Floor-to-ceiling windows framed the river, half-frozen in the lingering Midwestern cold. A tour boat crawled beneath the Michigan Avenue bridge, its guide talking into a microphone no one could hear from up here.
“Margaret,” Patricia said, appearing in the doorway to her office. “Come in.”
She’s in her fifties now—sharp black bob, sharp gray suit, sharp mind. The kind of woman opposing counsel underestimates exactly once.
I sat in the leather chair across from her desk. The same chair where, years ago, we’d talked about selling my practice, structuring retirement, making sure Kevin would be “taken care of” if anything happened to me.
Funny how plans age faster than people.
“Tell me what happened,” she said.
So I did.
I told her about the early-morning alarm and my careful packing. About O’Hare and the suitcases and the little turtle shirt I’d bought Tyler. About Jessica’s words, Kevin’s silence, the way strangers at the airport had more empathy for me than my own son.
By the time I finished, Patricia’s jaw was clenched so tight I could see the muscle ticking in her cheek.
“They gave your ticket to Jessica’s mother,” she repeated slowly, as if she needed to taste every word to believe it, “on the trip you planned and paid forty-seven thousand dollars for. And then they told you the grandchildren love her more.”
“Yes,” I said. “In front of strangers. While I stood there with my suitcase like… like a driver who’d been dismissed.”
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