An Invisible Client (20 page)

45

I went home early that night. I told the Commandant to clear my calendar, that I was taking a month off and when I got back I would take the entire firm to Mexico for a week. Fatigue had seeped into my bones and it felt like I was moving through water.

I sat on my balcony and closed my eyes, the setting sun warming my face. I heard the sliding glass door open in Jim’s house and he came out and sat in one of his chairs. He lit a pipe and took a few puffs.

“You okay?” he said.

“I think I’ve made myself sick from work and lack of sleep, but I’ve never been better. You?”

“All right. Woman and I broke up. It was for the best. Wasn’t the right fit.”

“How do you know when it’s the right fit?”

He shrugged. “I think you just know. You feel it in your guts. I been married three times and I only had that feeling once.” He chuckled. “I was fourteen and she was my nanny. Don’t choose who we love, though.”

“What happened to her?”

“She moved back to Toronto where her family’s from, and I stayed in the States. She’s married and has kids now, and I’m sure she’s content, but when I talk to her we both know we missed it. That person we’re supposed to be with. Plato wrote that the gods were jealous of man’s powers after the days of creation, that we had four arms and four legs and two heads, and were full of love and intelligence and grit, so they split us in half and threw our halves all around the earth. The point of life, then, is to find your other half and become whole again. The tragedy of life is if you find them and don’t hold on.”

I stared at him in the dying light of the sun. He took another pull off his pipe and then blew it out slowly through his nose.

“I’m too high. I gotta cut back on this stuff some.”

“I gotta go,” I said.

“Where?”

I rose, forcing every muscle to function when it didn’t want to. “I’ll tell you later.”

Olivia’s mother answered the door. She smiled pleasantly and said, “She’s in her room.”

I quietly peered into Olivia’s room and saw her busy on her Mac. I leaned against the door frame and watched her, the way her fingers moved deftly across the keyboard, the muscles in her arms flexing and relaxing, the way her hair fell naturally across her shoulders and seemed to dance there every time she moved her head.

“Hi,” I said.

She started, then exhaled. “Holy crap, you scared me.”

“Sorry. What you working on?”

“Blog post I’m writing about this case.”

I sat down on her bed. The room was too small for an adult and had only one window. I figured this was her childhood room. On the bed was a stuffed bunny, and I picked it up. “What I said before, about not becoming a lawyer . . . I was wrong. You’re good at it. I was just looking at it from the wrong view. You can help a lot of people with your skills.”

She rose from her desk and sat next to me. Her hand slipped into mine. “Do you know what Rebecca said to me on the way out of the courtroom? She said that Joel was smiling. You’ve changed the meaning of her son’s death for her. With the foundation, Rebecca’s gonna see that his death wasn’t for nothing. I don’t know of many professions where you can do something like that for people.”

I tossed the bunny on the bed. “I think you and I need to talk about that foundation. It’s going to need good leadership. But we can talk later. First, I’m going to give you a cut of the case. You’ve earned it. It will be enough to hire a full-time nurse for your mother.”

“Noah—”

“No, I want to. Then, after we get the nurse and you feel comfortable, I want you to go away with me. I’ve taken a month off. Let’s go lie on a beach in Fiji and do nothing.”

She smiled, and laid her head on my shoulder. “I think that would be something worth writing another blog post about.”

“Before we leave, though, we have to go to San Francisco. I have a promise to keep.”

EPILOGUE

T
he sun beat down on us and made me sweat. I wore a San Francisco Giants cap backward on my head as the team warmed up. The San Francisco sky was clear and blue, a perfect day.

Olivia sat next to me, wearing a Giants jersey. True to her word, she had quit our firm, but she hadn’t taken a job at the ACLU. She’d been appointed in-house counsel to the Joel Whiting Foundation, a foundation set up with the express purpose to evaluate products and investigate violations of consumer-protection laws. She smiled at me as she chewed her soft pretzel.

“So what’s this big surprise?”

“Look,” I said, pointing to the Jumbotron with my chin and trusting that Rebecca had turned on her television at home like I had asked her to.

An image came up. It was the photo of Joel taken at the hospital, his face twisted in a ridiculous expression, the light in his eyes still innocent and full of life.

“I promised him he’d get on the Jumbotron. And I wanted him to be here for this,” I said. I dipped into my pocket and came out with the small black case. Olivia saw it, and her eyes went wide and almost instantly became wet with tears. I opened it, revealing the ring inside, and said, “Will you?”

Tears rolled down her cheeks in silence as she stared at the ring. When she was able to move, she threw her arms around my neck and kissed me. The rest of the world disappeared, and I felt whole again.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo © 2014 FotoFly Studios

Victor Methos is a former prosecutor and is currently a criminal defense attorney in the Mountain West. He is the author of over forty books and several short story and poetry collections.

After completing his undergraduate education at the University of Utah, Mr. Methos abandoned pursuing a doctorate in philosophy for law school. A partner at a law firm he helped found, he has conducted over one hundred trials and has been voted one of the most respected trial lawyers in the West by
Utah Business Magazine
.

Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and having lived throughout the world before settling in the United States, Mr. Methos loves experiencing new cultures and peoples. His current goal is climbing the Seven Summits and hopefully not dying in the process. He divides his time between San Diego, Las Vegas, and Salt Lake City.