matter either. So keep me or let me go. Your choice, but on my terms. You haven’t agreed to withdraw it, so good-bye.”
“Wait—”
Bennie hung up and turned it off, because she didn’t want to hear it ring and she didn’t want to hear it not ring. She turned to her landline and buzzed the intercom button for Marshall. “Can you come in, please?”