Legal Bindings

1. Nick

Nick flexedhis fingers and wiped a damp palm against his thigh, wincing at the sensation of perspiration meeting wool. No matter—he was a professional, and he had a job to do. Not that the task at hand would endear him to his boss or help with the inane performance-improvement plan she’d put him on last month.

Shaking his head, Nick pulled a compact mirror from the top drawer of his heavy wooden desk. It occurred to him that he ought to know what type of wood it was. Ben, his ex-husband, would have known. Also, he probably would have known how old the tree had been when it was cut and the precise type of joinery holding it all together. The desk held an air of gravitas that said, “Here sits an important man. A lawyer, if you can believe it.” Only lately, Nick didn’t feel very important. For good reason, truth be told, and he might as well get it over with. So, he cleared his throat and pressed the button on his old-fashioned intercom.

“You can send him in, Rachel,” he said.

Seconds later, the door to his office opened, presumably to admit his asshole client, a man who’d embezzled money from a teachers’ pension fund. Nick didn’t look up. Matthew Peterman was guilty—there was no doubt about it—with a mile-wide paper trail leading straight to his sticky fingers. However, it had been Nick’s job to get him off with a slap on the wrist. Men like Matthew didn’t go to prison. They found patsies to pass the punishment on to, and their lawyers helped. Except Nick hadn’t done his job, and this was the day he had to tell Peterman he was facing prison time.

However, instead of Peterman, when the door opened, Nick looked up to find his assistant standing in the doorway with an apologetic look on her face.

“Is he late?” Nick said, noting her wince. Rachel winced at everything. She was a nervous person, which made her a poor fit for Nick, who was brusque on his best days.

“He’s… um, Liza called and said he’s not coming. And she wants to see you in her office.”

Rachel delivered that last bit with her eyes fixed firmly on the floor, and Nick’s stomach sank to his toes. His boss’s office wasn’t where he wanted to be, considering that every time he’d been in there lately, she’d berated him over yet another failing. Liza didn’t yell or scream, but being called to the carpet made Nick nervous anyway. Despite being years removed from his childhood, he still shied away from loud voices.

Swallowing, he got to his feet and nodded. “You can go.”

Rachel fled like a frightened field mouse, and Nick took a moment to look around his sparse, impersonal office. He had been there nearly a year, and while he didn’t like the clientele, he did appreciate the steady work, the paycheck, and the ecru business cards with the name of a top Seattle firm embossed on them.

The job was why he’d come back to Seattle in the first place. Following the divorce, he’d moved to San Francisco, but after a few years in the Bay Area, he’d been… well, homesick wasn’t the word. It was hard to be homesick when you’d never really had a home. But he’d felt adrift and ill at ease in San Francisco and missed Seattle’s gray drizzle, which suited him. So he’d applied to the open position with McNeeley and Lowe, and to his shock, he’d gotten the job. He wondered if it was because Liza remembered him from when he was married to Ben, but he liked to pretend he’d been hired on his own merits—though Liza was no stranger to nepotism. She was the granddaughter of the Lowe in McNeeley and Lowe, a trust fund baby who treated her job like a dalliance, reading management book after management book and implementing all sorts of nonsense plans for productivity.

Nick didn’t like Liza, but he’d learned long ago that going along to get along was the best course of action. Even when going along meant he let Liza put him on a performance-improvement plan because he wasn’t going to enough staff meetings or whatever nonsense she’d come up with to justify riding his ass like he was Seabiscuit. Deep down, though, he recognized that she wasn’t entirely in the wrong. He’d been struggling to stay afloat since he arrived, and lately, he’d just been drowning.

Plastering on a grim smile, Nick squared his shoulders and headed for Liza’s office. Her assistant announced his arrival, and when he entered the corner suite, he was surprised to find someone already there besides Liza.

“Uh, I can come back later,” he said, backing up.

“No, you’re fine.” Liza cleared her throat. “Nick, this is Jeff Phillips. He’s our HR representative.”

That was a bad sign. Nick didn’t know much, but he knew HR didn’t get involved unless there was something sketchy on the way. He took a reluctant seat. “What’s going on?”

“I assume you heard I’m taking you off the Peterman case,” Liza said.

“I hadn’t, but—”

“Nick, this isn’t working out. You’re not progressing as quickly as we’d hoped, and we’re going to have to let you go.”

The swiftness and severity of the statement hit like a blow. She sounded like she was reading from a canned script, not even bothering to meet his eyes as she ruined his life.

“I… what?”

“We’re letting you go. You’ll have severance, and—”

“But I was working on the plan! I was doing everything you said.”

“Honestly, Nick, when we have to resort to a PIP, it rarely results in success.”

“Then what’s the point?” That made him sound petulant. But also, he’d just been fired, so who cared what he sounded like? He’d never been fired in his life. Quit jobs, sure. Quit marriages… well, one, yes. But fired? Fired was for people who embezzled or lied—people like his clients, not like him.

“The point?” Liza echoed as if she’d never been asked that question before.

“Of course, we want everyone to succeed,” said Phillips, sounding even more like a drone than Liza. “And give them a fair shot. But underperformers tend not to improve, especially if they’re not the right cultural fit.”

“The right cultural… this is because of the volunteer crap, isn’t it?”

Liza cleared her throat and fiddled with some papers on her desk. “When you interviewed with me, I stressed the importance of the firm’s pro bono work.”

Nick fought the urge to roll his eyes. Every firm spouted feel-good bullshit about pro bono work during the interview, but in his experience, few of them meant it. McNeeley and Lowe appeared to be the exception.

“I didn’t think it was required,” he said, not mentioning that nobody had ever done a damn thing for him and that do-gooding was for people who’d had luckier lives.

“Technically, it’s not. But it’s strongly encouraged. Especially for, ah… underperformers.”

Nick shifted in his seat, still trying to litigate his case despite the evidence. “But—”

“You knew when you took the job that we do regular layoffs. And you’ve been here nearly a year.”

A few things clicked into place. Nick’s probationary period would be over after a year, and then he’d get some equity in the firm, plus a 401(k) match, more PTO, and… it didn’t matter. None of it was happening.

“We have some paperwork for you to sign,” said Phillips, whom Nick had nearly forgotten. Phillips was probably a lawyer, too, or at least had a retinue of lawyers making sure that whatever the firm did was aboveboard when it came to getting sued by disgruntled former employees.

Disgruntled former employees like Nick.

“I was trying,” Nick repeated, knowing he sounded like an angry little kid. “Liza…”

“Nick,” she said, sighing. “Please don’t make this harder than it needs to be. It can’t be coming as a surprise—you’ve ignored every invitation I’ve sent you for professional development, mentoring, or after-hours drinks.”

“Because they weren’t required!” he shot back, frustrated. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do with the damned plan.”

“You’re not a team player,” she said, her tone infuriatingly calm. “When I talked to the partners about cutting you, not one person spoke up in your defense. Not one. Do you realize how unusual that is? There’s always an argument. But with you…”

“I get it,” he said, stung. “Thanks, Liza, really. I appreciate your candor.”

“I think we’ve reached the end of any productive discussion here,” Phillips said. “Nick, we need you to sign the paperwork, after which you’ll be permitted back into your office with security to retrieve your things.”

“Security?” Visions of being frog-marched out of the building danced in his head. “I don’t need security.”

Phillips raised an unimpressed eyebrow, and for a moment, Nick could see himself through the man’s eyes. A pathetic loser in a cheap suit, groveling for a job he wasn’t even good at.

Nick couldn’t—wouldn’t—make a scene, though. He’d save what precious little dignity still clung to him and walk out with his head held high. At least he’d never brought any personal items to work, save for a plant, which he rarely watered. It stayed alive out of spite, and when his conscience got guilty enough, he’d take it to the bathroom and run it under the faucet as a minor concession to the fact that he owed it something.

“I’m not signing anything without reading it,” he said, snatching up the paperwork. “I’ll courier it over on Monday. As for my stuff…” He shrugged. “Tell whatever rent-a-cop you’ve got waiting outside to go get my coat and my keys. You can keep the plant.”

Phillips looked like he wanted to argue, but Liza just nodded before placing a call to her assistant. A tense silence settled as they waited, and Nick didn’t give them an easy out, holding painful eye contact with each of them, back and forth, until the security guard arrived with his things.

He stood stiffly, tugging on his coat and clutching the folder close to his chest. “Right. So.”

“If you need a reference…” Liza said.

Nick snorted. “Yeah, no thanks.” He strode past the security guard, trying his best to appear normal and nonchalant. At least he’d gotten the last word.

* * *

Nick drove home in a haze, his mind refusing to process what had happened to him. It wasn’t until he had parked and tripped on the step that led to his kitchen door that panic set in. He had losthis job. The job that paid his salary, which allowed him to pay the mortgage on the house.

The house. His house. The first one he’d ever owned.

Well, no. The mortgage company owned about eighty-five percent of it, and Nick was paying them an exorbitant amount for his very own slice of suburbia because he’d gotten into a bidding war and overpaid for a three-bedroom craftsman bungalow in desperate need of a face-lift. His plan had been to fix it up and turn it into his dream home, but after paying twenty-five thousand dollars more than he’d originally budgeted for, the renovations had been put on pause. But that was all right—Nick was used to being patient. The house was livable if not pleasant, and he could get by while he saved up enough to get her shipshape.

His one concession to vanity had been the exterior. Not wanting his house to be an eyesore to the neighbors, he’d sold most of his furniture and used the proceeds—plus his emergency fund—for a complete overhaul of the landscaping, a fresh coat of paint, new shutters, and a roof. From the outside, the house was beautiful, with dark-blue clapboard and matching cream-colored shutters. The lawn was perfectly manicured, and while the February gloom meant his trees and bushes were bare, in a few months, they would bloom into the cacophony of shades Nick’s landscape designer had promised.

Inside, though… well, Nick had plans. Or Nick had had plans. And now Nick had lost his job.

His chest leaden with the weight of failure, he let himself in then slid down the wall next to the door, slumped against the linoleum, and pulled out his termination paperwork to review. The severance package was bullshit—one month’s pay for every year of service. He hadn’t even been there a fucking year.

He could just see it. The big red eviction notice on the door. The padlock and chain. The neighbors on their porches, pointing and whispering while Nick stood on the front lawn, surrounded by his sparse belongings.

The notion was cartoonish, but he knew what it was like to be gawked at and shamed. He remembered people coming out of their houses in nightclothes, bleary-eyed and staring as Nick’s grandmother turned circles in her slip, singing to herself, while he desperately tried to convince her to come back inside.

“It’s a full moon, Eddie,” she’d said because by then her dementia was so bad that she believed he was her husband, Edward, who had died before Nick was born.

At twelve, he had understood that she was slipping away from him, but that understanding didn’t make it any easier when she danced on the lawn. That wasn’t happening to him again. Not now, not ever.

Nick was going to work the problem, figure out a solution, and find a new job, which he would proceed to shove in Liza Lowe’s smug face.