Four Wives by Wendy Walker Read Free Book Online Page A

that she wouldn’t hire a man. There simply weren’t many male attorneys who wanted to work for a woman practicing family law. And now one was standing in front of her.
    With characteristic ease, Marie recovered. “I’ve been waiting for a client’thought you were him. Never mind,” she said, ushering him around the conference table to the inner sanctum. “You’re here a little early, aren’t you?”
    The young man spoke to her back as they walked. “I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to get here. I drove from New Haven. I hope it’s all right.”
    “It’s fine.”
    Marie showed him to her associate’s desk in the back room, and the drawer they had cleared for him.
    “We’ve set you up here. Nancy is one of my two associates. She only works three days a week. And she doesn’t come in much. I use her to run motions at the court, and she works from home a lot. Are you OK sharing the desk?”
    “It’s fine.” With the awkwardness of a novice, he sat down, then popped back up to unbutton his jacket. Marie smiled and took a seat at her own desk, leaning back in the chair precisely as far as it would go, then crossing her legs. There was no question a male intern had never entered her mind, and she found herself surprisingly unnerved. But as she watched him settle in, it occurred to her that this would have been true even if she hadn’t made the wrong assumption about his gender. There was something about him’a sense of inner comfort that was unusual in a person his age. The suit was new. He was in a strange town, a hole-in-the-wall office with a woman superior. Still, he seemed to accept his awkwardness, his inexperience.
    Smiling with authority, she tried to put them both at ease. “You can take off your coat. We’re pretty informal around here.”
    As he removed his jacket and hung it on the back of his chair, Marie turned to a stack of books she’d collected from the conference room shelves.
    “I’ve pulled together some of the pivotal custody cases in our jurisdic-tion.
    “Great,” Randy said, taking a legal pad from his briefcase. “Is there something in particular I should pay attention to? I mean, a specific case I’ll be working on?”
    Marie nodded. “We’ve got a lot of cases in the works. All fathers, different degrees of custody and visitation requests. We don’t have any demands for sole custody at present, just clients who want more time with their kids than their wives want to give. But you’ll see a list of factors the courts use to make these decisions, and all of those will be relevant to our cases.”
    She paused then, and let out a long breath. “Then we have the Farrell case.
    Randy picked up the first book. “The Farrell case?”
    “The client I’m expecting. They had a baby who died, and now the mother wants to keep him from the other kids.”
    “Oh,” Randy said, trying to have the appropriate response but getting it all wrong.
    “It’s OK to be surprised. This is highly unusual. I’ve never seen it before, and I can’t find any local precedents. You’ll be doing research later on, after the discovery. Assuming our client shows up.”
    “OK.”
    He sat upright at the desk, both feet planted on the floor. It was hard not to watch him. His dark wavy hair, polished shoes, the gold college ring that was still glistening. His eyes were an average shade of blue, but clear and honest. Not something one saw every day.
    “Can I ask you a question?”
    Randy turned to look at her. “Sure.”
    “Why do you want to be a divorce lawyer?”
    Randy shrugged, returning his gaze to the closed book on his desk. “I guess the same reasons anyone does. I just feel drawn to it.”
    Marie smiled to herself.
If he only knew.
Divorce lawyers, though necessary, were usually (and unfairly) seen as occupying the bottom of the ladder as far as lawyers went. Well, maybe not the bottom. Personal injury specialists were tough to beat for that privilege. Still, having come from