The Wrong Answer to Every Question

Chapter 2 The Room I Read Wrong

The next morning, I got up at six and went to the office.

Not the consolidated one downtown. The satellite office at Kessler & Vale, the one I was supposed to have vacated, the one with the bad light and the ficus and the files I had not finished packing. I let myself in with my key, which still worked, and I sat at my desk and opened the case file for Halbrook v. Ardenne.

The Halbrook case was the biggest thing I had ever worked on. A class action against a private equity firm that had bought a chain of nursing homes and cut the staff to the bone, and eleven residents had died in a twelve-month window from things that should not have killed them. Bedsores. Dehydration. Falls. The kind of deaths that happen when no one is there to catch you.

I had spent two years on the discovery. I had read every incident report, every staffing log, every email. I knew the case better than anyone at the firm, including Nathan, the partner who had corrected me at the retreat, including the senior associates who had rotated off and on, including Theo, who worked in corporate and had nothing to do with it and yet somehow always had an opinion.

The case was set to go to trial in June. I had been preparing the expert witnesses. I had been preparing the plaintiffs. I had been living on coffee and the certainty that this was the one thing I had done right.

At seven thirty, my phone buzzed. Theo.

Theo: We need to talk about the apartment.

I did not answer. I put the phone face down and kept working.

At eight, Nathan came in. He was fifty-two and wore expensive glasses and the same navy suit every day of his life, and he stopped in my doorway like he had seen a ghost.

"Mara. I thought you were downtown."

"I'm finishing the Halbrook file."

"Downtown has the file."

"No," I said. "I have the file. I have the originals. Downtown has copies."

Nathan stepped into the office and closed the door. That was the first thing. Nathan never closed the door.

"Look," he said. "I heard about you and Theo."

I looked up. "From who?"

"Celia."

Of course. Celia, who worked in his group, who had been in our wedding party, who had told me three weeks ago that I was lucky.

"She told you."

"She told the whole floor, Mara. She's not a subtle person."

I set down my pen. "When?"

"Last night. There was a thing at the Whitley. She was upset. She said you'd overreacted."

"Overreacted."

"To the engagement. She said you had been pushing Theo, and he had tried to be honest with you, and you'd made a scene."

I thought about the kitchen. The clock. The box. The way he had said "you don't read the room."

"I made a scene," I said.

"That's what she said."

"Did she also say she's been sleeping with my fiancé since the fall?"

Nathan took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. It was a gesture he used when he was about to say something he had practiced. "This is a personal matter. I don't want to be in the middle of it."

"You're already in the middle of it. She's in your group. She's on my case."

"She's not on Halbrook."

"She's the second chair on the Ardenne motion."

Nathan put his glasses back on. "Yes. And that's a problem."

"For who?"

"For the case. For the firm. For you." He sat down in the chair across from my desk, the one clients sat in, and folded his hands. "Mara, you're one of the best associates I've ever had. You're thorough. You're honest. But you're also... difficult."

"I've heard that."

"People don't like to be corrected. You correct people."

"I correct errors. There's a difference."

"Not to them."

I leaned back. The light hummed. The ficus looked sad. I had watered it every week for six years and it had never once thanked me.

"What are you telling me, Nathan?"

"I'm telling you that the firm needs this case to settle. Ardenne has offered a number. It's not what the plaintiffs deserve, but it's real money, and the partners want to take it. And they want someone who can get along with the client to deliver the news."

"Deliver the news."

"Tell the Halbrook family."

I stood up. "You want me to tell eleven grieving families that we're settling for less than they're owed, because the firm wants to get along."

"I want you to be the adult in the room."

"I am the adult in the room. I'm the only one who's read all eleven files. I know what Ardenne did. I know the emails they deleted and the logs they falsified. I know that the settlement offer is a third of what a jury would give them if we took this to trial."

"And if we take it to trial, we risk losing everything. The firm, the case, the families. That's the reality."

"That's the comfortable version of reality."

Nathan's face changed. It was a small change, the kind I would have missed if I had not spent eleven years learning to read him. "You've been talking to Theo about this."

"Theo doesn't know anything about this."

"He's corporate. He knows Ardenne. He knows their counsel."

"He knows a lot of people."

"Exactly." Nathan stood. "Mara, I'm going to give you some advice, because I like you. Take the weekend. Think about what you want. If you want to stay at the firm, you're going to have to learn to read the room."

He left. He did not close the door.

I sat there for a long time. Then I opened my laptop and started a new file. I called it "Notes." I typed the date. I typed everything Nathan had said. I typed everything Celia had said, as reported. I typed the settlement number and the real number and the difference between them, which was thirty-one million dollars.

Then I called the lead plaintiff, a woman named Denise Halbrook whose mother had died in an Ardenne facility in the spring of the prior year. She had a voice like gravel and grief and she answered on the second ring.

"Mara. It's early."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Is it bad news?"

"Not yet," I said. "But I need to ask you something."

"Okay."

"When you gave me your mother's files. The ones from the last month. The ones with the staffing sheets."

"Yes."

"Did you sign a release for the firm to share those with anyone?"

"I signed whatever you gave me."

"That's what I thought." I looked at the file. "Denise, I need you to do something for me, and it's going to sound strange."

"Nothing sounds strange to me anymore."

"I need you to write down everything you remember from the last two weeks. Everyone who called you. Everyone who visited. Everyone who asked about the case."

"Why?"

"Because I think someone is trying to settle this behind your back," I said. "And I think I know who."

There was a pause. In the pause, I could hear her breathing, and I could hear the wind off the bay through my window, and I could hear, faintly, the clock in the empty apartment downtown where Theo was probably waking up with Celia.

"Okay," Denise said. "I'll do it."

"Thank you."

"Mara."

"Yes?"

"Are you all right?"

I looked at the ficus. I looked at the empty chair where Nathan had sat. I looked at my phone, face down, three missed calls from Theo.

"No," I said. "But I will be."