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Pushing away from the desk, I stand. “We’d better go tell everyone.”
He nods, and I follow him out the door, the dread in my gut slowly building.
Interestingly enough, though it’s barely noon, most of the office ends up at Houlihan’s, a dive bar on Commercial Street, drinking their worries away. The mood is like that of a funeral luncheon.
“Lisa… and Bill?” Mike grumbles, shaking his head. He’s by far the drunkest of us, but he’s echoing the question most of us have had since the news broke.
I always saw Lisa as living the perfect life. Family, great career, success. She had it all. And yet, she’d thrown it all away. For what? Was it the money? Was she in love with Bill? Or had she been secretly so dissatisfied with her seemingly perfect life that she needed to shake things up?
It makes me think of Courtney Perry, of Brooks, of all the people I’d misjudged.
“You just never really know a person,” I mumble, staring into my now-warm beer.
“It does make sense, now that I think about it,” Shelly says with a sigh. “She was always scheduling off-site meetings with him to go over his retirement plans. It seemed like overkill, but I did what I was told. And usually I’d hear her laughing on the phone with him. All the warning signs were there, but I ignored them because it seemed so unbelievable.”
“I wouldn’t beat yourself up,” Brooks says. “She fooled us all.”
Shelly gulps her beer. “Well, I don’t care about me. I can find another job. Or I’ll just retire. But you all? You’re all young, at the beginnings of your careers. What are you going to do?”
That’s the question. I’m sure most of the young attorneys in the firm have big-time student loans they’re chipping away at. And there are only so many firms in the state of Maine. “I’m moving back to Georgia,” Mike says, surely.
We all stare at him.
“Since when did you make that decision?” Brooks asks.
He shrugs. “I’ve been wanting to go back, anyway. My family’s there. All my friends. A buddy who owes me a favor just started his own firm. And the weather up here sucks.”
Brooks and I wind up trading glances, silent. If only it was as easy for us. But I’ve never had a back-up plan. I was too busy building my career at Foster & Foster and working with the women’s center to even think about a back-up plan. I don’t even know what the job market is like, but it’s probably not good. There are only a few local firms nearby, and most of them are small and I doubt they’re hiring. The thought of sending our resumes give me hives.
Finally, Mike says, “What are you thinking of doing, Gentry?”
To my surprise, Brooks says, “I have a couple of options.”
He does? Here, I thought we were going down in flames together. “You do?”
He nods, but doesn’t say anything else. He quickly changes the subject, leading me to think that he doesn’t want to talk about it. Why do I get the feeling these options are the kind that are going to rip my heart out of my chest? Why else would he be so evasive?
A little while later, Mike is so drunk that he actually begins to get argumentative with the waiter, and almost picks a fight with a couple of fishermen at the bar. Who knew he was an angry drunk? We wind up pulling him from the bar, and Brooks offers to drive him home to his place in South Portland.
It’s only two in the afternoon. It feels like the day is dragging. I’ve never had so much free time in all my life. Since I have nothing better to do, I go with them, making sure Mike doesn’t puke in the back seat.
When we pull up at Mike’s place, we say goodbye. As we watch Mike stumble into his house, I open my mouth to ask the question that’s been rattling in my head for hours.
But Brooks says, “I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do with the Perry case. I guess I’ll call her.”
Funny, I hadn’t even thought about my caseload. I’d been too focused on my own devastation. But this is going to be a big blow to Courtney. “Oh. Yes. She’ll have to get a new attorney.”
He nods. Then he drags his hands down his face. “What a mess.”
“Well, not really…” I say, watching him. “Right? You said you had options.”
He doesn’t look at me. “None of them are good, though.”
“What…” The cabin of the car is too fraught with tension. Whatever he’s dragging out telling me, I know it’s bad. So I decide to inject some humor. “You’re not talking suicide, are you? Because that’s not really an option.”
He chokes out a laugh. “No. I have a professor. From Yale. He moved to Chicago and started his own firm there a few years ago, and he’s been trying to recruit me, ever since.”
