had me there. I attracted every loser in the universe.
My face must have reflected some of my chagrin, for Hilary nodded with satisfaction. “Exactly. If you had done what I had advised and gone into the family business, you would’ve met some nice executive and be married by now. But no, you never would listen to me.”
I pinched my nose. “This is getting us nowhere.”
“So typical of you, Katherine. Changing the topic when I’m trying to talk reason.”
“I’ve lost track of what you’re trying to get me to do.”
“Not represent Lloyd, dear.”
“Why not? He needs a good attorney who’ll believe in his innocence.”
“What he needs is a great criminal attorney, and quite frankly, that’s not you, Katherine. What did you do at the U.S. Attorney’s? Prosecute a few executives who stole from their companies? Give them a slap on the wrist with a fine and send them to one of those white-collar prisons for a few years?”
Hilary leaned forward. “The government plans to seek the death penalty against Lloyd. This is his life at stake.”
She was right. I had dealt with only high-brow criminals in a world where the sole stake was money. First-degree murder was a different matter.
“Dear, Lloyd is going to need an attorney who can get him a good deal and you’re not up to it. How many of your so-called court victories can be attributed to the fact that you were dating the boss? That he might have given you easy cases? Even your uncle and godfather noticed that Harold sat as second chair on your trials more than was normal.”
Resentment burned in my stomach. It looked like the rumors had literally hit home. Only Carling and Nicole believed in me and my capabilities. Granted, I might not be experienced enough to try a murder case, but I certainly could plea-bargain with the best of them.
“Glad to know you think so highly of my abilities. Just for the record, I never rode on Harold’s coattails.”
“Be reasonable. You can help best by steering Lloyd’s wife toward the names of several good attorneys. A few of us on the restoration board are quietly raising money to help out. Of course, we can’t do so openly because of Grace.”
“Of course.” Mustn’t take a stand that the press could pounce on. I rose. “I have to be going.”
Unease clouded her eyes. “Katherine, you won’t do anything foolish?”
I crossed the terrace to the doors. “Now why would I start being anything but a disappointment to you?”
“Katherine!”
I paused.
“Why do you always fight me? I only want what’s best for you.”
“If that’s the case—” I turned halfway “—then why don’t you ever listen to what I want?”
“Oh, I’ve listened.” My aunt’s lips thinned. “But you never seem to know what’s best for you. At times you are utterly unreasonable just like…” Her voice trailed off.
I stilled. “Like my mother?”
“No, like my brother. Always so righteous. Always so wrapped up in such an abstract concept of what justice is that you never can recognize the realities of life. Life isn’t black-and-white, Katherine, it’s filled with gray.”
“That’s a lesson you’ve taught me well.”
All too well. The defining moment had been when I was fifteen and home for summer-school break. My aunt had accused a servant of breaking a Dresden figurine, even though Uncle Colin had been the culprit because he’d had one too many. All my arguments and pleas had fallen on my aunt’s deaf ears. When it came to her husband, Colin could do no wrong. He denied the incident and that was enough for her. Not only had the servant Carmelina been fired, she had been deported back to Colombia.
Six months later Carmelina and her family had been at the wrong place when a gunfight had broken out between a drug cartel and the police. Carmelina had died instantly, the earnest eighteen-year-old girl who had only craved and worked for a better life for her family. When I had come across another Colombian servant, distraught and crying in the kitchen over a letter from home with the news, I had gone to Hilary. Her only comment had been, “Death happens,” and that I should get use to it.
As if I wasn’t already all too familiar with death and the everlasting grip of its consequences. Exhibit One, my grandparents. Exhibit Two, my mother.
It had been at the moment I stared at her in disbelief over her callousness that my desire to be a lawyer who fought for others had been born.
Hilary rolled up a cuff of her robe. “I’ve tried my best to steer you from going down the same reckless path Jonathan traveled.”
To the point of suffocation. “If you had only answered my questions about my grandparents—”
Hilary’s chair scraped as she rose. “And tell you what? That Jonathan and Marguerite vanished one night? That the ensuing investigation uncovered his dirty secret—that he took bribes as a judge? That the police closed the case after concluding my brother and his wife had probably been murdered and their bodies dumped in the ocean? I see no need to display the family’s soiled linen.”
Only the barest flush across Hilary’s cheeks betrayed her anger. “As much as you love putting them on a pedestal, Jonathan and his treasured Marguerite weren’t perfect. She wanted too much and he was too weak. If you don’t learn to control your rash ways, you’ll share the same miserable fate as my brother.”
Even as I stared at her, the abyss between us widened, a lifetime of missed opportunities. As I stood on that knife-thin edge of no turning back, in a protective reaction I wrapped my fingers around the locket at my neck. Luckily it hadn’t been damaged in the courtroom scuffle.
Oddly, the piece of jewelry containing my grandparents’ pictures had been my guiding light since I had found it in my mother’s jewelry case in her former room.
No matter what Hilary and the rest of the world said about my grandparents, I had never believed it. True, as a lonely child surrounded by self-absorbed adults, I had fantasized that they were the parents I never had. As a young girl I could only see the warmth of their smiles the camera had captured. As an adult I recognized the core-deep integrity in their expressions that the camera had captured. Maybe I didn’t know who I was, but I knew in this moment the person I didn’t want to be.
“I’m sorry that you don’t understand me, Aunt Hilary, but I have to lead my own life and make my own mistakes.”
“I give up trying to reason with you.” She gave a slight dismissive movement with her right hand and turned away to walk toward the entrance to her suite of rooms. “Try not to drag the family name through another escapade.” She disappeared into the house.
I tucked the locket under my blouse. Hilary was right on one point. While I couldn’t do anything about the old family scandal, I could undo the damage I had done to the Rochelle name by getting my own act together. Time to get started.
As I hurried
