Page 41 of Pleading Innocence

The haunting of Jared Crawford continued. It already tired me out before and now I was growing fatigued. I slammed my palm against the steering wheel as I rounded the street corner to pull into the parking lot we shared with the other businesses on the plaza. Before getting out of the car, I gave myself a minute to breathe, leaning my head against the steering wheel. If Jared Crawford was meant to haunt my life forever, well, I was going to have to just ignore his ghostly ass.

On an exhale, I reminded myself that at least I didn’t have to work with him anymore. And he wasn’t going to be allowed to use his immature, nearly forty-year-old ass to browbeat me anymore. I didn’t let him do it when I was working within his company and I sure as hell wasn’t going to let his inability to see past his nose thwart me now that there was reasonable distance between us.

The pang of crushed hopes roared within me. It was the fact that I kept hoping he’d do something kind only for him to keep proving to me that he was only capable of being a jackass that hurt the most. It made me feel stupid and incapable of understanding that the man he was showing me was who he truly was and I needed to take him at face value. He would never be the man I wanted him to be, yet my body and my heart ached for him unreasonably. I didn’t want to be with the man that he was. And I’d made peace with that when I left.

For the life of me, I just couldn’t understand why the fuck this man seemed to be embedded in my life. I left him behind and it was like the powers that be were playing a cruel joke on me, injecting him in my life again. For what purpose? I wasn’t sure. Perhaps it was meant to strengthen me, to test me and throw seemingly insurmountable obstacles in my path that I was meant to overcome. Maybe this was teaching me resilience as a lawyer. It was difficult to conclude what other reason for his permanency in my life could be. It was like he could not be erased. He was like a stubborn pencil sketch that wouldn’t go away no matter how hard I rubbed with the damn eraser.

So I was going to put my resilience to the test and use his unwanted voice in my mind to fuel me to work even harder, even if I was working that hard just to drown his voice out. I swung my doors up and stepped out of the car, chunky heels tapping on conjoined gravel waiting for the ridiculous wing of my car to match my energy, but it didn’t.

What I wanted to do was to make a beeline straight for the library to drown myself in law books and research so that I could find something to counteract his team’s arguments in court today—because they’d made some pretty damn good points. The outcome for our client was not looking so great. Somehow, however, our points were strong enough for the judge to decide to give us an extra day before issuing a ruling.

Meanwhile, the stupid Lambo door was taking its sweet little time gliding back into place as if, unlike me, it’d had a peaceful, relaxing day today and was trying to prolong that relaxation with a good, long stretch. I grimaced at it, and when it finally closed, I stomped away from it like my door and I had just been in an argument.

Huffing, I pushed into the firm, giving the receptionist a fake-ass smile because she didn’t need to be exposed to my sour-ass mood and made my way through the door leading to the office. If my boss hadn’t stopped me, I would’ve kept walking down the hallway to the library.

“Ms. Levine, join us,” she said, and I spun around to see that I’d walked past the client and the rest of the lawyers that were in court with us today. My boss had a look of irritation on her face, and I tried not to shrink into myself as I hurried back toward the conference table.

“My apologies,” I said under my breath, sliding into my seat.

Ms. Saunders turned her eyes away from me and focused on the client, almost as if she were embarrassed. I kicked myself under the table. I was tired of letting Jared Crawford interfere with my job. From now on, it was about the client in this case for me, and whatever Jared Crawford had to say about it didn’t matter. He could bite me.

Tuning my thoughts out, I listened in on the conversations happening around me. This small space with just the quietened voices within the group made it easy for me to really home in on the client. Before, I’d noticed something about the client, but my head was of course crowded with other thoughts so I didn’t read much into it. But for a small woman who wasn’t overweight, she seemed to have problems with breathing and her little cough breaks reminded me of someone in law school.

A light bulb turned on in my head and I interrupted the conversation between the rest of my colleagues and the client to ask, “Do you smoke?”

Everyone stopped talking and looked at me as if I’d just passed my place, asking an inappropriate question at a time like this. It became pertinent for me to clarify my question.

“I’m sorry for interrupting, but I notice you have trouble breathing and you take quite a few coughing breaks. It reminds me of a case I once got to sit in on. I hope you don’t mind me asking, but it really is for the benefit of the case why I asked the question,” I said.

Skeptical eyes were turned upon me, and the way my boss’s eyes burned into me, it felt like actual fire on my skin. It was as if she was trying to warn me not to further embarrass her—first I’d come into the court ‘late’ after my talk with Jared led to me missing the arrival of the judge, then I’d walked in here and completely dismissing the client and rest of the counsel sitting in the conference area.

The client looked at me in confusion but decided to answer the question. “I’ve never touched a cancer stick in my life,” she said. She was an older woman, in her fifties, and I was guessing by ‘cancer stick’ she meant weed as well, which probably meant she had never smoked, period.

I nodded. “When did you start experiencing these symptoms?” I asked, aware that I sounded like I was her healthcare professional rather than her lawyer.

“Um, I’m not sure,” she stuttered.

“What is the point of your questions, Ms. Levine?” Ms. Saunders asked, impatience evident in her tone.

Clearing my throat, I straightened up and addressed the room. “Back in law school, there was a schoolmate, I didn’t know them personally, but all their life they’d lived in this house their parents were renting. Around their midtwenties, this schoolmate of mine started having similar symptoms to our client here. For someone as young as they were and not the slightest bit overweight, they shouldn’t have been winded after a five-minute walk, needing to catch their breath as often as they did. And they had a horrible cough that just wouldn’t go away. After running some tests, it was found that they had asbestos poisoning, and after some inspection of the older house, it was confirmed that asbestos was being released from the things that were used to build the house. My schoolmate was able to sue her landlord and we all had the opportunity to attend the hearing as part of our lessons.”

The client’s eyes widened, and I could see my boss’s lips tilt up ever so slightly—it was almost unnoticeable.

“It may be a long shot, but it’s something,” Ms. Saunders said before turning to address the client. “We’re going to need your medical records before and after you moved into your apartment,” she said.

A relieved breath rushed from my lungs. I felt like I’d managed to salvage a bit of my self-esteem after running into Jared. Happiness bloomed in my chest as I silently celebrated the fact that my idea wasn’t discarded and ridiculed. Looked like Jared didn’t succeed in stamping all over my mood today after all.

Chapter 26

Mario

Myglassofficedoorswung open, banging against the glass wall it was attached to, and my head shot up from my computer in shock. My heart could’ve outrun a cheetah. However, when I looked up to see Jared scowling, I relaxed as he threw himself down on my brown leather sofa.

“Dude, you almost gave me a frickin’ heart attack!” I said. “Why the hell are you trying to tear my door off its hinges?! I know technically it’s yours or whatever, but jeez, I appreciate a door in my office, I’m just saying,” I breathed as my widened eyes began to soften.

He looked like hell. Jared could be an asshole, but he was a controlled asshole most of the time. Whenever he got mad, he got silent and disappeared for a swim. He didn’t fucking break people’s doors down. His tie was all loose and twisted to the side and he had his head sunk into the middle of his hands rubbing the shit out of his eyes.

“Are you gonna tell me what’s wrong?” I asked him when he didn’t speak.

---