Because She Stepped In Right Foot First

Chapter 4 The Journal

The first thing I did, that first night in Maya's spare room, was open the journal.

I had kept it since my first month at Mercer. It started as a way to manage anxiety, a page a night, the names of clients, the numbers I was supposed to remember, the small things Julian said that I wanted to write down because they seemed to mean something. Then it became something else.

I had written down everything. The date of every meeting. The names of the people in the room. The number on every line item. The client complaints that came in at night and the way they were resolved in the morning. The accounts that had been smoothed over with private dinners and quiet wire transfers. The account, in particular, that Julian had asked me to work on in my second year, the one that had never gone to the board, the one whose numbers I had been told to adjust.

I had adjusted them.

I had been twenty-six years old and in love, and when Julian Mercer had asked me to make a spreadsheet more optimistic, I had made it more optimistic. And then I had gone home and written down the exact change in my journal, because some part of me, even then, had known I might need to remember.

I sat on the floor of Maya's spare room and read for four hours.

When I came out, Maya was at the kitchen table with two cups of tea.

"You found something," she said.

"I found everything."

She pushed a cup toward me. "Tell me."

So I told her. The adjusted numbers. The off-the-books arrangement with the Ashford family's holding company. The client complaints that had been paid off. The time Julian's father had flown in from Palm Beach to have dinner with a regulator who had never been mentioned in any file.

Maya listened. She was two years older than me, a public defender, and the way she listened was different from the way I listened. I listened the way a person listens when they are trying to belong. She listened the way a person listens when they are building a case.

"How much of it can you actually prove?"

"Some of it. I have dates. I have my journal. I have the emails I sent to myself, because I had a feeling about the account, and I started forwarding myself things."

"You forwarded yourself things?"

"I forwarded myself things for two years."

Maya sat back. "You're a witness."

"I'm not a witness. I'm a participant. I changed the numbers."

"You changed them because your boss told you to."

"That doesn't matter."

"It matters," she said. "It matters a lot. And I need you to understand something before we go any further."

"Go ahead."

"You are about to go after a family that has enough money to own every lawyer in this city. You are about to go after them as someone who signed a non-disclosure and took a severance. And you are going to do it while looking for another job, because you're going to need money, because your lease was on Julian's name and you have maybe two months of savings."

I looked into my tea.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I want you to do it anyway," Maya said. "I want you to do it well. And I want you to know what it's going to cost before you start, not after."

I nodded.

Someone knocked on the door.

Maya looked at me. I looked at her. Neither of us moved.

"Are you expecting anyone?" I said.

"No."

The knock came again, three times, and then a voice through the door.

"Elena. It's me."

Julian.

Maya stood up.

"Don't," I said.

"I'm not going to let him in. I'm going to tell him you're not here."

"He knows I'm here. He knows your address."

"How?"

I closed my eyes. "I told him. Last summer. When we were talking about you. He asked where you lived and I told him."

Maya stared at me for a second, then went to the door and opened it a c***k.

"What do you want," she said.

"I want to talk to her."

"No."

"She took my name off the account," I said, from the table. "Corinne. She presented my proposal and took my name off it. Did you know that?"

There was a pause.

"Yes," Julian said.

"Did you do it?"

"I didn't take it off. I didn't stop it either."

"That's the same thing."

Maya's hand stayed on the door.

"I'm not here to fight," Julian said. "I'm here to tell her something. And then I'll go, I promise."

Maya looked back at me. I thought about it for a long moment.

Then I nodded.

She opened the door.