An Erin McCabe Legal Thriller

Chapter 3-2

‘How’d you see a picture of her if she was never your student?’

‘Now it’s my turn to have a long story,’ he said. ‘Can I ask a delicate question? Are you seeing anyone? I mean, it’s been six months, so I’d understand if you were.’

She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘No,’ she said softly.

‘Okay, so here’s another question: have you eaten?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘But I’m hanging out in sweats and don’t feel like getting dressed. I was just going to make myself a PB&J.’

‘Feel like Thai?’

‘Thanks, Mark, but I really don’t want to get dressed.’

‘Who said anything about getting dressed? It’s not like I haven’t seen you in sweats. I’m pulling up in front of Taste of Thai now. I’ll pick up some extra and be at your place in fifteen minutes.’

‘Thanks, Mark, but –’

‘Great. See you then.’ He clicked off.

Her first thought was to call him back and tell him no. Her place was a mess, she was a mess – and, more importantly, she wasn’t sure she was prepared to see him again. But she needed to find out more about Ann Parsons, and, if she were honest, she missed him. The hell with it. She wasn’t changing, she wasn’t putting on makeup, and she wasn’t cleaning up. If he wanted to barge in, so be it.

Twenty minutes later, her intercom squawked, and she buzzed him in. She waited at the door, her hands suddenly clammy as she heard him bounding up the stairs. When he reached the landing outside her unit, he stopped. It looked like he was carrying enough food to feed her entire floor.

Seeing him again made her heart dance. He hadn’t changed. At six feet, he had jet-black hair, disheveled in a way that suggested he combed it with his fingertips. Somehow, he always managed to have just enough stubble to be sexy without looking grungy, and his green eyes still sparkled. God, she’d missed him.

‘Hi,’ he said, a goofy smile on his face.

‘What did you get?’ she asked, eying the bags and stepping aside so he could come into her apartment.

‘Just a few things. I remembered you liked the chicken satay and the pork dumplings, so I picked up some of them.’ He walked into her kitchen and put the bags on the counter. ‘Let’s see what else – there’s some curried sea scallops, fried rice, noodle soup, and’ – he reached into another bag and took out a sixpack of Sam Adams – ‘something to wash it down.’

She looked at everything spread across the counter. ‘You do realize it’s a school night, right?’

‘Yeah, but to paraphrase one of my favorite philosophers, life moves pretty fast. If you don’t have Thai food and a beer every once in a while, you could miss it.’ He gave her a sheepish grin and a shrug.

‘Ferris Bueller. Really?’

‘I’m impressed.’

‘You impress much too easily,’ she said.

He smiled and held her gaze, his voice suddenly turning serious as he said, ‘It’s nice to see you.’

‘It’s nice to see you too,’ she said softly. And before she could stop herself, ‘I missed you’ tumbled out.

‘Missed you too,’ he said as he leaned over and kissed her cheek.

Feeling the color rising in her face and the tears gathering, she quickly turned and pulled some plates out of her cabinet, grabbed some silverware, and moved her papers out of the way so they’d have somewhere to eat. He opened two of the beers, and they passed the containers of food back and forth, filling their plates.

‘So tell me why you don’t believe Ann Parsons is trans, and how you got to see a picture of her at five,’ she said after they started eating. ‘From what I’m told, she’s twenty-five. That would make you about sixteen or seventeen when she was five.’

‘Let me explain,’ he said between forkfuls of food. ‘You know that after I graduated NYU, I went to work on Wall Street at Lehman Brothers as an analyst. Part of my job was to work on pitch books, whether that was trying to get someone interested in buying a company or investing in a company. Toward the end of my time there, I guess it was around 1996, I actually got to go as part of a team that went to pitch Charles Parsons on making a substantial investment in one of our clients. I remember we were sitting in his office and he had photos all over the walls of himself with powerful people. But sitting on the credenza behind his desk was a picture of him in a tux, a woman in a wedding dress, and a young girl, around five, dressed as a flower girl. The guy leading our team, Chris Meehan, who was pretty high up the food chain, says, all chummy, “That’s a beautiful picture. Is that your wife and daughter?” And Parsons, without even turning around and looking at the picture, gave Meehan one of the coldest looks I’ve ever seen someone give another human, and said, “It is my daughter, and it was my wife – she’s deceased. Now, can we get down to business?” I’ll never forget it. It totally threw Meehan off his game. So much so that, after Meehan was about five minutes into his pitch, Parsons turned to me, a second-year analyst, a nobody, and said, “Perhaps you can explain why I should invest in your client, because obviously your boss here doesn’t have a f*****g clue.”’ Mark took a swig from his beer. ‘That was the day that I decided I was done on Wall Street.’

Erin sat quietly, mulling over what Mark had told her. ‘So assuming Ann is twenty-five, she was born around 1983-84. Which means that, if your estimate that Ann was about five in the picture is accurate, the picture would have been taken around 1988.’ She grabbed a pen and wrote a note on her legal pad, reminding herself to check and see if there was anything on Parsons’s marriage. She squeezed her lower lip between her thumb and forefinger. ‘Not many kids were transitioning that young in 1988. I guess it’s not impossible, but…’ Her voice trailed off. ‘Did you get a good look at the picture? I mean, at that age, there’s really little physical difference between boys and girls.’

‘Obviously I can’t be sure. The child was dressed as a flower girl, and my recollection is that she appeared like a normal five-year-old girl. I guess all I’m saying is that I’d be surprised if she was transgender.’

‘Were there any rumors about her at Westfield?’

‘Other than that she tried to kill herself, no. Why are you so sure she is trans?’

‘Let’s just say I was told that when she went through the medical intake at the jail, they discovered she was a post-op trans woman.’

‘How could they tell?’

This was getting a little close to home. ‘Probably because, despite pending lawsuits, the jail is still requiring female inmates to have a gynecological exam, which includes a pelvic exam. That would reveal that she doesn’t have ovaries and a uterus.’

Mark nodded. ‘Got it.’

The room fell silent, the only noise the sounds of them eating. After several minutes, Mark asked, ‘Can we talk about us? Please.’

‘Okay,’ Erin replied cautiously.

He pulled his chair over so he was close to her. ‘The last six months have been really hard. I watched from a distance as you went through some tough times – your client was murdered, your mom was diagnosed with cancer – and you were alone. I’m not sure why you shut me out; I know you said you were protecting me from the slings and arrows of my own family. But the message to me was you didn’t trust me enough to let me make that decision, or worse, didn’t love me enough to allow me to decide.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s not that I didn’t trust you, I just didn’t want you to wind up caught in the middle between me and your family. I really didn’t mean to hurt you.’

‘It’s okay,’ he said, reaching out to grasp her hand. ‘I’m not angry with you. If you don’t want to be in a relationship with me, that’s your decision to make, but you don’t have the right to make the decision as to whether I want to be in a relationship with you. Only I get to make that choice.’

Silence filled the room. ‘Do you?’ she finally asked, looking into his eyes and swallowing her fears.

‘Do I what?’ he asked.

‘Do you still want to have a relationship with me?’

‘Yes,’ he said, leaning forward and gently kissing her.