“Don’t concern yourself. I just need a good night’s rest and a decent bottle of red wine.” I smiled but Lance remained stony faced.
“We were very sad to lose Violet. I’m sure you were too,” he said. He scanned my face as if he were inspecting me, looking for my reaction. Was he trying to gauge how I felt about her leaving?
I drew in a deep breath. “Yes, well, Columbia’s a good school. I’m sure she’ll do well.” I was planning to fly out this weekend to put my case to her—to start my fight for her.
Lance nodded slowly. “I realize I’m speaking out of turn . . .”
I tightened my grip on the arms of the chair. What was he going to say? Was he going to tell me I’d been a fool? I knew that already.
“But I think Violet was good for you. Now, I don’t begin to presume what went on between the two of you, but I do think she was the only woman who ever matched you stroke for stroke. You two are quite different, but Violet is your equal.”
I swallowed. Lance and I rarely discussed anything personal, and I didn’t quite know how to react. “I’ve no doubt that Violet is at the very least my equal.” She was more than I could ever possibly deserve. “But you know how bad I am with women. I put work first like I always have done. And now Violet’s back in New York.”
“I’m not so sure you’re bad with women. More that you’re on unfamiliar territory as far as a woman as special as Violet is concerned. This job is demanding. And it can be a very lonely life—married or single. I’ve been lucky with Flavia. And not because she’s understanding about my hours but because I want to get home to her. She is a sufficient counterweight to the pull of our profession. You need a woman who you yearn to see at the end of the day. If you’ve found that in Violet, you mustn’t let her go.”
I sighed and my shoulders dropped. That’s exactly who Violet was, the only woman who could inspire me to give up Saturday nights at work. Now that she was gone, I wanted more than Saturday nights together, but how would I prove that to her? “I’m planning to fly over this weekend. I need to apologize properly. I messed up.”
“But you’re worried it won’t be enough.”
“I feel like I’m missing the evidence—how do I prove to her that it will be different? I’m going to try.”
He nodded, and his gaze wandered around the room as if he were trying to come up with a solution for me. “Well I might have just the thing for you. One of the reasons I asked you to pop in was because I just had a call from an old friend of mine. You know I have lectured in New York before now?”
I frowned. “I thought you did that at Harvard?” What had that got to do with anything?
“Yes, Harvard and also Columbia. My old chum is the president of Columbia law school, and he needs someone to help him out of a hole. I was hoping you might be the man for the job.”
“What does he need?”
“Someone to take the international law module at Columbia this semester. The person they had lined up has been taken sick at the very last minute.”
I’d expected him to say that his friend wanted some advice. Maybe wanted me to contribute a chapter to a textbook. A teaching post was the very last thing I was expecting Lance to suggest. “Lecture? But I’ve never considered teaching. Why—”
“Maybe not. But you admit you’re tired. And Violet leaving is upsetting news for all of us, not least for you. This could be a chance to reassess what you want from your life, your career. You can think about your practice, decide whether you need a change in direction.”
I frowned, wondering why he’d think my practice would need a change in direction. “My career? That’s the only thing I am certain of. I’ve spent so long laying the foundation. I think I’m finally on the right track.”
“You mean your father’s track.”
I wanted to be the best at the bar, so of course it made sense that I would follow the footsteps of the best who went before me. Those footsteps just happened to be my father’s.
“The thing is, your father’s legacy is just that—a career left behind, seen with the benefit of hindsight. We can discard the parts that don’t fit into his legend because it’s in the past. But this isn’t his career we’re talking about—it’s yours. Your time. Your life. You need to create something you can be proud of and stop measuring yourself against a man who isn’t here to tell you that there were downsides to leaving the legacy he did, sacrifices he wouldn’t make again.”
I only measured myself against him because he happened to be the best. Not because he was my father. And he’d only ever regaled me with stories of the good times. I’d never heard him say anything negative about the choices he’d made.
“There are sacrifices in whatever choices one makes,” I replied. “I just want to be the best at what I do.” I leaned forward in my chair.
“But what does being the best mean? It has many interpretations. Does it mean earning a lot of money, acquiring a myth to equal Alexander the Great, getting the best cases? Maybe it means having a career that allows you to give back to the generation behind you. Perhaps it means being a loving father, or being well-travelled and experiencing as much of the world as it has to offer? It could be enough to be a dedicated, devoted husband who knows the love of his equal.” He paused, bringing his hands together. “Being successful can mean a lot of things. I know your father felt like he failed you and your brother, but by the time he understood that there was more to life than law, he was too old to know how to do anything else. Too old to tell the people who looked up to him and relied on him that he wanted a change. Don’t let it be too late for you.”
I cleared my throat, beating down the emotion rising in me. I could never imagine my father failing at anything. The man I knew was a conqueror, a winner. He wasn’t regretful.
I wasn’t sure which way was up at the moment. Could my father have wanted more, something different? Had he ever lost anything as precious to him as Violet was to me?
“You don’t need to have the same career he did for you to honor him, for him to be proud of you. I think he’d want more for you.”
I couldn’t speak.
“Watching you over the years,” Lance continued. “I’ve often wondered whether your drive was really a desire to get your father’s attention—no doubt you were starved of it as a child. But actually I wonder if you’re searching for him in these walls, among the paper. You know your father’s office was a similar mess.”
“I remember.” I smiled.
“Maybe working is my way of keeping him close.” My father was all around me while I was in chambers—it felt as if he were still here and I was still eight years old, sitting at his desk, surrounded by paper.