Nineteen

You have to understand, it was now after two in the morning, and my mind wasn’t firing on all cylinders. So I gaped at her for a few seconds, and not in the way I usually do.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I must have heard you wrong. I thought you said they were coming after you.”

“I did,” she answered, and I noticed she hadn’t met my eyes for a while. “That’s the only logical explanation.”

“We need a broom,” I told her, and got up to get one. Abby stared at me as I left the room, went into the same closet where I had gotten the bag, and emerged with a broom and dustpan. I came back into the living room, and she was still staring.

“Don’t you want me to explain?” she asked.

I began sweeping up the smaller pieces of glass. “I’d be willing to bet fifty bucks you can’t,” I said. “What the hell do you mean, the only logical explanation is that people are coming after you?”

Abby sat down on the stairs again and got a dreamy look on her face, as if she weren’t actually there in the room with me. When she spoke, it was as if she were talking to herself.

“I had a case a couple of months ago, a guy who shot his girlfriend and left her in an alley,” she began.

“I remember,” I told her. “The pro bono case you were assigned. She was in the hospital for a couple of weeks, but she’s okay now, right?”

She didn’t appear to have heard me. “The girlfriend had to have four separate surgeries, but she’s mostly all right. But the client, the shooter, went to jail.”

“You lost the case.”

This time, Abigail heard me, and her face sharpened. She met my eyes for the first time in a number of minutes. “It had a lot to do with the fact that he was really, really guilty,” she said. “When six people see you shoot somebody, it’s hard to say you were actually at the Dairy Queen.”

“Sorry.” I dumped the last of the glass into the bag and put the broom down.

“It’s okay,” she said, dismissing my apology with a wave of her hand. “Anyway, he got six years. But he got himself another lawyer, and he’s appealing the decision. The client—his name is Preston Burke—is out on bail.”

It took me a second. “And you think he’s out to get you for losing his case?”

“I got a letter at the office last week from him, and while the language wasn’t direct enough for me to file a complaint, it was obvious he blamed me for his conviction.”

“Yeah, clearly it was your fault he shot his girlfriend. You shouldn’t have made him do that,” I said. I sat down next to Abby on the stairs and put an arm around her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know. You were all caught up in this thing with Ms. Cleavage, and I didn’t. . . I don’t know. . . lawyers get letters like that, but. . .” Abby looked at me, words failing her, and I held her close in my arms.

“It’s okay, baby,” I said. “We’ll deal with it together.”