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She’d gotten her JD and passed the bar. Then she’d gone to work in the AG’s office, thanks to an internship in her final year of law school. She enjoyed her work, felt passionately about her duty to hold accountable those who broke the law.
But she still sometimes dreamed about California, about that other version of herself, surfing as if nothing had ever broken her, about a woman whose life was more than work and endless hours sweating it out at the gym just to keep her head above water, just to be able to pretend she was like everyone else her age.
By the time she stepped out into the cold morning air, she’d put the past behind her and was focused on the day ahead. The ground was slick with ice. Rock salt crunched under her feet but she stepped carefully anyway, a hazard of her physical history. In spite of her hours at the gym, she was all too aware that her mobility hung on a tenuous thread woven of hard work and good luck.
The hard work was on her, the luck… well, sometimes that was on her too.
She walked carefully toward the black Camry she’d bought when she first got her job at the AG’s office. She parked at the far reaches of every parking lot, forcing herself to walk the extra steps, but at times like this the distance between her and the car felt like a minefield.
She took her time, careful to check the limp that sometimes crept into her gait when she was worn out. When she finally reached the car she threw her gym stuff in the trunk and sunk into the driver’s seat with a sigh of relief.
She gave herself a few seconds to breathe before she started the car and backed out of the parking space.
She was halfway to work when her phone rang. She looked at the name on the display and smiled, then pulled over. It had taken two years for her to get behind the wheel of a car after her accident, and she’d ended the first trial run dripping sweat, her hand sore from gripping the wheel so tight.
She’d gotten better, but she was still hyper-vigilant, and she never, ever talked on the phone while she drove.
“Hi, Mom,” she said through the car’s Bluetooth system.
“Hi, honey. How was the gym?” Her mom’s voice sounded like it always did: calm and comforting even though she was probably on her way to her job as a librarian at Emerson Elementary School, where she’d spend the day pushing books to the kids who adored her.
“It was good,” Alexa said. “Terri’s still working me like a dog.”
“You don’t need Terri for that.”
Alexa could hear the smile in her mom’s voice, but she knew her mom worried about her, about what her dad called her “militant work ethic.” They were proud of her, but they also worried that she pushed herself too hard.
“Ha-ha,” Alexa said.
“Busy day ahead at work?” her mom asked.
“Pretty average.”
“Did they ever get enough evidence to issue the warrant on those brothers?” her mom asked.
“The Murphys?”
“Is that their name?”
Alexa smiled. “They’re the only brothers in the queue at the moment.”
The details of the case flashed through her mind: the leaked allegations that the intelligence and security firm run by three brothers was actually a front for a mercenary operation, that they hired themselves out to the highest bidder to exact revenge.
“Will you be able to seat a grand jury, do you think?”
She wasn’t put off by her mom’s questions. The last person she’d been close to — stay-up-late-and-talk-about-everything close — had been Samantha. The years since then had been filled with PT and school and the often exhausting pursuit of normalcy that occupied every second of every day.
Her mom was her best friend now. They talked about everything — the other librarian at Emerson who came back from her lunch break smelling like weed, Alexa’s coworkers, the details of the men she dated on the rare occasion that she swiped right. Her mom knew the cases Alexa lost and won and Alexa knew when the school budget that would determine how much money her mom would have to work with would be approved by the school board.
“Lex?”
“Sorry,” Alexa said, picking up the thread from their conversation. “Too soon to tell. The digital forensics guys are still combing through the data.”
“Sounds exciting.”
Alexa laughed. Her mom had a weak spot for action movies and novels about cyber espionage. “It’s not.”
“If you say so,” her mom said. “Just got to work, honey. Have to run.”
