Chapter 35 Hailey
Hailey
Hailey stood outside Jackson Clarke’s thick office door, felt the reassuring weight of it as she pushed it open.
Cocooned in the firm’s dark wood paneling and pristine bookshelves, she felt better than she had last night, when Mack was burning up houseplants and spouting bullshit about being in this together.
They weren’t together, Hailey knew now, not in any sense, and the best Mack could do was to set things on fire.
She hoped he would at least manage the conversation they’d planned that morning, about telling the girls’ schools to keep a close eye on them and to release Mabel and Gigi to no one but their parents.
Hailey doubted Mack would convey the seriousness of it like she would have, but she’d had no choice but to delegate: she had to be here.
Clay Straus was already in Clarke’s office, slouched in a big armchair.
The two most senior partners fell silent as she entered.
Their faces were tan and leathery; she had been lucky to catch them both in town.
Under normal circumstances, Hailey would have called them snowbirds and asked about their golf handicaps, safe in the knowledge that she was their silver bullet.
Hiring her had made them look good—apart from that unbearable six months between bar exams—and, once she had proven herself, promoting her to junior partner had made them look even better.
Her ascent up the ranks of Cleveland divorce attorneys had made them a lot of money, which was the most important thing, and had more than redeemed her in everyone’s eyes.
But today was not for office banter.
“So.” Clarke gave a deep sigh, and his watery eyes met Straus’s in a way that Hailey did not like. “Mr. and Mrs. Rainier.”
This was the moment Hailey had been dreading for months, ever since Rebekah had announced her grand scheme to stiff them for a quarter of a million in advanced fees and expenses.
Since then, Hailey had been hiding from these two men who had once been her mentors.
More recently she had been hiding from everyone, and the feeling was mutual: the rock-star paralegal basically avoided Hailey like the plague, and even Dennis—Dennis who might unlock the secrets of the iPad, Dennis who Hailey still hoped could be the key to saving them—had started “working from home.”
“Yes, the Rainiers.” Hailey’s voice came out stronger than she’d thought it might. “I don’t even know where to start.”
Straus did: “This can never happen again, for a start.”
“No, of course not,” said Hailey. “It was a huge mistake to advance the wife the credit.”
Own it, Hailey thought to herself. Don’t try to explain. Own that you screwed up and then beg for their help. You need them.
“Yes. What a delightful woman Mrs. Rainier is.” Clarke rolled his eyes. “In all my years I’ve never had a phone call quite like that one.”
Straus curled his lips in disgust and nodded: he had heard about this call, or received one of his own.
Hailey’s chest tightened. It felt like ants were crawling down her arms.
“She made some pretty serious accusations about your relationship with her husband,” Clarke went on. “And she claimed to have proof. Is she lying?”
Hailey didn’t answer, and that was enough.
“I suppose I understand why you wanted to meet, but let me just say that I’m not inclined to get wrapped up in this,” Clarke said, “unless Mrs. Rainier files an official complaint.”
There it was. They knew Hailey had slept with a client’s husband, and they were prepared to do nothing. All those late nights, the ferocious fights for and with her clients and their counsel, had paid off in loyalty. These two had taken her side over Rebekah’s.
But it wasn’t Rebekah that Hailey was afraid of.
“I just don’t know how else to go after the money,” she said. “I’ve tried everything. I don’t think for a second that we should swallow the loss, but David Rainier—”
“Swallow the loss?”
This was good; Straus at least had no intention of giving up the fight.
Once she’d told them David was messing with her family—or possibly messing with her family—they’d pull out the big guns: more IT sleuths like Dennis, maybe some security, definitely a truckload of legal reinforcements.
Clarke was widely reputed to be the most aggressive attorney in Cleveland; he could take on David Rainier.
Hailey’s voice gained strength. “Of course, I know we’d never walk away from an outstanding fee like that, it’s just that Rainier is—”
Straus shook his head violently, and Hailey froze. “Walking away is exactly what we do,” he said, his voice like steel. “The man has paid his bill, and that’s the end of this discussion as far as I’m concerned.”
“What?” Hailey’s knees threatened to buckle.
“We’ve got our money back, so whatever personal entanglements you have are not this firm’s business. I trust that whatever happened between you and your client’s husband is now over—if indeed it happened,” Straus added, ever the lawyer.
Hailey couldn’t breathe, and she couldn’t help herself: “Rainier paid . . . he paid in full?”
Now, finally, Straus lost it. “You didn’t even know he paid us?” he roared. “Where the hell have you been? That should have been the most important thing on your plate!”
There was nothing to say. How could no one have told her? Where was Marla the rock-star paralegal? Where was Dennis?
Clarke couldn’t even look at her. “I’m so disappointed in this, Hailey,” he said to the wall opposite her.
“To conduct yourself like this—letting Mrs. Rainier run up a huge balance to start with, but also publicly carrying on with this man—if this is true, what on earth were you thinking? You’ve obviously lost the respect of your colleagues, and .
. . just stay well away from this man in the future, if you want to keep working for this firm. ”
At once Hailey was the teenager whose father had caught her making out with the quarterback right in her own bed.
She was the tipsy college girl who had fled the South of the Border restroom in shame as truckers looked on and jeered.
She was worse now, actually, because she should have been old enough to know better. Her face was hot enough to melt.
When Straus spoke again, he was calm. “Listen. It’s almost Christmas. Take some time off, relax with your family. It’s been a rough year for all of you.”
Mack. He was talking about Mack’s scandal. Hailey had brought shame on top of shame to Arthur, Clarke Hailey’s mind was focused on a more pressing subject. Why would David suddenly pay? What was his move here? Was this whole thing about to be over, or was it about to get worse?
In the end, it was Marla the rock-star paralegal who told her what had happened, and it had nothing at all to do with Hailey, or with Rebekah.
David Rainier’s decision to settle his bill at Arthur, Clarke they’d shot the shit and hit it off; and the rest, Hailey knew, would someday be Cleveland history.
Rainier had agreed to pay his wife’s legal bill before the ice in the empty Scotch glasses had melted because hey, what was two hundred and fifty grand between friends?
Although it sure had felt like a lot to Hailey.
* * *
She hardly trusted herself to drive home.
Her hands shook on the steering wheel—but was she afraid, or angry?
Mostly she felt a void: there was a dark shadow that followed her everywhere now, and suddenly the person who cast it was less clear.
Which, in a way, was more terrifying. The old boys’ club had closed ranks like it always did, but who or what had it left her out in the cold with?
A gray sky stretched over the interstate; the road was slushy and slippery from the drizzle that morning, but Hailey did not slow down.
Normally all she would have wanted was the sanctuary of her bedroom, that view out over the lake reassuring her that she was somewhere safe and warm, but now the house felt like it was conspiring against them, crumbling under some unknown force and taking their investment with it.
Two Magpie Court was in no shape to protect them from . . . whatever this was.
She was halfway to Akron before she really even knew where she was going, and then the yearning for her parents overcame her.
To know they could never fix this, that they couldn’t even provide a temporary shadow of relief from this terrible thing beating down on her life, filled Hailey with loneliness, and she wasn’t sure she could face being in their presence.
She ended up in Marc’s. She wandered the aisles, stacking a plastic shopping cart with out-of-date candy corn and lip smackers for the girls’ Christmas stockings.
She bought her mother an ice-skating penguin statue to go on her front steps, and her father a needlessly elaborate handheld sidewalk de-icer.