I smiled. “Yes, ma’am.”
Vera leaned her large frame in and hugged me and the waterfall between us started. Vera wasn’t much on crying, but anyone standing in that parking lot would have thought the opposite. She finally let me go and pulled a couple tissues from her skirt pocket. She wiped my face and handed the tissue to me.
I stared at Vera. “I’m scared.”
She wrapped an arm around my waist. “I know you are, honey bunny. But it’s all gonna work out just fine. Your momma was right about one thing. You ain’t but fourteen, but you too big for this place. This town ain’t equipped to hold somebody as smart and strong as you. Now, get on that bus and don’t come back until the good Lord sends you back. Now go.”
The driver trotted down the stairs of the bus and smiled at us. He took my suitcase and tucked it underneath in the luggage compartment.
Vera gave me another hug. “Go on now.”
I climbed the stairs of the bus into the stifling scent of disinfectant and human sweat. I’m a big girl. I can handle this.
I walked past a pregnant lady with two little kids snuggled underneath each of her arms, an old man and woman sitting side by side talking, before I took a window seat near the middle of the bus. I located my little ragtag family out in the parking lot. Sammy, Vera, and Birdie stood beside the car waving up at me. I watched them, Vera smiling and Miss Birdie blowing kisses, as the bus pulled out of the lot and onto the street. And then I cried for a solid hour, straight across the Georgia–South Carolina state line.
Part 1
The Elephants
Chapter 1
Six forty-five in the morning was far too early for keeping secrets.
But Michael and I are lawyers and that’s what lawyers do. We keep secrets. Attorney-client privilege, confidential work product, ethical rules, all the ten-dollar terms we use to describe the ways we harbor information from prying eyes.
I hustled through the parking garage, a veritable wind tunnel on a cold blustery January morning, and inside the lobby of Houghton Transportation Company. Houghton management proudly announced its corporate prosperity and success to visitors with an entryway of gleaming chandeliers, polished steel, and veined marble floors. Inside this sleek glass and metal cage, we raced around for ten-and twelve-hour days in our hamster wheels of closed-door meetings, videoconference calls, and potluck lunches in the breakroom.
It was so early, the security guard hadn’t even shown up for his post at the front desk. Good. No clumsy banter. The only sound in the lobby was the click-click of my red suede Louboutin pumps skittering across the marbled floor to the elevator bank. I pressed the call button for the twentieth floor. I don’t drink coffee, but I wished I had brought a travel mug of tea or a bottle of water with me to wash away the brain fog. Morning meetings weren’t unusual for us. But this one was particularly early and I’m not partial to sunrise secrets.
As the elevator rose, I closed my eyes for a moment and leaned into the wall. Michael is the executive vice president and general counsel, and I work under him as assistant general counsel in the Legal Department. Michael was cryptic in his call the night before, maybe because someone else was nearby: Let’s meet in my office in the morning. 6:45. I didn’t press him. He did the same thing last week, a late-night meeting that lasted over an hour. Only we didn’t talk about work. We didn’t even have sex.
That time, he wanted me to sympathetically listen while he complained about his wife. My better judgment told me I needed to end this. So many years. So much time wasted.
Michael was gorgeous with chiseled features, deep blue eyes, and the tall trim stature of a Kennedy from Cape Cod. If anyone had seen us together as a couple, we would have made quite the sight, me with all my tall, cocoa-hued coily mane and jiggly midsection against his slim buttoned-down WASP frame.
I’ve stood five feet, eight inches—six feet, in the right heels—since I was in the seventh grade. Men are either intimidated by me or challenged to climb and conquer “Mt. Ellice.” Honestly, I think men are attracted to the darker side they see in me. What makes her tick? they ask themselves. But Michael was different, or at least that’s what I told myself. He matched me in every way—height, intellect, and humor. He was my equal except for that pesky little business of a wife and two kids. I was stupid for sleeping with this man. Vera and her friends had a saying: Never get your honey where you make your money.
I should have gone somewhere different after leaving Dillon & Beck, the law firm where we used to work, but he made me a generous offer and I followed him here. And nothing had changed, despite all his promises of a new beginning and a different work-life balance as in-house counsel. Maybe one day I’ll get my shit together and go find the job, and the life, that I deserve.