by Rene Fomby
Finally, she gave up on waiting and clicked on the Skype connection anyway. At the very worst, Harry wouldn’t be at his computer yet and she’d just have to wait. But, to her pleasant surprise, his face popped up on her screen almost immediately.
“Sam! It’s great to see you. It seems like these weekly calls are getting further and further apart.”
“Same back atcha. What’s happening these days in beautiful downtown Waco?”
“Well, as you know better than most, not much ever changes around here, and not much ever will. Those fixer upper people opened up another restaurant, and the Brazos River jumped its banks during last week’s rains and almost flooded the law school. Other than that, it’s been pretty boring. How about you? Any new adventures to report?”
Sam shook her head. “Not much, really. More business trips, trying to get a handle on my daughter’s financial affairs. I’ve got a trip to Rome tomorrow for a sit-down with the Italian Minister of Finance to talk about cash reserve issues with the bank. Oh, and Margaret hauled me off to Lake Cuomo over the weekend for a party at the Clooneys.”
Harry snorted. “You know, that’s a pretty big ‘oh, by the way,’ don’t you think? A party with George and Amal? I mean, I don’t want to brag, but I had myself a steak at the new restaurant in town the very night that it opened. And got to see Chip and Joanna from way across the room. You’re missing out on the real action, I’m tellin’ you.”
“I think I would have been a lot happier hanging out at the steak place with you, to be honest. All those beautiful people floating around like their feet don’t touch the carpet. I felt like I had just stepped out of the bargain aisle at Walmart.”
“I’m sure you looked fantastic, Sam. You always do.”
“Well, Margaret did take me shopping in Milano beforehand. We went to Valentino, Versace, Prada, all of the top names, but, I mean, who am I kidding? You can’t take a Cabbage Patch Kid and dress it up like a Barbie doll …”
“A Barbie doll you’re not, but I mean that as a compliment. You’ve always been a natural beauty, with the kind of wholesome, fresh look that real men find attractive. Not that anorexic high fashion look that is really only aimed at one-upping all the other gals.”
Sam blushed, looking down for a moment. “You’re sweet, Harry, even if you are totally blind. But hey, blindness works for me. Moving on to other things, now that your third year at Baylor is almost over, have you decided yet which offer you’re going to take? Being a big star and all, every law firm in Texas must be climbing all over each other to be the first to snap you up.” Samantha Tulley leaned back in her desk chair, sipping tea from a bone-colored mug with “Baylor Law” scrawled in green and gold across the side. It was early in the morning for her, but she could see on the monitor that Harry was already enjoying a cold bottle of beer. An appropriate beverage, given that it was well into nighttime back in Texas, on the other side of the world.
Harry nodded his head, and the Skype image pixelated slightly in front of her. “Actually, Sam, I don’t think that’s going to work out the way we thought. I mean, I got lots of interviews, but I think they were all just courtesy interviews in the end. Maybe just, take a peek at the boy wonder in the flesh, see if he really walks on water, but otherwise not all that serious about making me a job offer.”
Sam looked confused. “And why not? You’d be the only first year anyone could get their hands on that has any real legal experience. And not just the Jordan case—you sat second on that Rollins fiasco, and played a big role in all the other cases we worked on together last summer. Hiring you should be a no-brainer.”
Harry smiled at her across the Internet. “I’m glad you feel that way, Sam. But it looks like your enthusiasm for me isn’t all that contagious. To be honest, I think the big issue is that my experience is all in criminal law, and they don’t think that translates well into a civil practice. And they’re probably right, to some degree. But, hey, no big deal. After chewing it over with some of my buddies from last year who wound up at the bigs, and seeing up close what sister Hailey has had to suffer through at Truman Walker, I just don’t think chasing the partner ladder at a big firm is a good fit for me. Especially after tasting the sweet life with you last summer. I mean, Hailey has been an absolute rock star at Truman, and still the closest she’s been to a courtroom is delivering some random paperwork to a senior partner in the middle of a trial. No amount of money in the world could convince me to spend the next five or six years writing legal briefs for some old geezer who doesn’t even remember my name.”
“I hear you, Hare. And when I got pregnant with Maddie, and Luke got that offer with the hospital in Blair County, it didn’t take much to convince me to leave that whole rat race behind, myself. In fact, I all but showed Truman Walker my middle finger as I walked out the door. But seriously, if you don’t go with a firm job, what are you going to do? I mean, the law business is still recovering, still climbing back from the meltdown in 2008. Do you have any leads on something at one of the smaller firms?”
Harry glanced nervously off screen for just a second. But after everything they had been through the past summer, a brief second was long enough for Sam to know he had something else on his mind, something delicate to bring up with her that he was still trying to put into words. She leaned forward, subconsciously struggling to get a better look at Harry’s face, his eyes, but all pretty useless over a low speed Skype connection. “Okay, spit it out, Hare. What’s bothering you? You want something from me. What is it?”
Harry smiled back at her cautiously, his eyes still shifting a bit as he tried to figure out the best way to say it. “W-e-l-l,” he drawled, stretching the moment out a little longer. “You remember what we talked about, that first time we met in your study? About my plans for after graduation?”
Sam’s forehead wrinkled as she fought unsuccessfully to make the connection. “No, I think you’re losing me there, Hare. Come on, just say it. You know I don’t bite. Well, at least not very hard.” She chuckled a little, hoping that would help break the tension. And it seemed to work.
“Okay,” he told her, still avoiding direct eye contact. “Here’s the deal. I really enjoyed what we were doing last summer, taking on the judges and prosecutors, figuring out how to win cases that seemed impossible at first. And I like to think I held up my end pretty well, considering I had just finished my second year—”
“You were actually pretty amazing,” Sam interrupted. “Especially toward the end. I had expected just a lazy law clerk, really, and you turned out to be more like a partner by the time summer was over.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m talking about, Sammie! A partnership. Just like we discussed, the Crawford Tulley Law Firm. Or, really, Tulley Crawford. You know, the whole age before beauty thing.”
Sam shot him a playfully sour look. “Hmph. For someone with his hand out, you sure have an interesting way of begging. And, by the way, mister, I’m only a few months older than you. And a damned sight better looking.”
“Okay, Sammie, you’re right. I’ve got a face only my mother could love. If her. But what do you say? You blew out of town so fast after the fire that you never actually shut the old firm down. I know, I checked. And your bar dues are still paid up through early summer, so you’re still a registered attorney. And, on top of that, my student bar card is still current.” Harry was talking fast, blurting it all out at once, like a dam inside of him had finally burst open.
“Harry, I don’t know …” Now it was Sam’s turn to be hesitant. “I mean, is it even possible? I’m pretty much stuck out here in Italy for the time being, trying to save Maddie’s inheritance from bankruptcy. I don’t see how I could possibly get back and forth to Houston to run a law firm. To handle any court appearances. Or even, for that matter, spare enough time these days to stay current on any cases that might come dragging in. Between Maddie and the trust, I barely have enough time in the day to eat or go to the bathroom. I just don
’t think I could do it.”
On the screen, Harry shook his head. “Look, I get it. I’m asking a lot. But I’m not talking about taking on a full load. Just a couple of cases, maybe, until the bar results come back and I can get my own license. And big sis Hailey says she can fill in on the down low if we need to make any court appearances, so long as we keep it under the radar at Truman Walker. Of course, I don’t want to mess with her meal ticket, now that she’s on the short list for partner. And as you know, most of the motions are just efiled these days, anyway. I can shoot them out to you for your approval, and you don’t even have to sign them. I’ll just paste your digitized signature onto them.”
Sam still looked unconvinced. “Harry, I’d love to do this for you, but honestly, I think my law days may be long behind me now. Until Maddie gets old enough to handle the trust—assuming I can even keep it afloat over the next year or so—it’ll be twenty years or so before I have time for anything other than watching over her interests.”
“I get that, Sam. I know you have a lot on your plate these days. But hey, didn’t you once say that your husband juggled the trust on the side while he still managed to run the pediatric surgery department at Blair County? Plus take on a bunch of research projects, too? And I’m not asking you to give me a lifetime commitment. Just give it a try for a few months, see how it works. If we run into any problems, I have a long list of buddies to hand any cases off to. People I trust. And I promise, you’ll barely know I’m here.”
Sam smiled at that. “Well, not staying in touch with me isn’t exactly your best bargaining chip, Harry. Other than the time I get to spend with Maddie, Skyping with you is pretty much the high point of my week.” She looked down at her hands, thinking. “I’ll tell you what. Let me chew this over for a day or so, think through all of the angles. I have a big meeting with the Finance Minister in Rome tomorrow morning, and depending upon how that goes, I might wind up having to shut down everything out here after all and head back to Houston by the end of the month. Hanging my head low with Maddie in tow. But hey, you don’t need an answer immediately, do you? Didn’t you tell me last week you have an offer in your hands from somebody else that you need to respond to in the next few days?”
“Well, I do have that one offer, but I’m going to turn it down. It’s just a personal injury mill, churning the cases. Not exactly what I went to law school for. But really, Sammie, no pressure. You can’t know how much I appreciate you even considering the idea. That’s why I hesitated bringing it up in the first place—I really didn’t think it had much of a chance. I figured you’d just shoot it down in flames, but I knew I had to give it a whirl, anyway.”
Sam smiled, remembering all of the crazy things that had happened to the two of them that last summer back in Texas. And one particular kiss just before she hopped on the plane bound for Italy. “Look, Hare, I’m not saying no. I just need to think about it. And certainly, if things do go well tomorrow, maybe by next fall I’ll be in a position to do something like that. God knows I’m absolutely miserable with what I’m stuck doing around here these days. I have like zero training for all this big business stuff, and there really isn’t any kind of guidebook for how to handle any of it. No Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, no Rules of Evidence. So I’m just making it up as I go along, and I get the feeling that it shows. That everyone is acutely aware of just how incompetent I am.”
“I find that hard to believe, Sam. I’ve never seen you be anything but the smartest person in the room. And I’ve never seen anyone who’s quicker on her feet. But just the same, if that’s what it takes to convince you to come back home to Texas, I’m all for it.” He held up a finger. “Speaking of which, Hailey has been trying to get hold of you the last few days. She had your old cell number, but it just went straight to messages. I talked to her this morning and gave her your new number, so I think you should be expecting a call from her pretty soon.”
“I’ll look forward to it. By any chance do you know what she wants? Is she okay?”
“Yeah, she’s fine. And I guess I really should let her break the news to you, but I’ve never been all that good with secrets. She and Dave are getting married.”
“Dave? The same Dave she met the night of Luke’s birthday party? The night Luke and I first met?” Now that Sam thought back on it, Dave had been Hailey’s date at her own wedding, and had been at Hailey’s side the night the house burned down.
“Yep. Same Dave. Their relationship has been kind of on again off again, but it really heated up recently. They moved in together about six months ago, and now they’ve decided to make it official.”
“That’s wonderful news! I’m so happy for her. Do they have a date set?”
“Yep, as a matter of fact they do. It’s the first Saturday in June. They’re going to tie the knot at the little white wedding chapel in Vegas. And she wants you to be a bridesmaid.”
“Three weeks from now? Holy Toledo! Why the rush?”
“I think the idea is that she doesn’t want to be showing in the wedding pictures.”
“Showing?” Sam’s forehead crinkled up for a second, then cleared. “Oh! I get it now. Yeah. Hmm.” She sat back for a second, taking it all in. “Well, as my grandmother always said, the first baby can come at any time, but the second one takes nine months.”
“Yeppers. Kind of a surprise all around,” Harry said. “So, can you make it? Do you have anything else planned for that weekend?”
“Well, I always have something planned these days, but there isn’t anything I can’t just unplan. Of course I’ll be there. It’ll be lovely getting to see everyone again.” She gave him a soft smile. “How about you? Do you mind being my plus one for the reception?”
“Uh, well, the thing is …” He looked awkwardly off screen. “I kind of …”
Suddenly, Sam understood. “You already have a date.”
“Yeah, I haven’t really had a chance to tell you about her …”
Sam had to pause for a brief second to catch her breath, and she desperately hoped it didn’t show. “Harry, it’s fine. I mean, I’m really happy for you. Happy that you’ve found someone.” Sam’s smile wilted a bit, but she managed to keep her voice upbeat. Happy, like she said. “Tell me about her. What’s her name? Where did you two meet?”
Harry looked uncomfortable, like he had something very sour in his mouth and was looking for a place to spit it out. “Her name is Annabelle. She’s a graduating third year at Baylor Law. She made the interscholastic mock trial team last fall, along with me. We’ve been partners since the middle of last semester.”
“Partners, eh? And how long have you two been dating?” Sam didn’t really want to hear any more of the details, but she had to keep up appearances, if nothing else than for the sake of their friendship. One of the few friendships she had going, these days.
“Since just before Christmas break. We went to a national championship tournament together in Chicago in early December, and things just kind of happened.”
“Well, good for you. And how did that turn out? The tournament, I mean. This is the first time you’ve mentioned any of that to me.” And she didn’t need to guess why.
“We did pretty well. The last round was kind of nip-and-tuck. I had to keep reminding myself that the key to the competition was scoring points, not winning the case, which is really pretty hard to stay focused on once you’ve done the real thing. But Annabelle’s closing argument was totally spot on, so we somehow managed to barely eke out a win, even with me on board.”
“You mean you won the national championship?” A pretty big secret to keep to yourself.
“Yeah. But it’s no big thing. It’s all just fake, just pretend. Not like winning the Jordan case, where it was literally a matter of life and death.” Harry still couldn’t look her in the eye.
“Well, I look forward to meeting Annabelle in person in three or so weeks. I know she will be just lovely, inside and out. You wouldn’t settle for
anything less.” Sam decided it was time to break for the exits with this conversation. “Look, Hare, I hate to cut this short, but I have something I need to tend to this morning. If you hear from Hailey, tell her to call me any time, except for the wee hours out here. And I’ll catch up with you again same time next week.”
“Sounds great, Sam.” Harry looked just as relieved to be getting off the call. “Talk to you next week. And give Maddie hugs and kisses from me.”
“Will do. And I’ll try to bring her along for the wedding so you can give her the real thing. She always loves getting kisses from her Uncle Harry.”
“I’d love that. Can’t wait.”
Sam clicked on ‘End’ and the screen went blank. Then she picked up her mouse and shattered it against the outside wall.
17
Rome, Italy
Sam had stayed up late the night before pouring over the bank’s financial statements and finishing up some notes for her meeting with Italy’s Finance Minister. So when the limousine finally showed up to take her to the meeting, her eyes were still a bit blurry, and she sipped on a large paper cup of American coffee to try and clear her mind. God knows she had to be on her ‘A’ game today. Quite literally, everything in her new world hinged on this one meeting. Everything.
As they pulled up to the Palazzo delle Finanze, home of Italy’s Ministry of Economy and Finance, Sam was struck by how unimposing the building seemed. The Palazzo was the first major complex to be built in Rome after the city became the capital of Italy. It was supposedly designed to emphasize the solidity and efficiency of the then-nascent Italian State, but to Sam, the end result reminded her more of a faded yellow version of the stark blockish buildings of the Mussolini era.
