She stood from her chair, so everyone else did. She made an anodyne comment about looking forward to their results as she left the conference room.
They followed her, keeping their distance, because they all worked on the same side of the building. Sam often felt like the long walk back to her office was akin to being stalked by a pack of geese. Invariably, one would push ahead, hoping to make his name known, or to prove to the others that he wasn’t afraid of her. A few peeled off for other meetings, wishing her happy birthday. Someone asked if she had enjoyed her recent trip to Europe. Another young man, a bit over-eager since word had spread that Sam would soon become a named partner, followed her all the way to her office door, relaying a long story that ended with the detail that his grandmother had been born in Denmark.
Sam’s husband had been born in Denmark.
Anton Mikkelsen was twenty-one years Sam’s senior, a professor at Stanford from whom she had taken a Technology in Society course entitled Engineering the Roman Empire Design. Anton’s passion for the subject had captivated Sam. She had always been drawn to people who were delighted by the world, who looked out rather than in.
For his part, Anton had been completely hands-off while Sam was his student, aloof even, so that she was convinced she had done something wrong. It wasn’t until after she had graduated, when she was in her second year at Northwestern, that Anton had reached out.
At Stanford, Sam had been one of only a handful of women studying in a male-dominated field. She had infrequently received emails from some of her professors. The subject lines tended to show a combination of desperation and a loose understanding of ellipsis: “I can’t get you out of my mind …” or, “… You have to … help me …” As if they were being driven mad by their desire and only Sam could alleviate the pain. Their collective insecurities had been one of the reasons she had applied to law school rather than pursue her Ph.D. The thought of any one of these pathetic, middle-aged lotharios being in charge of her thesis was untenable.
Anton had been well aware of his colleagues’ reputations when he first emailed Sam.
“I apologize if you find this contact unwanted,” he had written. “I waited three years to ensure that my professional authority has no overlap with, nor impact upon, your chosen field.”
He had retired early from Stanford. He had taken a job as a consultant for an overseas engineering firm. He had established his home base in New York so that he could be closer to her. They had married four years after Sam was named an associate at the firm.
Anton had opened up her life in ways that Sam had never fathomed.
Their first trip abroad was magical. Except for an ill-considered freshman jaunt to Tijuana, Sam had never before been outside of the United States. Anton had taken her to Ireland, where as a boy he had summered with his mother’s people. To Denmark, where he had learned to love design. To Rome to show her the ruins, to Florence to show her the Duomo, to Venice to show her love.
They had traveled extensively throughout their marriage, Anton taking jobs or Sam attending a conference with the sole purpose of being somewhere new. Dubai. Australia. Brazil. Singapore. Bora Bora. Every new country, every new foreign city that Sam set foot in, she thought of Gamma, the way her mother had urged Sam to leave, to see the world, to live anywhere but Pikeville.
That Sam had done this with a man whom she adored made each journey that much more rewarding.
Sam’s office phone rang.
She sat back in her chair. She glanced at the time. Her three o’clock call from Atlanta. She had lost herself in work again, skipping lunch, inexorably lost in a patent design for a narrow plated pintle hinge.
Laurens Van Loon was Dutch, living in Atlanta, and their in-house specialist on international patent law. He was calling about the UXH case, but like Sam, he was an enthusiastic traveler. Before they talked shop, he wanted to know all about the trip she had taken a few weeks ago, a ten-day tour through Italy and Ireland.
There had been a time in Sam’s life when she talked about foreign cities in terms of their culture, the architecture, the people, but money and the passage of time had made her more likely to talk about the hotels.
She told Laurens about her stay at the Merrion in Dublin, how the garden suite did not overlook a garden, but a rear alley. That the Aman on the Grand Canal was breathtaking, the service impeccable, the little courtyard where she drank her tea every morning one of the most tranquil spots in the city. In Florence there was the Westin Excelsior, which had a magnificent view of the Arno, but the noise from the roof-top bar had occasionally echoed down into her suite. In Rome, she told Laurens, she had stayed at the Cavalieri, for their baths and beautiful pools.
This last part was a lie.
Sam had booked a room at the Raffaello, because the budget hotel was the only place that she and Anton could afford during that first magical trip to Rome.
For Laurens’s benefit, Sam continued to prevaricate, recommending restaurants and museums from past journeys. She did not tell him that in Dublin, she had stood in the Long Room of the Old Library at Trinity College, looking up at the beautiful barrel-vaulted ceiling with tears in her eyes. Nor did Sam relay that in Florence, she had sat on one of the many benches inside the Galleria dell’Accademia, where Michelangelo’s David was displayed, and sobbed.
Rome had been filled with equal parts nostalgia and grief. The Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon, the Colosseum, the Piazza Navona where Anton had proposed to her while they drank wine under the moonlight.
Sam had first seen all of these wonderful sites with her husband, and now that Anton was dead, she would never see them with the same pleasure again.
“Your trip sounds amazing,” Laurens said. “Ireland and Italy. So, that’s the ‘I’ countries, though I suppose you technically should have included India.”
“Iceland, Indonesia, Israel …” Sam smiled at his laughter. “I think we should probably stop discussing hotels and move onto the exciting world of sanitary napkin disposal.”
“Yes, of course,” Laurens said. “But may I ask you—I hope this is not intrusive?”
Sam braced herself for a question about Anton, because even a year later, people asked.
“This school shooting,” Laurens said.
Sam felt ashamed that she had forgotten about it. “Is this a bad time to speak?”
“No, no. Of course it’s terrible. But I saw this man on television. Russell Quinn, the attorney who is representing the suspect.”
Sam gripped the receiver so tightly that a tremor developed in her thumb. She had not connected the dots, but Rusty volunteering to defend someone who had shot and killed two people inside of a school should not have come as a surprise.
Laurens said, “I know that you’re from Georgia, so I wondered if there was a relation.” He added, “It seems this man is quite the liberal champion.”