Page 45 of Love in Fine Print

“Hey.”

He didn’t smile, he appeared to be shocked to see me. I was sure he thought I was here to lodge a complaint about my date, or worse, fire him. But nothing could be further from the truth.

“Your friend, Olivia, was just telling me that she met Dolly before.”

Ben glanced down at his elderly neighbor. “Olivia is the person Dolly mowed down. She broke her wrist and sprained her ankle.”

“Oh, yes, Ben told me about that.” Miss B turned back to me. “He left out the part about you being sobeautiful, though.”

I felt my cheeks warm. I wasn’t sure why accepting compliments was such a struggle for me. Not all compliments. If someone told me I was the best divorce attorney ever, I’d gladly accept that compliment. If someone told me I was the best friend ever, I’d slurp it up with a spoon. If someone told me that I was hardworking, dedicated, loyal and persistent, I’d gladly accept it with open arms.

It was just the physical praise I had a hard time with. Whenever someone who wasn’t Trevor or Bailey commented on my appearance, I wanted to burrow into the ground like a gopher and disappear.

“So, Olivia, tell me a little bit about yourself. What do you do?” Miss B asked as she rocked in her chair.

People always had opinions about my chosen career path. Sometimes, not very positive ones. “I am an attorney.”

“Oh, my first husband Walter, was an attorney. He worked in civil litigation. What field are you in?”

Damn. She called out my vague response and doubled down with her late husband’s specialty. “I’m in family law.”

Miss B sighed. “Oh, wow. That’s a barrel full of emotions you deal with on a daily basis.”

“It can be.”

“That’s why my Walter stayed on the business side of things. He couldn’t handle the personal, intimate nature of divorce and child custody. He said the stakes were just too high. He said, ‘Beverly, there are only two types of people who could not only survive but thrive in family law’.”

Since I had no idea where Miss B was going with this, I didn’t follow-up by asking her to clarify what the two types were.

“The first has sociopathic tendencies,” she continued. “They have no empathy for their clients. They use their intelligence, charm, and charisma to manipulate the court into seeing their client in the most positive light and to villainize their opponent. They have no qualm in lying and misrepresenting the truth to serve themselves, which ultimately serves their clients.”

Miss B had just described ninety-five percent of the attorneys I knew, in family law or not.

“The second, and much rarer, are the opposite of the first. They are someone who feels things even deeper than other people. They are highly intelligent, both analytically and emotionally. They know how high the stakes are and value social justice, fairness, and putting people on an equal playing field regardless of sex, religion, ethnicity, or economic standing. They often present to the world that they are the first type of person, but those who are lucky enough to see behind the walls they construct, those who are lucky enough to be given access to their hearts, are the luckiest people in the world.”

I was rarely at a loss for words, or self-conscious about what people were thinking. But Miss B’s descriptions had me dumbstruck and not sure what she was thinking. Did she think I was the sociopath? If she did, she wouldn’t be alone.

People had categorized me as unfeeling, cold, distant, and manipulative my entire life. I’d earned the nickname Maneater freshman year of college and it had stuck through law school and two separate firms.

“That’s what my Walter said. What do you think about that, Olivia?” Miss B asked as she lifted her cup of tea to her lips.

“I think that Walter was a very wise and perceptive man.”

Miss B smiled and nodded, “That he was, dear. That he was, may he rest in peace.”

The song “Build Me Up Buttercup” began playing and interrupted the lull in conversation. Miss B picked up a large phone I hadn’t noticed on her lap, and her eyes lit up.

“Oh, that’s Sam!” She exclaimed before she stood up and answered, “Hello!”

She was still saying ‘hello’ when she went inside her house.

“Sam is her son. He lives in Seattle,” Ben explained.

“Oh, that’s…nice.” I looked at him but immediately broke eye contact. I didn’t want to look at him because I was wondering if he thought that I was the first type of lawyer Walter had described. If so, it was going to make the reason why I was here an even more difficult sell than I’d originally thought it would be.

“Did you want to go to my office?” he stretched out his arm toward his house next door.

“Sure, yes.” Last night, when I’d gone back to my office and spoken to Trevor, I’d felt so sure of what I was doing. I had maintained that level of confidence through the night, when I’d gone to bed, when I’d woken up and even on the drive over here. But now that I was face to face with Ben, I was starting to think this was a bad idea.

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