9. Nick
Nick sippedhis mediocre coffee and brushed a speck of lint from his suit then turned a page in the open file folder on his lap. It was meant to look like a case but was actually Evan’s background check, which he happened to have in his briefcase. Still, the idea was to give any passersby the impression that he was a competent, thoughtful attorney perusing a file, even if what he was actually doing was sitting on a bench outside a closed courtroom, playing pretend.
It wasn’t his first time faking it. In fact, in the ten days since Evan had taken up residence in his home, Nick had been faking it daily, leaving the house each morning under the pretense of having a job. What he did for eight hours varied, but mostly, he just drove to a coffee shop on the other side of town and spent the day looking for jobs, cold emailing any firm he thought might have him.
No bites so far, but it beat being at home, where interactions with Evan were awkward if infrequent. They had different schedules, which was good, so they hadn’t spoken much since the fight over whether Evan was flirting with the movers. In fact, Evan seemed mostly nocturnal, and by the time Nick got home at night, he was tucked up in his studio, where he was likely to stay until two or three in the morning.
Nick could hear him sometimes on those nights he couldn’t sleep, the strange, new presence in his home presenting itself in the creak of a floorboard or the opening of a door. It was weird, that liminal state in which he and Evan existed, leaving ghostly traces of their lives for the other to find.
Truthfully, though, Nick knew he couldn’t keep hiding in a coffee shop. If nothing else, the artisanal fair-trade blend was costing him a pretty penny, and while Evan’s rent had eased the burden of his unemployment, it hadn’t alleviated his money problems entirely. So after a week and a half of coffeehouse, Nick had decided to try something new—namely, spending his day at the courthouse instead. There was method to his madness. An old acquaintance was currently arguing an important case in the courtroom behind him, and Nick was determined to get face time with the man and let him know he needed a job.
And all right—the acquaintance in question wasn’t so much Nick’s contact as he was a former colleague of Ben, Nick’s ex-husband. In fact, Larry Benson had been Ben’s mentor for a while, though their management styles differed greatly. Larry was a perfectionist who worked his team hard and didn’t care much for excuses, especially if those excuses involved having a life outside the company. Which made Nick the perfect hire because he didn’t have a life at all.
The doors to Courtroom B opened, and a stream of people emerged, including several reporters scribbling on notepads and tapping on phones. Nick stood, setting his coffee and briefcase on the bench before studying the crowd. Nothing, nothing, and nothing, and then—about five minutes after the bulk of people departed, leaving him waiting like a jilted prom date—Larry strode through the open doors, trailed by his team.
Nick couldn’t find his voice, his legs having grown deep, dragging roots that bound him to the shiny parquet floor while branches wound around his tongue. Larry was going to walk right past him if he didn’t say something. He was going to miss his chance.
“Liza?” Larry said once he was about three feet past Nick.
Oh no.Nick snapped his head up, eyes wide, to find his former boss strolling toward Larry, a genteel smile on her deceptively kind face.
“Larry, hi, so good to see you,” she said, extending a hand. As she did so, her eyes cut to the side, widening in recognition. “Nick?”
“Hi. Hey.” Nick’s tongue loosened, words pushing past the thickness in his throat, probably because he was still angry enough at Liza that his frustration fought past his fear. Attempting to play it cool, he stepped closer to the duo and greeted them like they were old friends. “Liza. Larry.”
“Have we met?” asked Larry.
Well, that was humiliating. Diminished to the size of a dormouse, Nick stammered, “I, ah… I’m Ben Greer’s husband. Ex-husband. I’m Nick? Robinson?”
Larry frowned, likely flipping through his mental Rolodex. “Ben Greer. God, I haven’t seen him in ages. He was in an accident, right? How’s he doing?”
“Oh. Um. Good.”
It seemed neither the time nor place to explain that Nick hadn’t spoken to his ex since the divorce papers were signed, save for a single awkward encounter that he’d rather forget. Ben had been limping at the time, though, which might explain Larry’s “accident” comment. Maybe Nick ought to have probed, but holding a conversation had been tough, considering Ben had looked like he wanted to murder him during the few seconds they’d spoken.
“Still retired?” Larry pressed.
“As far as I know.”
“Ben’s an upstanding citizen now,” said Liza, the sort of person who knew everyone, thanks to her father. “He’s teaching woodworking classes, if you can believe it, and volunteering at the women’s shelter. Our firm helped him out with putting on some legal-aid classes last year.”
“Did you really?” Larry said with a chuckle. Nick might as well have been the stock painting of Lady Justice on the wall, for all the attention they were paying him. “Good for you. And him. Woodworking—is he any good?”
“He’s excellent. Once he retired, my dad was his first commission. Ben made him a desk.”
That prompted Larry to ask about her father, which led to such a long, ass-kissing conversation that Nick had time to count every subtle check in the pattern of Larry’s tie. Once again, he was the third wheel, the kid picked last at recess because he didn’t quite get social mores and didn’t really understand why nobody liked him.
“Where are you these days, Nick?” Liza asked, breaking him from his thoughts with the one question that brought him up short. The audacity, really—asking him that as if she hadn’t ruined his life less than a month prior.
“I, ah…” Nick was still trying to figure out how best to word groveling in front of people like Larry for an opportunity when a young, wary voice spoke from behind him.
“Are you guys lawyers?”
Turning, Nick found a girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen, standing slump-shouldered and sullen, her kohl-rimmed eyes blinking out at him from beneath heavy black bangs. She was short, pale, and far too skinny, dressed for a concert rather than a courtroom in an olive-green ribbed sweater and torn jeans with seams that split at the ankles and dragged on the floor. Weirdly, she could have been a time traveler from 1993. Nick could smell the proverbial teen spirit all over her.
“We are,” Liza said, not unkindly. “Can we help you, honey?”
“Yeah. I need one. A lawyer.” She folded her arms, the sleeves of her oversized sweater dwarfing her hands as she chewed on her bottom lip with the wariness of a kid chafing against adult rules in a system she’d been forced to navigate too soon.
Nick knew that look. He’d seen it on nearly every kid in the group home when they came face-to-face with the odds that had been stacked against them from the start.
“Can you be more specific?” Liza said with a tinge of condescension.
The girl bristled, and Nick felt an urge to put himself physically between them and tell Liza that clearly, this kid was in distress, and she needed to fuck off with her cavalier, privileged attitude. Instead, he watched as the girl narrowed her eyes and fixed Liza with a look of teenage disdain.
“Uh, yes. I got this letter that said I missed a court date, so my social worker brought me here so we could, like, figure it out. Only when we went to the office, they said that there was a warrant out for me because I missed the date, and they’d sent two notices. But I never got the notice because the lady checked the system, and the system said they sent it to this address where I was living, like, two families ago. And my social worker can’t get anyone in the public defender’s office on the phone, and I don’t want to get arrested again, so I came down here to find a freaking lawyer since you guys are, like, everywhere.”
Liza was stunned into silence, while Larry seemed stuck on the semantics. Nick, however, was familiar with the grinding crush of bureaucracy and bullshit. It was the same nonsense whether you were in Washington or Iowa, and without some help, the girl was going to end up with a record.
“How old are you?” Larry said after a moment.
“Sixteen.”
Old enough for a particularly prickly judge to be an asshole to her—make an example, or whatever language they were using these days.
Nick sighed. “I can help.”
Liza’s and Larry’s heads swiveled toward him, and Nick straightened his spine. Liza wanted pro bono work? He’d give her pro bono. This was the purest of deeds, done out of the goodness of his heart to impress a potential employer. Not because the girl reminded him of what it felt like to be a kid crushed by the system.
“You can?” said the girl.
“Sure. Love a little pro bono work,” he said with a pointed look at Liza before glancing at Larry. “I’m going to take her to find her social worker, figure this thing out. Larry, so good to see you. I’ll tell Ben you said hello. And hey, maybe we ought to grab lunch sometime?”
Larry looked between Nick and the kid then nodded. “Sure. Call the office and have my assistant set something up.”
That was as high a note as any to leave on, so Nick looked to the girl then gestured down the hall. She led him toward the elevator bank on the far wall, taking two steps for every one of his.
“Thanks,” she muttered as they walked.
“It’s fine. What floor is your social worker on?”
“Four.”
“Four.” He took a pack of gum from his pocket and offered her a piece, waiting until she’d taken one before speaking again. “What’s your name?”
“Sydney.”
“Sydney. I’m Nick. You wanna tell me how you ended up here?”
“I mean. I got arrested, so… yeah.”
“Yeah, I gathered.” Nick pressed the elevator button and glanced down at her. “But if I’m going to help you out, I need you to be more specific.”
“Well. Okay. So, like, I was staying with this family, and Melly—that was the lady—was being a bitch, and she wouldn’t let me use her car to visit my br—my boyfriend.”
Oh boy. The elevator doors opened, and Nick ushered Sydney inside. “Go on.”
“So he said, you know, ‘Just take it. She won’t notice.’ Which I did. Only I guess she did notice, and she was mad about it, so she reported it stolen, and we got pulled over, and, like… we got arrested.”
Grand theft auto. Fantastic.Nick stifled a sigh as they arrived on the fourth floor. “Then what happened?”
“Donna—that’s my social worker—she came and got me, and then I moved into the group home. That’s where I am now.”
A prickle of heat went up Nick’s spine, though he fought to keep his expression neutral. “And your boyfriend?”
“He’s not my boyfriend anymore.”
“Ah, no, I meant… what’s going on with his case?”
“Oh. Well, like, his dad’s kind of a big deal, so they got the charges dropped with a warning because I was the one driving. And now I don’t even go to his school anymore, so that’s… whatever.”
It was clear she was trying to mask the hurt she’d felt at her treatment compared with her idiot boyfriend, and while Nick didn’t know him, he felt very sure the boyfriend was an idiot. A rich, privileged little shit who had the whole world working for him. Because there were two systems of justice, as Nick knew well, and the better one was bought and paid for.
“And they sent the letter for the court date to the woman you stole the car from, and she didn’t pass it on?” he asked.
“No, the one before that.” She folded her arms and scowled as they navigated the maze of bureaucratic hallways. “I didn’t even live there that long.”
Maybe not, but she’d been there long enough for her address to make it into a system where some drone doing a mail merge had fucked up, overridden her current address, and sent a letter that she’d never received. Typical. Nick’s nostrils flared, though he managed to keep his temper.
“We’re going to get it sorted,” he said. Historically, the criminals he defended were more white-collar than wounded teenager, but he could certainly get her through the afternoon without being arrested. After that, the public defenders could deal with her.
They turned a corner to find a woman, presumably Donna the social worker, holding a phone to her ear with a frantic expression on her face. When she saw Sydney, she let out a little cry of relief. “Sydney Ruth! You said you were going to the bathroom, and you’ve been gone twenty damn minutes!” Donna had a faint accent Nick couldn’t place—Caribbean, maybe—and kind, if exasperated, eyes.
“Yeah, well, I needed a lawyer. So I found one. His name is Nick.”
Nick extended his hand. “Hi. Donna, right?”
Donna hung up the phone, where she’d presumably been on hold, and shook his hand, her grip warm but firm. “Thank you so much. They got us a last-minute slot with a judge to try and sort this out, but she’s already ten minutes late.”
“Sydney gave me the nuts and bolts of what happened, and I’m happy to help out.” Nick straightened his tie, projecting a confidence he didn’t necessarily feel but could fake. “This is relatively simple—we’re going to go in, apologize for our tardiness, which I’ll use to segue into explaining the situation. I’ll make sure to touch on the inefficiencies of the system, how Sydney’s trying to do better, and then we’ll get a new court date and—”
“Another one?” Sydney yelped. “I just want it to be over! Can’t they, like, give me a fine, or whatever?”
“Ah, that’s not…” Nick sighed. He wasn’t about to go into the intricacies of how the justice system was set up to grind people—especially poor people—beneath the wheels of its slow-moving processes. “Today’s just about getting your warrant lifted. You still have to deal with the actual charge around the car theft, but your lawyer will be able to help you with that.”
Sydney’s scowl deepened. “You’re my lawyer.”
“Honey, Nick’s just helping us today, and he’s being very generous to do that,” Donna said, putting a hand on Sydney’s shoulder. “Once we get your court date sorted, we’ll work with the public defender’s office to get you your own representation.”
Sydney’s bottom lip shook. Nick worried she might cry. But then she steeled herself, a slick mask of nonchalance sliding over her face. Christ, he knew that expression. He’d spent years perfecting it, in fact—shutting himself down so the world couldn’t hurt him anymore. Which was how, for the second time that afternoon, he found himself making the kid an offer, only this time there was no potential employer or beastly ex-boss to impress.
“I’m actually in between jobs right now,” he said slowly, hardly believing he was doing it as the words left his lips. “So as long as the case isn’t too much of a beast, I’m happy to help. I’m sure we can secure a plea since it’s her first time.”
Donna looked at Sydney, whose shuttered face had begun to show a modicum of hope. “I appreciate the offer, but we can’t afford—”
“No charge.” Nick surprised himself again by reaching over to squeeze Sydney’s shoulder. For a moment, he worried he’d overstepped, but Sydney straightened, taking a step closer to him, and he realized that he’d been chosen as her protector for good or for ill. Clearing his throat, he forced a smile and looked down at her pale, peaky little face. “Come on, clock’s ticking. Let’s go convince this judge you’re not an imminent threat to society, and we’ll take it from there.”