Page 11 of Never Alone
I didn't say anything.
"I'm not telling you what to do. I would never. But you asked me, in your own way, and that's my answer."
She reached into the pocket of her apron and put something on the counter between us. A cream-colored business card.
Miranda Holt. Holt & Associates. Family Law.
"She was my Caroline's roommate at Wake Forest. She does family law here in Havensworth. She's very good, honey. And she isn't afraid of rich men, which, in my experience, is the most useful thing a lawyer can be."
I looked at the card.
"Mrs. Thompson, I?—"
"I know. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to call her today. You don't have to call her at all. You can put that card in a drawer and forget it's there, and I'll never bring it up again. I just wanted you to have it. So you'd know there was a door if you ever wanted one."
I looked at her.
"Thank you."
She reached over and squeezed my hand once. That was all.
I picked up the card.
CHAPTER 3
Tessa
I called Miranda Holt's office on Monday morning, three days after Mrs. Thompson had handed me her card. The receptionist gave me an appointment for Wednesday at ten.
I'd taken the weekend to think about it. I'd carried the card in the pocket of my apron through Friday's shift, the Saturday rush, and the Sunday morning crowd, taking it out at the back counter when no one was looking and reading the same six words.
Miranda Holt. Holt & Associates. Family Law.
I had not wanted to call. Some part of me, the part that had been folded smaller and smaller for ten years of marriage, was sure that calling another lawyer was just paying for the same disappointment twice. I'd hired a lawyer once before. I'd paid a retainer. I'd told a stranger everything Nicholas had ever done to me and asked him to use it to protect my son. Within a week, he'd stopped returning my calls. The file had vanished. Nicholas had known.
I drove to Miranda's office on Wednesday morning the way I drove everywhere now, with both hands on the wheel and my eyes on the rearview at every other block.
What had moved me, in the end, was Mrs. Thompson.You can't keep running for the rest of his childhood,she'd said. And:She isn't afraid of rich men.I had thought about both of those sentences for three days. The second one was the one that mattered. The first lawyer had been a man Nicholas could buy. I didn't know yet whether Miranda was someone he couldn't.
And going to her office wasn't the same as deciding. I was going to ask questions. I was going to find out what my options were. Whatever came after that came after.
I parked two blocks down on Meeting Street, fed the meter, and walked.
Holt & Associates was on the second floor of a brick building that had been a bank in the 1920s and had since been chopped into law offices. I climbed the stairs and gave my name to a receptionist who handed me a clipboard and pointed me toward a leather chair.
I filled out forms. My name was on each of them.Natalie St. George née Shaw.I had not signed it on anything but tax forms and a lease in seven months. Putting it down five times in a row, in a brick building on Meeting Street, made my stomach feel hollow in a way the tax forms never had.
Miranda came out fifteen minutes later. She looked to be in her mid-forties. Navy suit cut clean. Dark hair pulled back. The kind of presence that didn't announce itself but was difficult to miss once you registered it.
"Tessa Marin? Miranda Holt. Come on back."
She walked me down the hallway at her own pace. The desk in her office was uncluttered. A legal pad. A pen. Her phone, face down. She gestured me into the chair across from her.
"Mrs. Thompson called me Friday," she said. "She told me enough to expect you. Tell me what's happening."
I told her.
I told her in the order it had happened, and I told her without crying, which was an accomplishment I didn't expect to be proud of. I had said this out loud exactly twice before—once to a man who took it from me and used it against me, and once to Mrs. Thompson in the back office of the bakery, the afternoon she'd hired me. Telling it again, out loud, in a room I'd been in for less than fifteen minutes, was harder than I'd thought it would be when I'd rehearsed the conversation in my car.
