3. Things Linger
THINGS LINGER
“ H ow did the interviews go yesterday?” her father asked.
“Not bad,” she said. “I scheduled one to come back for a second interview on Friday with me and Ellen.”
“That’s great,” her father said. “It’s difficult to find staff and you knew it’d be harder there.”
She’d picked this location because it felt like it was a good spot in the middle of a triangle of three big cities.
Charlotte where her family firm was located about two hours away, Durham was about an hour away, and Fayetteville was an hour away.
It was a large area for people to come to her without going into one of the bigger cities.
So far it was working in her favor because business was booming already even if she felt a little alone in her two short weeks here.
No clubs or social events to go to meet people and mingle.
She wasn’t into small-town gossip and rumors, and so far, that was about all she’d heard when she was out and about.
“I know,” she said. “And I hate to ask this, but I think I should start thinking of another attorney. Is it too soon for the budget?”
It bothered her she had to get a budget from her father, but she had no choice.
She’d wanted to put her own money into this and her parents said no. This was helping the firm overall and they would do it.
It made her think they didn’t believe she could do it on her own, but she kept those words locked in like always. Her grandfather always told her not to whine when she tried to plead her case.
Guess some things never leave your mind.
“We have the money in there for another one. I know in just a few weeks you’ve been pushing some work back to us here.”
“I have to,” she said. “I can’t do it all. I’ve gotten four calls today and one is for family court. It’s not my thing, but I don’t want to turn it away either. Divorces, sure, but child custody agreements take a lot more work.”
She did and could do just about anything, but didn’t specialize in family court. It was the one thing that she had put little time into because she always felt they should get more attention than she could give when she was balancing so many balls in the air.
“I think it might not hurt to look,” her father said. “It could take you time. If you want to see if you can take that case and have them work with attorneys here, we can do that. Otherwise you might have to turn it down.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll call them back.”
Her father sighed. “It’s killing you to turn anything down,” her father said. “Don’t be that way. There are only so many hours in the day. You don’t need to prove anything to anyone, least of all your mother and me.”
“I know,” she said. Lip service like always. “It’s hard.”
“Get my father’s words out of your head,” her father said firmly. “He’s gone and you know I’ve never felt that way.”
“Thanks, Dad,” she said. “I know that. But like Ben, sometimes words and memories don’t fade.”
Her oldest brother, Ben, got the brunt of it for not wanting to follow in the legal footsteps of the family. Then when Ben went to college for brewing, their grandfather really came down on her brother hard.
Her brother added to it by growing his hair long and doing everything he could to be the opposite of what their grandfather stood for.
She wished she’d had the courage to do those things.
Instead, her middle name might as well be Switzerland.
Not that she wouldn’t have been an attorney because she loved her job.
But she would’ve liked to have told her grandfather to go shove it now and again.
Maybe if she had, people wouldn’t have considered her so noncommittal or wishy-washy in her personal life.
Professionally, she was known as being firm, rigid, and once she got her teeth into something, there was no letting go until she got what she wanted.
It always made her wonder how she could have such distinct personalities between the two parts of her life.
“It’s easy for me to tell you to forget it and move on, but things linger. Your mother will tell you she had to deal with it more. She worked for Grandpa.”
Phoebe laughed. “And she lasted. God only knows how.”
“Because she fell in love with me,” her father boasted. “And I wasn’t about to let her leave.”
She’d found out years later that her father had stood up to his father and threatened to leave the firm if her grandfather fired her mother so her father wasn’t distracted.
Her grandfather was a lot of things, but one thing he couldn’t stand was bad public opinion. And losing his son from the family law firm would have surely done that.
Phoebe liked to think she got her courage from her father too.
To come here on her own even though a few weeks in she was bored out of her mind when she wasn’t working.
Thankfully there was enough work to keep her busy, but on the weekends, Lordy, she was sitting home channel surfing.
She wasn’t one to go clubbing, but she’d try anything to not just stare at farms in the distance on her way to work.
Southern Pines was famous for golf and horses.
Two things she wasn’t interested in.
Maybe she should try to take one of them up.
Nah, not happening.
“Good thing for your stubbornness, Dad,” she said.
“You know a thing or two about that,” her father said.
“I’ll take it as a compliment,” she said.
“As you should. You know where I am if you need anything. Keep me posted on filling positions and your workload.”
“I will,” she said, forcing a cheerful tone.
She was trying not to take offense that she had to report this back to her father.
When she was in Charlotte he was aware of her caseload. Her parents, as partners, knew everything happening at the firm.
She had to look at this no differently.
But deep down there was a part of her that worried her father would think she’d made a big mistake and this was costing the firm money if she couldn’t fill her caseload as heavily as she did before the move.
She looked up when there was a knock at her door. “Yes,” she said to Sophie.
“There is a man up front that would like to speak to you. He claims they fired him without reason. Or reasons he isn’t saying. He’d like to know what his legal recourse could be. Ellen is on a call, but I wasn’t sure if you could talk to him or not.”
Normally Ellen, her paralegal, would gather information on something like this and come to her to decide if it was a case they could take.
“I can meet with him,” she said, getting out of her chair. The rest of her work could wait.
“I’ll put him in the conference room,” Sophie said.
“Thanks,” she said. Phoebe got her laptop and a pad and pen, prepared to get to work.
“Hi,” the man said, standing up. “I’m Bill Riggins. Thank you for meeting with me on short notice like this. I’m sorry for just stopping in, but I’m not sure what to do.”
The older man was in jeans, a thick flannel jacket over a sweatshirt, and he’d placed his baseball hat on the desk. His hair was thinning and she could tell by the rough skin on his hand when they shook, that he’d worked hard his whole life.
“No problem,” she said. “I’ve got the time. Why don’t you tell me what is going on?”
“I work for a women’s health care provider. I do maintenance. Clean, fix things, general stuff. I’ve been employed there for about ten years. They used to have a few male doctors but now all the doctors are women. The nurses too.”
“Okay,” she said. “But you have nothing to do with patients, correct?”
“Right, ma’am,” Bill said, nodding his head. His accent was thicker than most in this area that she’d come across. “I’m normally there in the afternoon and then clean up the rest of the building after everyone leaves so it’s set for the morning.”
“In North Carolina, it’s an at-will state. They can terminate your employment for any reason as long as it’s not discrimination. What was the reason they gave you for termination, or did they not?”
“They said they no longer needed my services,” Bill said. “But then two days later they hired a woman to do what I was.”
“Do you know if the person has the same title and responsibilities?” she asked.
“I’m being told yes. I can’t reveal how I know, but there is someone there who is still talking to me. They let me go, and she’s upset about it. She overheard they want an all-female practice, even down to maintenance.”
Her head went back and forth. “This might not be easy to prove. I guess the first thing I need to know is what you are hoping to accomplish coming to me. Do you want your job back? Do you want some kind of settlement?”
“I loved my job, but I don’t think I can go back there knowing what they did,” Bill said.
“I hate that I’d be the type of person to sue, but it’s difficult for someone my age with my health conditions to get a job.
On top of it, I take care of my wife. She’s got dementia, so we’ve worked it out that I’m there to put her to bed at night and care for her in the morning. ”
“Can I ask how old you are?” she asked.
“Fifty-nine,” Bill said. “Few people are willing to hire someone my age.”
This was just adding up to so many things in her mind. All hard to prove, but not so hard to hit them with some filings to get answers.
“Do you know how old your replacement is?”
“In her thirties, I think,” Bill said. “Not my age.”
“You mentioned health issues. Can I ask what?”
He pulled out a piece of paper showing all of his health issues, how little he missed work for them, but that his employers were fully aware of them and had made comments in passing that they hoped he never passed out at work if his sugar was low or had a seizure if he forgot to take his meds.
She was shaking her head. “They said those things to me,” Bill said. “There are witnesses.”
“Well,” she said. “Let’s see what we can do for you.”
“You’re going to take it?” Bill asked. “We haven’t even talked about how much this is going to cost me.”
“Nothing unless you get a settlement,” she said. “And that is what we are going to try for.”
She hoped to hell her father didn’t slap her hand over that, but she was positive this was going to pay for Bill and her as her first win on her own.
And she was going to get it fast to give her the ego boost she desperately needed.