50. Grand Opening
grand opening
alyssa
I stood in the doorway of what would, in two weeks, officially be my law practice, and ran my fingers along the brass nameplate Julian had commissioned. Alyssa Carter, Esq.
The morning light came through the tall windows and laid itself across a reception area that had been only a thing I’d sketched on the backs of legal pads and never let myself believe in.
Three weeks after I’d lost the office space I was looking at leasing, Julian set a single key on my kitchen counter. When I asked what it was, he told me he’d bought the entire building. I looked at him like he had two heads, because, how?
The office space I was looking at was now mine and so was the entire six-floor building.
“Lease them out, or reserve some floors for when you are ready to expand your practice,” he told me like it was a no-brainer.
Like buying out a building was the only logical answer to a landlord’s apprehension about renting to me.
Most people would have just looked for other places to rent. Not Julian. Of course not.
Now that office had soft yellow walls and built-in shelves and consultation rooms with warm lamps instead of overhead fluorescents, designed to put frightened families at ease — every detail of it reflecting things I’d needed without ever saying I needed them.
“Contractor finished the kids’ corner yesterday,” Julian said from behind me, coffee in hand, leaning in the doorframe. “Micah tested it. Says it passes the nine-year-old quality inspection.”
I laughed. “It’s perfect.”
“So.” He pushed off the frame. “We should talk about your opening.”
“I don’t need all that, Julian. I can just… open. Put a sign up, send out some emails. Spread the word.”
“Alyssa. You rebuilt your whole career and provided something people actually need. That deserves to be celebrated. Officially.”
“It’s a law office, not a new restaurant or something.”
“It’s your law office. Your dreams, made real. Let people give you your props.”
“You’re right. Ok, but small,” I agreed finally. “Promise me small.”
“I promise you appropriate.”
I should have known what Julian’s “appropriate” meant.
Gerald pulled up with Julian and me in front of the building at seven-thirty and the whole block had been transformed. White tent lights were strung between the old oaks, and there was an actual red carpet from the sidewalk to my door. A news van was parked off to the side.
Inside, the office glowed. Soft jazz played, small floral arrangements were everywhere, people I’d helped over the past months clustered with their kids or other guests, and the mayor and county clerk were shaking hands around the room.
The entire Wade clan was there too, filling the room with warmth.
“This is not small,” I whispered to Julian.
“It’s appropriately scaled,” he lifted my hand and kissed the back of it.
I was a few steps inside, accepting congratulations, when I stopped breathing. Because standing next to Raschad, by the conference room, were my sisters. Tamika, Jada, and Jordan.
“There’s the lawyer,” Tamika said, as I crossed the room to get to them. She reached me first and wrapped me in a fierce tight hug.
“What are you doing here?”
“We heard there was a party.” Jordan smiled, giving me a hug.
“Julian sent for us. Put us in first class and everything, too!” Jada said into the hug. “Said we were not allowed to miss it.”
“Did you think we’d let you celebrate without?” Tamika said.
I was crying in my own law office in my perfect dress, surrounded by my sisters.
“Alyssa Dionne Carter!” The voice came from behind me, warm and a little scolding, and I turned and there was Ma. She crossed like she had all the time in the world, and took my face in both hands.
“Look at what you built,” she said.
“It’s just—”
“Don’t you dare make it small. You lost everything, and you built it back better. I’m so proud of you, baby. So proud.”
I found Julian across the room, giving us space, watching. When our eyes met he gave me a private smile. He’d done this for me. Flown my whole family in, just because he knew I’d want them and would never once ask.
The ribbon-cutting was brief. The mayor said kind things. Julian spoke, and every word of it was about my vision and my work, and he took credit for none of it. When they handed me the giant scissors my hands barely shook.
“The law office of Alyssa Carter,” the mayor said, “is officially open.”
By half past ten the crowd had thinned to nothing, my family swept off by Raschad toward dinner, and it was just Julian and me standing in the quiet of the practice among the empty champagne glasses.
“Thank you,” I said. “I wouldn’t be able to do any of this if it wasn’t for you, Julian. I don’t take this for granted. You’ve made my dream come true.”
He stepped closer, reached into his jacket and took out a red square leatherette box, and set it on the reception desk between us. Didn’t say anything about it.
“Julian,” I gasped.
“Open it.”
My hands hadn’t held a box like it in years and I knew what it was before I opened it.
A Van Cleef Alhambra bracelet. Five motifs. Yellow gold. Mother of pearl. And when I turned the clasp up, an engraving, very small, very precise, was the year I’d passed the bar.
I’d bought that exact bracelet as a gift to myself when I’d passed the bar.
The first beautiful thing I had ever bought with money I’d earned.
And I’d sold it in the bankruptcy with everything else that wasn’t nailed down.
I had never once let myself grieve it because it seemed obscene to grieve a bracelet when I was grieving so much else.
“You bought that yourself. Earned it. Should still be yours.”
That was all he said.
The tears came. Not the kind you wipe away fast because they’re embarrassing. The slow leak of a thing arriving that you’d stopped letting yourself want. I let them flow. He watched me and didn’t flinch. He just let me have it.
“How did you know? And the year too?” I finally managed.
“You told me. Long time ago. We were at Maple’s, I think. And the year, that’s not hard to look up, Lyss.” He took the bracelet from the box, turned my wrist gently in his hand, slow with the clasp, his knuckles brushing the inside of my arm.
I looked down at it on my wrist. Same style bracelet. Different woman. The engraving said years ago and the giving of it said now.
“Julian. This is the best, most thoughtful, most beautiful gift I’ve ever, ever received. Better than when I bought it the first time. Way better.”
I went into him and he caught me, and held me in the middle of the practice I’d dreamed up and he built for me, and I cried into his neck for reasons I’d spent most of my life not being able to cry for. Because I was loved. I was seen. I was remembered. Locatable again.
“I love you so much, Julian,” I said, when I pulled back.
“I love you more, Lyss.”
In the car heading home, he laid out the logistics he’d arranged.
“Your sisters can stay at your place. Your mother and Micah at Simone and Raschad’s.”
“Which leaves you, going home with me.”
“Condo or Belmead?”
“Condo, I figured, so you can be close to your sisters.”
I looked out at Lennox Falls going by in the dark, the bracelet a small new weight on my wrist, and realized both of his places had stopped being his place somewhere along the way. Home had quietly stopped being an address and started being wherever he was.
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s go home.”