Page 2 of The Lawyer & the Christmas Tree Farmer

“Not because we need to take an extra few weeks getting this case settled properly. The fact you’re not recognizing it is the bad leadership I’m talking about. Working paralegals until ten PM atthis time of year? There’s a time and place for asking extra of our staff, Laura. This isn’t it.”

“What would be?”

“Murders, arson, getting caught on surveillance video in certain delicate situations, political campaigns, and political campaigns murdering people,” Irene tossed back. “Stuff with a deadline. You’ve got to learn leadership, Laura. Or else you end up like Howard.”

Laura shuddered. Howard Draper was a sad legend around the office. Fifty-four years old, he’d been a senior associate for twenty-seven years, since Laura had been in diapers. Never promoted, always passed over when partnership opportunities were offered, he was a broken, bitter man who put in his hours, cashed his paychecks, and waited for the day he could retire.

Why he’d never just gone out on his own and opened his own firm was beyond Laura.

“You think I’m Howard?”

“Not quite, I think you’ve got the guts to actually tell this place to take a walk at some point and hang up your own shingle,” Irene said. “And you could. Go to a smaller town, or even stay here in the city, starting or staying as a small operation. But until you learn to be a leader, Laura? The partners aren’t going to extend an offer to you.”

Laura inhaled sharply, counting to ten in her head, and then again. A thousand questions were running around in her head, and she knew that none of them would be answered at the moment.

“I see. Foot off the gas.”

“On this case,” Irene reminded her. “Look, what’s going to happen in January is what’s going to happen. You should now focus on getting your act right for the July partnership meetings, or, given your financial situation, aim for next January’s meeting.”

Irene left. Laura shut down her computer, and locked away the Stevens case files. Walking out, nobody said goodbye. Mostly because nobody was there except for the security guard in the lobby of the building, who was more interested in watching something on his phone than being civil. Not that she knew the man, but still, it would have helped her dark mood as she left the midtown high rise and headed for the subway.

As she walked, she kept thinking. Was Irene correct? Had her hard-working nature turned into a liability? She thought back to her younger days, growing up in Colorado. The area had been known as the Rockaways, an unincorporated community northeast of Pueblo on the way towards Colorado Springs. You couldn’t even see it from the Interstate, it was an offshoot of the state highway. She’d been poor, although she didn’t know it until high school started and Paw-Paw couldn’t drive her to school. She took the bus nearly an hour each way to go to Colorado Springs. There, she’d heard the taunts, and learned the shame that came with having worn out jeans that you could never quite wash all the dust out of the seams no matter how hard you tried, or wearing shoes and boots that used military parachute cord as laces every day, sun, rain, or snow.

She vowed to get out, and she had. First she’d been eligible for a scholarship because her father had been a miner. That sufficed despite the fact that her parents had died in a car accident unrelated to his work. That, combined with a lot of hustle and hard work, had gotten her through her undergraduate degree and into law school, and then into a choice job at her firm. She’d picked that firm for two reasons. One, it had some of the best reviews for being a place a woman could advance. Half of the partners there were women.

Second? They had one of the more generous compensation packages for new associates. They demanded a lot, but they paid a lot. And Laura was going to make it. No matter what.

She thought she’d been on the right path until tonight, when Irene had burst her bubble. She wasn’t going to make partner before she turned thirty, she wasn’t going to be the toast of the town, she wasn’t going to be breaking records on getting to the Supreme Court by the time she was forty.

But as she thought about it, those goals, had been set long ago when she’d been seeing the pretty lawyer on stage at career day, elegant and beautiful in her fitted suit and high heels, powerful and smart and everything Laura wanted to be. Tonight, those goals felt a little hollow.

Was she happy?

Well, she had a job. She even could pay for an apartment of her own, a rarity in the city.

But she didn’t have a boyfriend. She didn’t even have a decent list of ex-boyfriends, really.

She didn’t have anyone she could share her life with, someone to talk to when her day was bad, or someone she could listen to. No real friends. At best, she had co-workers that she could grab a drink with after a day’s work. It took her a few minutes to think of the last person she’d had a conversation with thatwasn’ta lawyer.

She didn’t even know the name of her hairdresser.

So was she happy?

No.

But, enough of that negative self-pity.

She was Laura Bennett, and she was going to reach her goals and more.

So what if it took her an extra six month or year to make partner? That wasn’t going to stop her from doing everything that she wanted to do.

Getting off the elevator in her building, she was fumbling for her keys when her phone rang, and she looked. It was an out-of-town number. She knew the area code. It was a Pueblo number.

“Hello, this is Laura Bennett.”

“MissBennett? Hello, I’m Adam Franklin,” the man on the other end of the line said. “Are you busy?”

“I’m just getting home from work, Mr.Franklin,” Laura replied, opening the door. She stepped inside, and as soon as the door closed, flipped the twin locks she had by habit. “There we go. Now what can I do for you, Mr.Franklin?”

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