Gray Mountain: A Novel(31)

“And why not?”

“He did fail, and we were secretly thrilled. Imagine that, we put in tons of hours, charged the guy a fortune, and felt like celebrating when his project got rejected. How’s that for client relations?”

“I’d celebrate too.”

“Now I’m worried about Lady Purvis whose husband is serving time in a debtors’ prison, and I’m fretting about Phoebe getting out of town before her husband is free on bond.”

“Welcome to our world, Samantha. There’ll be even more tomorrow.”

“I’m not sure I’m cut out for this.”

“Yes, you are. You gotta be tough in this business, and you’re a lot tougher than you think.”

Adam was back, homework suddenly finished, and he wanted to challenge Miss Sam to a game of gin rummy. “He thinks he’s a card shark,” Annette said. “And he cheats.”

“I’ve never played gin rummy,” Miss Sam said.

Adam was shuffling the deck like a Vegas dealer.





10


Most of Mattie’s workdays began with coffee at eight o’clock sharp, office door closed, phone ignored, and Donovan sitting across from her sharing the latest gossip. There was really no need to close her door because no one else arrived for work until around 8:30, when Annette punched in after dropping her kids off at school. Nonetheless, Mattie treasured the privacy with her nephew and protected it.

Office rules and procedures appeared to be lax, and Samantha had been told to show up “around nine” and work until she found a good stopping place late in the afternoon. At first, she worried that the transition from a hundred hours a week to forty might be difficult, but not so. She had not slept until seven in years and was finding it quite agreeable. By eight, however, she was climbing the walls and eager to start the day. On Tuesday, she eased through the front door, passed Mattie’s office, heard low voices, and checked the kitchen for the coffeepot. She had just settled behind her compact desk for an hour or two of studying, or until she was fetched to sit through another client interview, when Donovan suddenly appeared and said, “Welcome to town.”

“Well, hello,” she said.

He glanced around and said, “I’ll bet your office in New York was a lot bigger.”

“Not really. They stuffed us rookies into what they called ‘quads,’ these cramped little work spaces where you could reach over and touch your colleague, if you needed to. They saved on rent so the partners could protect their bottom line.”

“Sounds like you really miss it.”

“I think I’m still numb.” She waved at the only other chair and said, “Have a seat.”

Donovan casually folded himself into the small chair and said, “Mattie tells me you made it to court on your very first day.”

“I did. What else did she tell you?” Samantha wondered if her daily movements would be recapped each morning over their coffee.

“Nothing, just the idle chatter of small-town lawyers. Randy Fanning was once an okay guy, then he got into meth. He’ll wind up dead or in prison, like a lot of guys around here.”

“Can I borrow one of your guns?”

A laugh, then, “You won’t need one. The meth dealers are not nearly as nasty as the coal companies. Start suing them all the time and I’ll get you a gun. I know it’s early, but have you thought about lunch?”

“I haven’t thought about breakfast yet.”

“I’m offering lunch, a working lunch in my office. Chicken salad sandwich?”

“How can I refuse that?”

“Does noon work in your schedule?”

She pretended to consult her busy daily planner, and said, “Your lucky day. I happen to have an opening.”

He jumped to his feet and said, “See ya.”

She studied quietly for a while, hoping to be left undisturbed. Through the thin walls she heard Annette discussing a case with Mattie. The phone rang occasionally, and each time Samantha held her breath and hoped that Barb would send the caller to another office, to a lawyer who knew what to do. Her luck lasted until almost ten, when Barb stuck her head around the door and said, “I’ll be out for an hour. You have the front.” She disappeared before Samantha could inquire as to what, exactly, that meant.

It meant sitting at Barb’s desk in the reception area, alone and vulnerable and likely to be approached by some poor soul with no money to hire a real lawyer. It meant answering the phone and routing the calls to either Mattie or Annette, or simply stalling. One person asked for Annette, who was with a client. Another asked for Mattie, who had gone to court. Another needed advice on a Social Security disability claim, and Samantha happily referred him to a private firm. Finally, the front door opened and Mrs. Francine Crump walked in with a legal matter that would haunt Samantha for months.

All she wanted was a will, one “that didn’t cost anything.” Simple wills are straightforward documents, the preparation of which can easily be undertaken by even the greenest of lawyers. Indeed, rookies jump at the chance to draft them because it’s difficult to screw them up. Suddenly confident, Samantha led Mrs. Crump back to a small meeting room and left the door open so she could keep an eye on the front.

Mrs. Crump was eighty years old and looked all of it. Her husband died long ago, and her five children were scattered around the country, none close to home. She said she had been forgotten by them; they seldom came to visit, seldom called. She wanted to sign a simple will that gave them nothing. “Cut ’em all out,” she said with astonishing bitterness. Judging from her appearance, and from the fact that she was looking for a free will, Samantha assumed there was little in the way of assets. Mrs. Crump lived in Eufaula, a small community “deep in Jacob’s Holler.” Samantha wrote this down as if she knew exactly where it was. There were no debts, nothing in the way of real assets except for an old house and eighty acres, land that had been in her family forever.