Household Gods

On the strength of that, and after a few seconds’ pause to get her voice under control, she asked, “Are we representing the developer here, or someone who is thinking about trying to stop him?”

“An extremely professional question.” Did Sheldon Rosenthal sound the least bit surprised? Maybe he did. Maybe he’d dropped this project on her desk to see if she would lose her temper, or to try to make her lose it. That would have given him the perfect excuse to let her go.

But she’d refused to give it to him. He scratched his chin along the edge of his neat little beard. “Perhaps it would be best if you did not know the answer to that. I want the analysis to be as nearly disinterested as possible.”

Nicole took time to think about that – time in which he stood there, waiting in apparent patience. “All right,” Nicole said at last. Rosenthal made a certain amount of sense. Lawyers were by trade advocates, hired guns. If she knew which way he wanted the analysis to come out, she’d slant it that way. As it was, he could go to the client, whoever the client was, and say, Here’s exactly why you can, or maybe, why you can’t do what you want to do with this land.

“Do you think you can have this on my desk a week from today?” he asked.

Nicole nearly let go regardless of all her combat training in circumspection. But her resolve held. She was able to say with a reasonable degree of aplomb, “I’ll try. If I weren’t coming back from being sick, I’d be sure of it. But with everything else backed up a week and more – “

Rosenthal cut her off with a chopping gesture. “This has priority. If everything else has waited for you to return, it can wait a little longer.”

Nicole drew a deep breath. If the founding partner said Hop! the wise frog didn’t ask How high? till she was already on the way up. “All right,” she said. “In that case, I’ll have it done on time.” Or die trying.

“Good,” Sheldon Rosenthal said. “I’ll look forward to seeing what you do with it.” His nod was as carefully wrought as everything else about him. “And let me say once more, I am very glad to see you back in good health.” Without even waiting to hear her dutiful thanks, he nodded one last time, turned and headed back to the eminence of the seventh floor.

He’d left the attache case, brass fittings and all. Nicole refused to run after him like a flunky. She’d send somebody up with it later. For now she closed it and set it aside, pausing to stroke the fine leather. Then she turned back to her desk, took another deep breath, and started skimming through the documents the case had carried. The sooner she knew how brutal this job was going to be, the better.

As she read through the papers, she felt how long she’d been away, even more than she had with her kids. Time after time, she remembered the outline of the legal points she’d made in the Butler Ranch report, but not the details. And the details were what mattered, because the outline fell to pieces without them.

She pulled the old report on her computer and scribbled notes for the citations she’d need to check to write this new one. She’d have to hit the books, too, because she couldn’t recall what went into some of those citations.

She stifled a sigh. She’d known it would be this way. Even if she wasn’t quick, she’d be right. Here, she needed to be right and quick both – either that or take a lot of work home.

Well, if she had to, she had to: part of the price she paid for going away. It was cheap enough, she reckoned. She could have had to stay in Carnuntum till the day she died.

Another part of the price was the continued stream of attorneys and secretaries, all of whom professed themselves glad to see her back. She started to wonder just how important to the firm she was, if so many people were making a point of welcoming her. Or were they just being careful? She could sue, after all. You could sue for just about anything – and she had been passed over in favor of a male employee. Sheldon Rosenthal had warned her that any attempt to sue would get her nowhere, but that was before she landed in the hospital for just under a week.

Or maybe she was too cynical. They really did seem happy to see her. Several teased her for working so hard so soon. Her answering smile was decidedly wan. She wished they would go away and let her do the work instead of commiserating with her about it.

There was one notable exception to the procession of well-wishers. Tony Gallagher did not come down from the seventh floor to see how she was. She didn’t miss him a bit – and not only because he spared her yet another interruption.