Page 103 of The Suit

“Professor Grannery…”

“Beulah, I think we’re probably past the formalities. You can call me Jennifer.”

Huh, Jennifer. I don’t think I’d ever known her first name. It was also not sure how comfortable I felt using it. She would always and forever be Professor Grannery to me.

I smiled. “Thank you for coming here, I appreciate it beyond measure.”

“You’re welcome, Beulah. It’s going to be a long journey until this is over, and I’ll be here with you.”

“I know.” I sighed, the adrenaline crashing to a hard stop.

It was going to be hard; FSJ would not go down without a fight, but Agent Diggs said I’d be able to avoid most of it if the evidence they’d found was good enough, and he’d promised my name would be kept out of it. I could also kiss goodbye a career in practice, but I’d had enough of it already to last me a lifetime. I had more important things to do; namely spend time figuring out who I was, what I loved, make friends, and visit my family more than once a decade.

And I had a new job to start.

One of Grannery’s stipulations for helping me was that I come and teach with her. It was the easiest decision I’d ever made, even though I knew nothing about teaching. But if I could survive the last few weeks, and come out the other side, I could manage to teach a class of summer school students.

Her head tilted and she removed her glasses. “You’re not coming back with me tonight, are you?”

I shook my head. “No. I need a few days to pack up my life here. It won’t take long,” I added with a small chuckle, trying to make a joke out of it.

Grannery reached out and rubbed my arm, exactly the type of thing Santa used to do. “You’ll be fine, Beulah. I’ll see you when you get back to the city. Now come on, I’m hungry. Spy work certainly builds an appetite,” she added, like she was the one who’d risked her life stealing confidential information.

* * *

I walked into my apartment and did what I’d wanted to do for the last three weeks - get into bed, pull the comforter over my head and stay there. I fell into the deepest sleep, broken dreams of police raids and kisses; of Santa and Jackson and Muscot; of the sunrise hitting the Chrysler building and car races around the Columbia quad, then woke up fourteen hours later, sweat-soaked and more rested than I’d ever felt in my life.

I could do this.

I could take on FSJ.

I could move to New York.

I could win Rafe back, or at least get him to talk to me. I hoped.

Good job I had all the time in the world now.

20

Rafe

Islammed my hand down on my desk as the papers in the corner started fluttering in a new breeze.

“Sabrina, the door! It keeps fucking opening! Can you call the facilities team to get it fucking fixed already?!”

A pointed throat clearing had me looking up from the summary judgement appeal I was currently writing to find Murray and Kit standing in the doorway, both wearing similar expressions of… revulsion, possibly. Shock, maybe. Not sure why though.

“Oh, it’s you. What are you doing here? Can you close the door?”

“Please.”

“What?” I frowned, confused, my head already back to the appeal I was concentrating on. Or trying to concentrate on. This particular one was against a judge who’d decided that Celia Ellington, an eighty-year-old lady who’d lived in her Brooklyn apartment for fifty years, needed to move out next month because the owners of the building had decided to evict her to redevelop. They’d given her two months’ notice, and she had nowhere else to go.

“Can you close the door,please, Murray. Also, so wonderfulto see you, seeing as I haven’t seen you since I stormed out of Penn’s five days ago. And hello, Kit, you look beautiful today.”

I grunted, waving them in. “Yes, yes, please. Hello, Kit, you look nice.”

“Thank you,” though she didn’t seem remotely appeased by my compliment.

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