“Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
“Is that true?”
Corbin looked out the windshield as two girls who didn’t look old enough to buy alcohol walked out of the store with several bottles of cheap wine under their arms. He had a sudden urge to roll down the car window and warn them.
“Corbin, are you there?”
“Yes, I believe.”
“Where do you stand with Step Three?”
A copy of the Twelve Steps was on the floorboard on the passenger’s side of the truck. Corbin leaned over and picked it up.
“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him.”
“That’s the point where you get plugged into the power source of help,” Jimmy said.
Corbin didn’t question Jimmy’s sincerity, but that didn’t keep doubts from dancing around inside his head.
Jimmy continued, “Your job is to make the decision; God’s job is to provide the power.”
“Yeah, I know,” Corbin said halfheartedly.
“Is that how you talk when you’re trying to convince a judge about something?”
Corbin felt backed into a corner, but wasn’t mad about it. “No.”
Jimmy didn’t say anything. Corbin knew he was waiting on him.
“Okay,” Corbin said, taking a deep breath. “Right now I’m making a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand him. And for me that means Jesus Christ.”
Corbin had spoken that name in a profane way many times. To say it as an act of surrender was a new experience.
“What are you going to do now?” Jimmy asked.
Corbin paused. He’d expected at least a little bit of affirmation from his sponsor.
“I guess I’ll go home,” he said. “And I’m not going to have a drink.”
“Good. Call me as soon as you wake up in the morning. Don’t worry about the time. I want tomorrow to be another successful day of sobriety.”
Corbin left the convenience store. A mile farther down the road he approached The Office tavern. He braced himself for the inevitable desire to turn into the parking lot. But tonight the flashing neon lights didn’t reach out and wrap their colorful fingers around his soul.
He continued down the road without looking in the rearview mirror.
The following morning Ray worked on non-Colfax matters until Corbin arrived. He left the door of his office open and stepped out into the reception area as soon as he heard his father’s voice.
Corbin, a cup of coffee in his hand, looked him in the eye. “You can join the meeting with the Colfax plaintiffs,” he said before Ray could speak.
“And I need to let you know what else I’ve been working on.”
“Go ahead,” Corbin replied.
Ray raised his eyebrows and glanced at Janelle, who spoke up.
“If you two start keeping secrets from me, this firm won’t last six months.” She turned to Ray. “Most of your brain cells may still be functioning, but if Corbin doesn’t tell me everything, who’s going to remind him when he forgets?”
“Okay, okay.” Ray told them about his conversation the previous evening with Roxy. “After I talked to her, I called Branson Kilpatrick and Millie Watson and asked each of them to bring some well water with them this morning. I want to send the samples to the chemist so he can run a few tests and give a preliminary opinion about what’s in the water and potential harmful effects.”
“He’s not going to do that kind of work for free,” Corbin replied skeptically. “And we’ll have to tell the other side about him in responses to interrogatories. If his results come back adverse to us, that’s going to be another hurdle we have to overcome.”
“For now we can designate him a shadow expert. Roxy is going to take care of all communication. Which means—”
“Her communication with him won’t be discoverable because she’s not a counsel of record on the case,” Corbin finished. “Good work.”
“Two Gages on a case is plenty,” Janelle interjected. “Three would be, I don’t know, too many.”
Thirty minutes later, Janelle buzzed Ray and let him know that Branson Kilpatrick and Millie Watson were waiting in the conference room. Both clients had grim expressions on their faces when Ray entered and sat down. Corbin was seated at the head of the table.
“My phone has been ringing off the hook since the newspaper article came out,” Branson said. “I’ve lost five of my best customers. Four of them are management folks at Colfax, and the other one is the sales manager for the company that services their copy machines. And I know this isn’t the last of it.”
“My mother chewed me out horribly,” Millie said, her eyes slightly red. “She accused me of trying to collect a bunch of money off Josh getting sick. I tried to explain what the lawsuit is about, but she wasn’t hearing any of it.”
Corbin tapped his fingers against the tabletop as he listened. Ray could feel the tension building.
“Branson, what’s Mitchell’s status at Egleston?” Corbin asked.
“We don’t know yet. They’re still running tests.”
Corbin turned to Millie. “And how is Josh?”
“Getting ready for the next round of chemo as soon as the doctor gets it approved.”
Corbin balled his beefy hand up in a fist. Ray braced himself for what he knew would come next—a slam to the table followed by verbal outrage directed at Colfax, Cecil Scruggs, and anyone else who deserved it. Instead his father took a deep breath and let it out.
“Do you have the water samples Ray asked you to bring?” he asked.
Branson and Millie each put a gallon jug on the table.
“We didn’t know how much you needed, so we brought a lot,” Branson said. “I wrote the name of the well on the bottom of the jugs in permanent marker, along with the date and address.”
Corbin looked at Ray, who took it as his cue and explained the problems they’d had locating an expert. As he was finishing, Janelle stuck her head into the room.
“Roxy called and told me to let you know the chemist will test the water. She also said to send him the information from the attorney general’s office.”
“Great,” Ray replied, then turned to the group. “Your jugs of water are about to take an overnight flight to Chicago.”
FORTY-THREE
Roxy hung up the phone. She’d agreed to pay Dr. Sellers twenty-five hundred dollars out of her own pocket to test the water in the Colfax case and evaluate the data from the Georgia Attorney General’s office. When she made the call, she’d not had the nerve to ask the chemist to work for free. After all, it wasn’t his family that was stuck in a legal ditch.
“The relationship between 2,4-D and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, especially in children, is subject to debate,” Sellers said when she explained what she wanted him to do.
“That’s what I understand.”
“Over what period of time did the exposure take place?”
“I’m not sure about that either. My brother is going to send the data from the environmental impact study conducted by the state EPA prior to filing criminal charges against the company. Maybe there will be an indication of duration in that information, or they may have to work their way backward based on the date the company started testing 2,4-D as a component in its herbicide/insecticide product.”
“Duration of exposure along with degree of saturation will be important factors. The compound doesn’t leach out of the soil quickly, but it will be tough to prove enough toxicity to significantly contaminate well water unless multiple tests were performed.”
Roxy wished she could present the chemist with a persuasive factual scenario, but she couldn’t. Everything he said was a missile that the defense lawyers would launch at her father and Ray.
“I’m just the go-between,” she said.
“I understand. Should I send my report directly to you?”
“Yes,
that way it’s off the books for the lawsuit.” Roxy paused.
“In case I have bad news.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay, I don’t mind doing it. It fact, I’m curious. Most chemists cook up compounds for the betterment of mankind, but when they mess up it can be a public health nightmare. And I’m inherently suspicious of anything in the DDT family.”
“How much time will you need to prepare a report?”
“A few days at the most. I’m in between projects, and all I’m teaching this semester is a graduate-level seminar class.”
“Thanks again.”
Shortly before lunch Roxy received a call from an unfamiliar lawyer who worked in the Dallas office of the firm. Suspecting it might be related to her future partnership status, she took a few seconds to compose herself before accepting it. Forty minutes later she hung up the phone, relieved at how well it had gone, and confident it had tipped the scales in favor of her becoming a partner.
Of course, the next call might have the opposite effect.
“I’m on my way to the bank,” Corbin announced to Janelle. “Then to lunch. Where’s Ray?”
“He left for a doctor’s appointment with Cindy. Is she okay?”
Corbin held his hands out in front of his abdomen.
“She’s pregnant?” Janelle’s eyes widened. “I thought they weren’t going to try for another child.”
“Keep the news to yourself until Ray mentions it.”
Corbin walked briskly to the bank and made a small deposit into the law firm operating account. The teller, a young woman in her thirties who was normally very friendly, treated him like a stranger.
Her attitude left Corbin puzzled; then, as he walked out of the bank, he remembered that her husband worked at Colfax. The shunning had begun.
Corbin continued down the street to the sandwich shop Kitty liked so much. When he entered a couple of people glanced at him and turned away. Corbin ordered his sandwich to go and left with it in a white paper bag. Not wanting to eat at the office, he walked down the street, not sure where to stop. When he reached the local library, he sat on a bench at the edge of a small, carefully manicured patch of grass. Because it was the middle of the day, the fall air was pleasant, and the sun felt good on his face.
Corbin took small bites of his sandwich. He didn’t particularly want to rush back to the office. For now, at least, the pull of alcohol was muted, and he could enjoy being alive. He was overdue at the doctor’s office for a checkup. One reason he’d stayed away was to avoid a lecture from Dr. Fletchall about limiting his consumption of liquor. Now he could tell the sharp young internist that he was on the path of sobriety, one day at a time.
Corbin glanced down the sidewalk and saw Maryanne Christopher approaching. He’d not seen her since the day she tracked him down at Red’s after Kitty’s funeral. Seeing her, Corbin’s first thought was that her husband worked in management at Colfax. To avoid making eye contact, he glanced down at a few blades of grass fighting for life through a tiny crack in the concrete.
“Hey, Corbin. Enjoying this beautiful weather?”
He looked up. Nothing in Maryanne’s face revealed a hostile agenda.
“Yeah, I don’t usually have a little picnic in the middle of the day. How are you doing?”
“Fine,” Maryanne replied. “I saw the article in the newspaper about the lawsuit you filed against Colfax.”
“About that,” Corbin began. “It’s nothing personal against the folks that work there, and I don’t believe there’s a real danger that the company will close up and move to someplace in Central America. I mean, it’s been here for over seventy years.”
Maryanne interrupted him. “That’s not why I brought it up,” she said. “I saw through the real purpose of the article by the time I reached the third paragraph.”
“You did?”
“Give me credit,” she replied with a wry smile. “I’m not going to talk about it openly, but if the company did something that made those boys sick, it should make it right. No, the first thing that popped into my head was what Kitty asked me to tell you when I visited her in the hospital.”
Corbin had tried to forget the conversation, but Maryanne’s words brought it back. “That you should believe for me until I believed for myself?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Corbin nodded and scooted over to one end of the bench. Maryanne joined him on the wooden slats.
“I don’t know about you, but I’ve continued to think about her words,” Maryanne said. “I think she wanted me to continue praying the prayers I heard her pray for you.”
Corbin ached with regret that he never heard Kitty pray for him. Then he felt worse because he knew how he would have reacted if he had.
“Is it okay to say that to you?” Maryanne asked. “I don’t want to offend you by making it sound like there’s something wrong with you.”
Corbin was able to chuckle. “I’m not offended,” he said. “I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what’s wrong with me. How would she pray?”
Maryanne repeated phrases that had a familiar ring to them.
“That sounds like Kitty,” he said.
“It should. I kept the journal for our prayer group and wrote down what each person prayed.”
“Well, I have some good news for you,” Corbin said.
And sitting on a bench in front of the local library, Corbin told Maryanne about coming to believe in a power greater than himself.
Ray and Cindy left the ob-gyn appointment. To their relief the doctor saw no need to put Cindy on bed rest or restrict her activities more than normally expected for this stage of a pregnancy.
“So far, so good,” Ray said when they reached their vehicles and prepared to go their separate ways.
“Yes, and next visit they’ll do the ultrasound that should tell us whether it’s a boy or a girl. What was the nurse saying to you when you left the examination room?”
“Oh, she knows one of the little boys we’re representing in the Colfax case. She moonlights occasionally at the hospital in the oncology unit. She couldn’t say anything specific, of course, but she told me Josh is a good kid, a real fighter. I needed to hear something positive. The fallout from the newspaper article has been almost 100 percent negative. A man who works at Colfax fired us this morning. It was the best car wreck claim in the office.”
“How did your dad take the news?”
“He doesn’t know yet, but it’s not all bad. I settled a case that will plug a few financial leaks and keep the boat from sinking immediately.” Ray paused and pointed behind them at the doctor’s office. “And if the nurse is right about Josh being a fighter, the least I can do is fight for him.”
FORTY-FOUR
Roxy checked her watch as she waited for Peter. Normally punctual, he was ten minutes late and hadn’t sent a text letting her know why. This time Roxy wasn’t going to accept the cell phone in the washing machine excuse. Looking up she saw him walk rapidly into the restaurant and glance about. She waved him over to the table.
“Sorry,” he said as he sat down. “I was here on time, but I had to stay in the car to finish an important call.”
“It’s all good now that you’re here,” Roxy said.
He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. A waiter brought a water for Peter, and Roxy ordered a glass of wine. Peter stared at her across the table.
“What is it?” she asked, shifting in her chair.
“The phone call in the parking lot. A senior vice president in Boston wants me to consider stepping into upper-level management. I’d still get to do some of the hands-on stuff I like, but I’d also oversee a subgroup that will focus on new products in the communications industry. It’s one of the hottest areas going, with tons of professional upside.”
The logical side of Roxy’s brain enthusiastically tracked with Peter’s news. The emotional side rapidly rose up in alarm.
“That’s great but scary,” she said as both sid
es sprang into action. “It’s a lot like my conversation with Mr. Caldweller about becoming a partner.”
“Believe me, I know.” Peter paused. “This new job could put me in London for at least a year, then to Boston. We both like to run long distances, but we mean a few miles, not different continents. All I could think about was that I’d go crazy if I couldn’t do things like meet you for dinner on short notice, or go for Saturday morning runs at the crack of dawn, or see you for no reason at all except that I want to be with you.”
As Peter talked Roxy’s eyes got bigger and bigger. She wasn’t sure she had room in her heart for a man with such a huge level of commitment to her.
“Do you know what this means?” Peter asked.
Roxy’s heart began to pound, and her mouth suddenly felt dry. “Uh, that we have a lot to talk about when it comes to our jobs?”
Peter laughed. Roxy felt her face flush, a reaction she’d successfully avoided since the eighth grade.
“What’s so funny?” she asked irritably.
“It’s my fault,” Peter said. “I said the wrong thing at the wrong time. I’d make a terrible lawyer.”
“What did you want to say?” Roxy asked.
“That I love you, and the only move I want to make is to be closer to you. So yes, we need to talk about our jobs and what they mean for our relationship.”
Roxy allowed herself to exhale. As she did, excitement rose up in her heart. “And I love you too,” she said.
“Good.” Peter smiled. “I’m glad we agree.”
Roxy smiled back, surprised to find herself feeling more secure than she’d ever felt in her life. She relaxed.
And let Peter’s love and kindness wash over her.
Corbin went to the evening AA meeting at the Hopewell church. Both Max and Jimmy were there. It was a speaker meeting featuring a gracious older woman from Savannah. Her topic was how to make a searching and fearless moral inventory, admit to God the wrongs committed, then make amends to those harmed by them. As he listened to the woman’s soft, rolling accent, Corbin was reminded of the wealthy women in his hometown. He wondered how many of them hid a secret addiction to sherry and twelve-year-old bourbon. Looking at the speaker’s carefully coiffed white hair and nicely tailored outfit, he had trouble imagining that her inventory would require more than a single sheet of paper. But it did.
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