Page 4 of The Workaholic Down the Hall

She was dressed for work in slim pants and a fitted blazer that made her look taller than her five foot three inches. Everyone in my family was short, but I was the shortest at five foot one. Mimi's long, lustrous brown hair was twisted up in a loose bun and she was wearing those dark-rimmed glasses she didn't need, but wore when she feared she wasn't being taken seriously. I had argued with her in the past that she'd won too many high profile cases not to be taken seriously, but she said men had short memories and sex-obsessed brains. She had a low opinion of all men except her husband, Hank, who was an eleventh-grade history teacher and one of the kindest, most acerbically funny people I'd ever met.

I stuck my tongue out at her, but she was right. I'd found showering in my tiny cubicle of a shower difficult. My baby bump was not huge, in fact many women had cooed over how tiny I still was at seven months, but when you're used to walking around taking up a certain amount of space, it's difficult to adjust to new proportions.

I pulled the towel off my head and reached for my comb, but Mimi grabbed it first. “Let me,” she said. “I'll comb your hair and you can tell me how it went.”

“Why don't you comb my hair and tell me about your day,” I said. “I'm not ready to talk.”

I went into the living room and got comfy on the couch. Mimi sat next to me.

“This case has got me all kinds of stressed,” Mimi said. “Hank might just move out.”

“He won't move out. And you haven't lost a case, yet. What's different about this one?”

“It's my first family law case.”

Ah. Mimi had wanted to work in family law and help orphaned and misplaced kids like me for as long as she'd wanted to be a lawyer. She couldn't just go and join a firm that already handled family cases, oh, no. She had to work for the best law firm in the city, become partner, and convince them to start taking on family cases with her at the helm. She never took the easy road, not anywhere. I'd told her more than once that she'd inherited all our familial generation's ambition.

“How'd you convince the other partners?”

“I'm just taking on two or three cases a year for now. I have to work enough lucrative cases to make up for it.”

“Will that be enough?”

She shrugged. “For now, yeah. We'll see how it goes, but the partners aren't going to like me taking on more cases that don't make us money.”

“There have to be family law cases that bring in money. Otherwise how would firms that specialize in that field manage?”

“They take on more lucrative cases in that arena, custody disputes, that kind of thing. I'm not interested in those cases.” She sighed. “I may just have to open my own firm.” She finished combing my hair and set the comb on the coffee table.

“How does Hank feel about that?”

She smiled, her eyes getting that far-away look they always got when she thought of her husband. “He's willing to support me, but he's worried I'll be taking on too much. He thinks being pregnant and opening a firm would be too much stress for me to handle. He doesn't really get that stress is like mother's milk to me, I thrive on it.”

I eyed her petite frame, looking for signs of a baby bump. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

She got a little wrinkle of confusion between her brows. “What?”

I looked at her belly and raised my eyebrows.

She slapped one hand over her flat stomach and the other over her mouth. “Aubrey Honor Fletcher, if I was pregnant you would be the first one I told. I wouldn't just slip it awkwardly into a conversation about something completely unrelated.”

I sighed. “I'm sorry, Mi. How many times do I have to say I'm sorry?” I may have blurted out the news of my pregnancy in a less than stellar way.

She sniffed. “A few more. I don't think you'll ever understand how it hurt me to find out my only niece was four months pregnant while she was talking about spaghetti.”

“I was really craving spaghetti. And I told you, I didn't even realize I was pregnant until I was three months along.”

“That's what you say, but I don't believe you. How could you not notice missed periods, chronic nausea, and extreme exhaustion?”

Because I'd been heartbroken. I didn't tell her that. Someday, I hoped Noah would be in his child's life and I didn't want my aunt to think badly of him. It was bad enough that she knew our child was the result of a drunken encounter that Noah didn't even remember. I stood. “What can I get you to drink?”

“I'm not thirsty. I just want to know what the hell happened with that asshole who knocked you up.”

No matter how many times I explained that he wasn't an asshole, she didn't listen. If anyone was the asshole in this situation, it was me for not telling him about the baby. “He didn't give me a chance to tell him. He was so, so angry.” I laced my fingers together and placed them in my lap. “I hadn't expected him to be so angry.”

Mimi pursed her lips and scooted around to sit criss-cross applesauce. “I have no interest in defending the man and I absolutely don't believe he doesn't remember having sex with you, because no man forgets sex, no matter how drunk he is, but you did leave him with no explanation, no discussion, and he did try to call you. Didn't he even show up at your door?”

He had shown up at my door. She knew he had, because she'd been with me and I'd made her hide in the closet with me. There was no way he could have gotten in to look for us, but I'd made her hide anyway, until I was sure he'd given up. I folded my hands over my baby bump and sucked my bottom lip between my teeth. My cheeks heated. I'd been wrong to hide from him, I knew that, but I couldn't face him. I'd told myself he'd get over it, that he'd forget me as easily as he'd forgotten our one-night stand. It didn't make me feel better that he hadn't forgotten me. “He was probably just annoyed that he'd lost his assistant.”

---