Gray Mountain (12 page)

“Did you hear me? I said drop the charges,” Tony said in a louder growl.

“I just filed for divorce, Tony. It’s over. I’m leaving town as fast as I can, but I’ll be sure and come back when he goes to court. I’m not dropping the charges, so please get out of the way.”

One thug stared at Samantha, the other at Annette. The brief confrontation ended when Hump and Richard walked out of the courthouse and saw what was happening. “That’s enough,” Richard said, and Tony backed away.

Hump said, “Let’s go gals. I’ll walk you back to the office.” As Hump lumbered down Main Street, talking nonstop about another case he and Annette were contesting, Samantha followed along, rattled by the incident and wondering if she needed a handgun in her purse. No wonder Donovan practiced law with a small arsenal.

The rest of her afternoon was client-free, thankfully. She had heard enough misery for one day, and she needed to study. Annette loaned her some well-used seminar materials designed for rookie lawyers, with sections on divorce and domestic relations, wills and estates, bankruptcy, landlord and tenant, employment, immigration, and government assistance. A section on black lung benefits had been added later. It was dry and dull, at least to read about, but she had already learned firsthand that the cases were anything but boring.

At five o’clock, she finally called Mr. Joe Duncan and informed him she could not handle his Social Security appeal. Her bosses prohibited such representation. She passed along the names of two private attorneys who took such cases and wished him well. He was not too happy with the call.

She stopped by Mattie’s office and they recapped her first day on the job. So far so good, though she was still rattled by the brief
confrontation on the courthouse steps. “They won’t mess with a lawyer,” Mattie assured her. “Especially a girl. I’ve been doing this for twenty-six years and I’ve never been assaulted.”

“Congratulations. Have you been threatened?”

“Maybe a couple of times, but nothing that really scared me. You’ll be fine.”

She felt fine leaving the office and walking to her car, though she couldn’t help but glance around. A light mist was falling and the town was growing darker. She parked in the garage under her apartment and climbed the steps.

Annette’s daughter, Kim, was thirteen; her son, Adam, was ten. They were intrigued by their new “roommate” and insisted that she join them at mealtime, but Samantha had no plans to crash their dinner every night. With her crazy schedule, and Blythe’s, she had grown accustomed to eating alone.

As a professional with a stressful job, Annette had little time to cook. Evidently, cleaning was not a priority either. Dinner was mac and cheese from the microwave with sliced tomatoes from a client’s garden. They drank water from plastic bottles, never from the tap. As they ate, the kids peppered Samantha with questions about her life, growing up in D.C., living and working in New York, and why in the world she had chosen to come to Brady. They were bright, confident, easy to humor, and not afraid to ask personal questions. They were courteous too, never failing to say “Yes ma’am” and “No ma’am.” They decided she was too young to be called Miss Kofer, and Adam felt as though Samantha was too much of a mouthful. They eventually agreed on Miss Sam, though Samantha was hopeful the “Miss” would soon disappear. She told them that she would be their babysitter, and this seemed to puzzle them.

“Why do we need one?” Kim asked.

“So your mother can go out and do whatever she wants to do,” Samantha said.

They found this amusing. Adam said, “But she never goes out.”

“True,” Annette said. “There’s not much to do in Brady. In
fact, there’s nothing to do if you don’t go to church three nights a week.”

“And you don’t go to church?” Samantha asked. So far, in her brief time in Appalachia, she had become convinced that every five families had their own tiny church with a leaning white steeple. There were churches everywhere, all believing in the inerrancy of the Holy Scripture but evidently agreeing on little else.

“Sometimes on Sunday,” Kim said.

After supper, Kim and Adam dutifully cleared the table and stacked the dishes in the sink. There was no dishwasher. They wanted to watch television with Miss Sam and ignore their homework, but Annette eventually shooed them off to the small bedrooms. Sensing that her guest might be getting bored, Annette said, “Let’s have some tea and talk.”

With nothing else to do, Samantha said yes. Annette scooped up a pile of dirty clothes and tossed them into the clothes washer beside the refrigerator. She added soap and cranked a dial. “The noise will drown out anything we say,” she said as she reached into a cabinet for tea bags. “Decaf okay?”

“Sure,” Samantha said as she stepped into the den, a room overrun with sagging bookshelves, stacks of magazines, and soft furniture that had not been dusted in months. In one corner there was a flat-screen TV (the garage apartment did not have one), and in another corner Annette kept a small desk with a computer and a stack of files. She brought two cups of steaming tea, handed one to Samantha, and said, “Let’s sit on the sofa and talk about girl stuff.”

“Okay, what do you have in mind?”

As they settled in, Annette said, “Well, sex for one. How often do you get laid in New York?”

Samantha laughed at the frankness, then hesitated as if she couldn’t remember the last time. “It’s not that wild, really. I mean, it is if you’re in the game, but in my crowd we work too much to have any fun. A night out for us is a nice dinner and drinks, after which I’m always too tired to do anything but go to sleep, alone.”

“That’s hard to believe, all those rich, young professionals on
the prowl. I’ve watched
Sex and the City
, over and over. By myself, of course, after the kids go to bed.”

“Well, I haven’t. I’ve heard about it, but I’m usually at the office. I’ve had one boyfriend in the past three years. Henry, a starving actor, really cute and fun in the sack, but he got tired of my hours and my fatigue. Sure, you meet a lot of guys, but most of them are just as driven. Women are disposable. A lot of jerks too, a lot of arrogant brats who talk of nothing but money and brag about what they can buy.”

“I’m crushed.”

“Don’t be. It’s not as glamorous as you think.”

“Never?”

“Oh sure, the occasional hookup, but nothing I care to remember.” Samantha sipped her tea and wanted to shift the conversation. “What about you? You get much action in Brady?”

It was Annette’s turn to laugh. She paused, took a sip, and became sad. “There’s not much happening here. I made the choice, now I live it, and that’s okay.”

“The choice?”

“Yes, I came here ten years ago, in full retreat. My divorce was a nightmare and I had to get away from my ex. Get my kids away too. He has almost no contact. Now, I’m forty-five years old, somewhat attractive, in fairly good shape, unlike, well—”

“Got it.”

“Let’s just say there’s not much competition in Noland County. There have been a couple of nice men along the way, but no one I wanted to live with. One guy was twenty years older, and I just couldn’t do that to my kids. For the first few years, it seemed as though half the women in town were trying to fix me up with a cousin. Then I realized they really wanted me to get married so they wouldn’t have to worry about their own husbands. Married men, though, do not tempt me. Far too much trouble, here or in the city.”

“Why do you stay?”

“That’s a great question, and I’m not sure I will. It’s a safe place to raise kids, though we do worry about the environmental hazards.
Brady’s okay, but not far from here, back in the settlements and hollows, kids are constantly sick from contaminated water and coal dust. To answer your question, I’ve stayed because I love the work. I love the people who need my help. I can make a small difference in their lives. You met them today. You saw their fear and hopelessness. They need me. If I leave, there may be someone to take my place, and maybe not.”

“How do you turn it off when you leave the office?”

“I can’t always do that. Their problems are too personal, so I lose a lot of sleep.”

“I’m glad to hear that because I keep thinking about Phoebe Fanning, with her busted face and kids hidden with a relative, and a goon for a husband who’ll probably kill her when he gets out.”

Annette offered a caring smile. “I’ve seen a lot of women in her situation, and they’ve all survived. Phoebe will be fine, eventually. She’ll relocate somewhere—we’ll help her—and she’ll divorce him. Keep in mind, Samantha, he’s in jail right now, getting a good taste of life behind bars. If he does something stupid, he could spend the rest of his days in prison.”

“I didn’t get the impression he’s that much of a thinker.”

“You’re right. He’s an idiot and an addict. I’m not making light of her situation, but she’ll be okay.”

Samantha exhaled and set her cup on the coffee table. “I’m sorry, this is just so new to me.”

“Dealing with real people?”

“Yes, so caught up in their problems, and expected to fix them. The last file I worked on in New York involved a really shady guy, worth about a billion or so, our client, who wanted to build this very tall and sleek hotel in the middle of Greenwich Village. It was by far the ugliest model I ever saw, really gaudy. He fired three or four architects and his building just got taller and uglier. The city said hell no, so he sued and cozied up to the politicians and conducted himself like a lot of Manhattan developers. I met him once briefly when he came to the office to yell at my partner. A total sleazeball. And he was our client, my client. I detested the man. I wanted him to fail.”

“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.

M
ost 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.