AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I flip open the manila folder while I nod and scribble notes. This guy is all over the place. I remove a stack of initial paperwork to have him fill out at home and bring back later. Sometimes, these hot heads don’t know what they’re getting themselves into and they change their minds overnight.
“Oh, those?” he says, looking at me with disdain. “I downloaded these off your website yesterday, already filled ’em out. That lady lawyer, Miss Garcia, said that lady principal has already been served. Here.” He sniffs importantly while he unlatches a 1980s-looking briefcase, and I have to control the mocking look on my face. He might be a bumbling tool but his family owns the biggest construction company in town. He can more than afford the services of this law firm.
Chamberlain slides some papers over to me and I peruse them while I also correct him. “Ms. Garcia is the founding partner of this firm. There’s no need to put the word ‘lady’ in front of everything.” In my head, I finish that sentence with “jackass.”
My jaw hits the floor when I read the paperwork more closely and finally see the name of the defendant. “Mary Martha Moody.”
It’s a good thing I’m into fasting every other day, or my breakfast would be rising up in my throat. As it is, the black coffee I drank this morning is definitely threatening to come back up.
I check everything over. Maybe it’s a case of mistaken identity on my part.
But there’s no denying it. It’s Greenbridge Academy. It’s her. I feel as though the floor has cracked open, the walls are crumbling around me and the ceiling is caving in.
How can this happen? Who would want to sue this woman? This incredible, brilliant woman… And why would a toad like this guy in front of me dare to stand in her way? Does he even know her? Has he ever even spoken to her personally? If he did, he would have figured out by now that it’s best to just let Ms. Moody do whatever the hell she wants.
I would have thought that history had taught us all—including the Chamberlains—not to try so hard to throw one’s weight around.
And yet, here I am, forced to represent the bloated twit who wants to take everything away from the only woman I have ever adored.
3
Miles
I walk the long, stylishly minimalist hall down to the office of founding partner E.L. Garcia, Esq.
Clearly, I can’t take on this case.
At the very least, I’ll have to inform Ms. Garcia that Martha Moody is a former teacher of mine. I hold the disclosure form in my hand.
I push in through the engraved glass door. The receptionist greets me warmly and asks if I have an appointment to see the big boss.
I shake my head. “No, I just have a disclosure to drop off.”
She answers perkily, “Oh! I’ll have her paralegal file it when he gets back from lunch.”
Megan holds out her hand expectantly but I’m still not sure.
“Actually, I’ll wait. On this one, I need to speak directly to her.”
Without batting an eye, she nods and says she’ll ask Garcia to save five minutes for me when her current consult ends, and sends Garcia a text alert that I’m waiting outside.
I sit in an oversized white leather chair in the waiting area and look over the document in my hand, considering.
I’ve read through all the paperwork that nimrod filled out. It turns out there’s a lot of money and ulterior motives behind that dopey exterior. The Chamberlain family has been trying to unseat one leader or another of the school since the 1980s, when the school went through a huge upheaval and a change in its charter.
This time around, it looks as if they’re trying to use monuments and the school’s founding fathers to make a point about the school’s heritage. According to their documents, their chief complaint is that Moody has contracted to have the final piece of major religious statuary removed from the grounds: a large statue of the Virgin Mary that overlooks the reflecting pond.
Not only is the Chamberlain family angry that she’s taking it down, but when the family offered to replace it with a monument of the Ten Commandments, she refused. Apparently, in Chamberlain’s world, them’s fighting words.
Never mind that every single kid back in the day—and probably the current students—referred to that giant concrete figure as “Scary Mary.” It is scary. It’s too tall and modern and angular to even be suitable as a piece of art to complement the classic architecture of the school. It’s always been a sore subject, ever since the troubles of the 1980s.
I smirk to myself. Martha may not even need my help with this. The Chamberlains could lose this one all on their own. Woe be unto any witless schlub who went up against Ms. Moody in a debate back in my day, and I’m sure nothing about that has changed.
It was the debate team that made me fall in love with her in the first place.
* * *
My first day of senior year at Greenbridge Academy was eight years ago.
