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“Yes, pretty much. I kept telling Herb that I had nothing to do with the leaks, but he just wouldn’t listen.”
“Does anyone in your family know what happened?”
“I told my mother that I had a falling out with a senior partner and left the firm. That upset her, but not as much as the whole truth would have. I told Aunt Jewel pretty much the same story, for the same reason. It wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t the whole truth.”
“You didn’t want them to worry.”
“No. My dad knows more of the details. He wanted to charge home and help me get a lawyer of my own and ‘sue the bastards into bankruptcy,’ as he put it, but I knew I’d have to have more evidence to back up my story if I was going to even try to fight the accusations. That’s why I hired Beecham, though it’s obvious I had no idea how to hire a private investigator. He convinced me that he knew what he was doing and that he would be very discreet, but I just don’t think he’s very good.”
“Andrew is.”
“That’s what you and Aaron keep telling me.”
“Trust us.”
She bent down to pick up an interesting pebble beside the creek. A very pale gray, it was shaped roughly like a heart with a small crack in the center. Though she found that symbolism a little too ironic, she slipped it in her jacket pocket, anyway.
“Will you go back to the firm?” Casey asked. “After you prove your innocence, I mean?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
He tossed a twig into the rushing water of the creek to watch it tumble down the rocks. Studying his expression, she asked, “Casey? Why is your family so worried about you?”
“You heard Aaron. They think I’m having a nervous breakdown.”
“Because you took a vacation?”
He released a long, low breath. “I’ve had some?
??setbacks lately. Nothing like what you’ve been through.”
“Those people who betrayed your trust?”
“Yeah.” He put his free hand to the back of his neck and squeezed the muscles there as if they’d suddenly tightened. “It started when I lost a big case.”
Raising an eyebrow, she murmured, “That happens to the best of us.”
“But this was a particularly bad loss. I missed something in my preparation for the trial. Something pretty damned important.”
“So you made a mistake. I hate to tell you, my friend, but it won’t be the last one you make.”
“It wasn’t just that.” Speaking in a low voice as they continued their stroll, he told her about the spoiled rich kid he’d gotten acquitted on a technicality for a vehicular manslaughter charge. The kid had promised everyone, including Casey, that he had learned his lesson and would never get behind the wheel of a car again after drinking.
Less than a year later, only weeks after Casey had lost the other big case, that self-absorbed and obscenely indulged teenager had driven drunk again and wrecked the third sports car his father had bought for him. A child in another car had been killed in the crash.
Her hand tightened spasmodically around his as she heard the pain in his voice. “Oh, Casey, surely you don’t blame yourself for that. You did your job, nothing more. If anyone is to blame besides the boy, it’s his parents.”
“I know. I don’t blame myself, exactly. I believe in what we do, and that we have to do our best for the people we represent no matter what our personal biases might be.”
He seemed to be presenting an argument he’d made many times to people who were derogatory toward attorneys. She’d made much the same speech herself a few times. “But—”
“But,” he said with a sigh, “sometimes I can’t help but focus on the downside of that practice. Especially when I know it was money and connections as much as my skill that were responsible for putting my client back behind the wheel. A kid from a different part of town would have been assigned an overworked and underpaid public defender and he’d have been put behind bars.”
“That’s part of the reality of the job, too,” Natalie murmured. “The best defense that money can buy.”
He grimaced and nodded. “It just really shook me when I heard what happened right after the loss that should have been a win.”
“So you took some time to rethink your career choice?”
