12. Janet
JANET
The waitress comes through the noise with a tray balanced over one shoulder, dropping a fresh round of drinks onto the table like she's done it a thousand times and stopped caring nine hundred years ago.
The bar is packed with courthouse people.
Dark suits. Loosened ties. Court officers at the far end, defense attorneys pretending not to know prosecutors, everyone drinking under old brass lights and framed photographs of judges who looked like they never smiled sober.
The place smells of bourbon, fried onions, wet wool, and bad decisions postponed until morning.
Peter lifts his glass.
Bourbon. Always bourbon.
Peter raises his bourbon higher, letting the table settle before he speaks. He looks at Rosemary and me.
"The woman who convinced a jury on circumstantial evidence alone."
"We had the phone records."
"Janet. Take the win." He gives me the look — the one that means stop deflecting.
"To the best damn DA's office in the country," he says loudly, for the surrounding tables to hear.
"Not because we win every case. Not because we're loved for doing the job.
We're not. We're here because somebody has to stand between the public and the worst thing a human being can do to another human being.
We don't play politics. We don't chase headlines.
We serve the public good, and we do it better than anyone. "
For a second, nobody says anything.
Rosemary raises her glass first.
"Damn right," she says.
The table follows. Glasses lift. Bourbon, gin, cheap white wine, whatever was closest when the waitress came around. Somebody lets out a low cheer. One of the younger ADAs knocks his glass too hard against Peter's and almost spills it, which gets a laugh from the table.
Around us, a few heads turn. A defense attorney at the bar rolls his eyes. One of the court officers lifts his beer in lazy agreement.
We drink.
The bourbon burns going down, and the room gets loud again around us — lawyers arguing war stories, waitresses calling orders, the courthouse emptying itself into alcohol one tired body at a time.
He laughs, which is rare enough that the two associates nearest us glance over. Peter McGuire does not laugh easily. He cultivates the impression that he finds most things merely tolerable.
He pulls me aside from the table.
"I want to talk to you about something," he says, dropping his voice a register.
The noise around us doesn't change, but I go still.
"First Assistant District Attorney."
I look at him.
"I'm not announcing anything yet. But you're at the top of a very short list."
"Peter, don't fuck with me."
"Don't say anything tonight. sit with it."
He moves back toward the group before I can respond, and Rosemary materializes at my side like she was waiting.
"What was that?"
"He offered you First Assistant, didn't he?"
"Not officially. He said, 'Don't say anything.'"
"Holy shit." She grabs my arm. "I'm so fucking jealous."
I exhale. "It's happening."
"It is happening."
We clink our drinks.
Mike's place is closer to work than mine.
That's what I tell myself.
It makes sense. Less traffic. Less time in the morning. I can get dressed there, take a cab downtown, walk into the office like I didn't spend the night in another man's bed.
Not my bed.
That part matters.
I don't let Mike stay in my apartment. Not overnight. There are still places in that room that belong to Joe, even if he's been gone long enough for the dust to settle over the grief. His side of the bed. His drawer. The shape he left in a life that kept going without permission.
I have a full set of clothes there now. My own closet space. It's growing.
I open my laptop. Put in my password.
A cup of coffee going cold beside me.
I finish a brief.
Mike is at his trading setup across the room. Three monitors, two keyboards, market data scrolling in columns I can't fully read from here. He's been at it since six. I got here at seven and he barely looked up. Handed me a coffee and pointed at the table like I belonged there.
That's the thing about him I didn't expect. He doesn't perform for me.
The men I knew before Joe, even Joe sometimes, would shift when I walked into a room. Straighten up. Turn on. Mike keeps working. Like my being here doesn't require anything from him.
I open my case files.
By eight-thirty he closes out his screens and comes to the table with a second coffee for each of us. He sits across from me and opens his own laptop. We work in silence for twenty minutes.
It is the least romantic thing I can imagine.
It is also the most settled I have felt in years.
"You're frowning," he says without looking up.
"I'm thinking."
"Looks the same on you."
I kick him under the table. He doesn't flinch. Smiles at his screen.
I notice things about the way he operates. The discipline of it. He tracks four markets simultaneously and never seems rattled by any of them. When something moves wrong, he adjusts without drama. No panic. A recalibration, like a man who has decided in advance that surprises are just information.
"Hey," I say, buttoning my blouse in front of his mirror. "Do you want to come to dinner at my sister's on Saturday?"
Mike looks up from his phone. "Which sister?"
"Karen. New Jersey." I turn around. "Does it matter? You don't know either one."
He gives me a small smile, but it doesn't hold.
"Saturday's no good."
Something in me drops, quiet and stupid.
"No?"
"I have to go upstate."
"What's upstate?"
"Albany," he says. "Permits. Paperwork. Bar stuff."
"Okay. Some other time."
"Yeah," he says. "Some other time."
But he's already looking back at his phone. He seems unsettled.
On the screen, numbers move. Green and red. Charts rising and falling like heartbeats.
"You're day trading."
That gets half a smile out of him.
"That's how I make my real money," he says. "The lounge is a risky business. Liquor licenses, staff, rent, idiots with too much cash and no judgment. Unpredictable."
"And day trading isn't?"
"Not if you know what you're doing."
I lean against the edge of his desk. "Do you know what you're doing?"
Now he looks at me. "I do."
He says it without bragging.
"Are you asking how much money I make?"
"No. I'm not."
"How did you learn this?"
"In the Marines."
"You didn't go to college?"
"Nah, that wasn't in the cards for me."
He turns back to the screen. "A lot of downtime between bad things. I started reading. Markets. Patterns. Risk. Guys gambled. I studied."
"You're self-taught?"
"I am."
He goes back to work, one hand on the mouse, eyes moving across the screen. Calm. Focused. Comfortable inside a world I don't understand.
It hits me.
This is how it started with Joe.
The feeling is the same. The dangerous softness of it. The way ordinary things begin to feel permanent. A man with his back to you. Work on his screen. Dinner plans. Clothes in a closet. The private language of a life being built one careless object at a time.
It's happening.
All of it.
Mike's back is still to me when my eyes fill.
For the first time in years, I can see a life in front of me that doesn't look like survival.
The career I bled for.
The man I didn't think I could want.
Both of them are there to touch.
The first tear slips loose anyway.