“Hedge,” Casey said quietly, “can you hook me up or not? It’s up to you.”
“Yes, Casey Cat, of course I can. And I will. But with this snippy attitude, you will owe me big,” he said.
Casey smiled with pleasure. “You’re all talk.”
“And you? Are you ready to take action?” The image of her in the taxicab came to mind.
“Stop flirting with me. Can you get me a spot?” she asked, unable to remain serious.
“I will call Charlie Seedham. It will be up to you, however, to get a spot.” Charlie, Hugh’s friend, was in charge of summer internships for B school students.
“I appreciate this, Hugh,” she said, feeling relieved. “And you’re right. I was too proud to call you earlier.”
“Ah, that’s better,” he said. “Done. I’ll call you back.”
A few hours later, Casey had an interview set up for Wednesday afternoon. Casey missed her organizational behavior class to meet Charlie Seedham, who gave her a hard time about coming in so late for an interview. But he gave her an offer anyway, and Casey sent Hugh a bottle of wine and promised to take him to dinner.
BOOK III
Grace
1 OBJECT
ELLA’S LAWYER, RONALD COVERDALE, was the only one who wasn’t surprised by Ted’s request. In his twenty-four years as a matrimonial lawyer, he had seen the worst the heart can inflict.
Ella was sitting in the lawyer’s sunny thirty-ninth-floor corner office on Fiftieth and Park. It couldn’t have been a prettier day outside. Ronald Coverdale’s spacious office smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and an expensive citrus air freshener. On his glass-and-steel desk, a charger-size crystal ashtray sat empty except for a single half-smoked stub. The lawyer was trim and wore an English suit cut close to his body. Ronald’s mind worked quickly, and he didn’t have patience for most people. He hardly needed any new clients but had agreed to take Ella Shim’s case as a favor to David Greene, the development director of his son’s school. Ronald liked Ella Shim fine as a client. In fact, he liked looking at her, for she was easy on the eye—only confirming what he had learned over the years. Men left beautiful young women as well as ugly women. Romantic love was a complicated and fickle bond without much security.
For a marriage to last, Ronald believed that both partners should possess a stubborn will, a fear of failure, and a strong sense of shame of breaking from convention—mind you, this was not a recipe for a happy marriage, but it could make two people stay married. If two people had a lot of sex, that was helpful. Having many children did not keep a marriage going, despite all the for-the-sake-of-the-children talk to the contrary. In fact, the more kids there were, the more likely the man would cheat and the woman would be too busy to notice or too tired to care. Men left when the children were not so adorable and the women were too old to marry again, ensuring the Medea effect. The Kim divorce was interesting, because the man had stayed while she was pregnant, then bolted not much after. Ronald had seen it all.
“Why would he want joint custody?” Ella asked him, her hands folded ladylike in her lap.
“Why do you think he might want that?” Ronald redirected the question. There was no reason for the lawyer to speculate on these matters. The wife would know her spouse better.
“I was at my father’s since August, and in the eight months I was in Forest Hills, Ted came by to see Irene six times.”
“And since you’ve been back in the city?” Ronald picked up his pen to jot down the dates.
“I moved back into the house the first of May.” It was Casey who had pushed her to take back the house. “And the past two weeks, ever since we’ve been back in the city, Ted hasn’t come by at all,” Ella said. “He knows I’d never deny his right to see his child, and I would want Irene to know her father and to see him regularly.” Her voice grew more strained. “But now you’re saying he could take her away from me.”
“Not take away from you, Ella. He is asking for joint legal and physical custody, which means that he would have fifty percent decision-making power in child rearing, and he might want to have physical custody for fifty percent of the time. Ted’s lawyer was rather insistent on this point—of custody.”
“But I would’ve asked him for his opinion on how to raise Irene. Of course I would have, but. . .” Ella started to cry. “But she can’t live with him for half the—” She couldn’t get out the words.