Page 42 of Plain Sight

I don’t want to go to law school, do I?

“It doesn’t have to be Columbia,” Charlotte offers. “If you’d rather do something less intense but along the same path, I bet you’d get plenty of offers.”

“Huh.” I hadn’t thought about law school but not at Columbia. “That honestly never crossed my mind.”

“Were you a super-student?” Elise peers at me. “Because that lifestyle can be extremely stressful. It doesn’t have to be that way.” She puts her hands out and does jazz-hands, still holding the spoon. “This is not an ad for higher education. But from experience, it doesn’t have to consume your entire life. You can also learn to bake. Or dance!”

I could have a life with time for everything. Dancing and Jameson and…law school?

A voice in the back of my head whispers that it might not be such a bad idea. I did spend all that time studying, pushing myself as hard as I could, so I could be prepared for Columbia. Even if I felt like I was faking it, I did well enough to be invited to a prestigious pre-law program, so the skills I gained were real.

Did my mother have a backup plan like this? Or did she just walk out of my life without one?

Did she have any choice?

Isn't it better for me and my baby if I give myself as many choices as possible?

“You look sad.” Charlotte’s blue eyes are soft. All of her looks soft—the leggings, the tunic top, even her hair. Sunshine is the perfect nickname for her, and she seems like the perfect person for Mason. “We can stop bringing up law school if it doesn’t feel good to talk about.”

“I’m just thinking.” I lean my chin in my hand and watch the scene in the kitchen. Elise, stirring another color of frosting. Charlotte, dancing with her son. Jameson’s sister is at an archeology lecture by a visiting professor. “Maybe it’s too early to rule out law school altogether.”

“It’s never too late to start.” Elise shrugs. “You can wait until the time is right.”

Normally, I’d agree with her. But Jameson’s staying out all night and getting beat up. I’m pregnant. In nine months, we’ll have a baby, and my grandfather might be after all three of us and not just me and Jameson.

In nine months, I’ll have a baby.

Then, like it or not, my life will be totally different. Again. Will I want to think about law school when I have a baby? What kind of law school would accommodate an infant? It’s pretty famously not a place that looks welcomingly on mothers with tiny kids.

The timer on the stove beeps.

“That went by fast!” Elise says, and goes to find an oven mitt.

I don’t think time has any intention of slowing down.

11

JAMESON

Maybe I was wrong about the existence of a higher power who gives even the slightest fuck about his creations. Maybe that sort of deity does exist, because here I am at the Phoenix Enterprises headquarters, sitting at my desk like a normal fucking businessman who had a run-in with something solid—a sidewalk, I tripped and fell, it wasn’t a frat boy’s fist—and my assistant, Kirk is hovering at the side of my desk, talking through some business items and waiting for me to dispense wisdom to him or whatever.

In this normality—yay for me—I have just received a blessing from a higher power.

In the form of an email.

Attached to the email are two scanned images. The first image is a photo of a paper check.

And what do you know? There’s Malcolm Walsh’s name. There’s Malcolm Walsh’s address.

The check is from two months ago. This year.

I fucking found him. Or I’m about to find him, because this is as close as I’ve come.

It’s the second image that turns me into a believer. It’s a photo of Malcolm Walsh’s expired driver’s license. There’s his fucking picture. His name is actually Malcolm Walsh.

“Amen.”

“What?” Kirk says. He’s writing something on his tablet with a stylus. Kirk is a decent guy. He likes spreadsheets and order, which is perfect, because I like to blurt out whatever it is I’ve just decided and let someone else handle it. We make an excellent Community Development team. That’s me, VP of Community Development, investing in community properties and turning massive profits and saving historical buildings from the clutches of time. And that’s Kirk, the guy who keeps track of every word that comes out of my mouth and turns it into a spreadsheet. We make such an excellent team that my real job can easily be squished into a fraction of the workday, and I can be ready to receive this news.