I cock my head, examining their features. “Your dad?”
Claire chews her lip nervously. “Yeah.”
It never occurred to me to even wonder about what happened to her dad. I’ve been too focused on her mother taking over my father’s life. “What happened to him? Ran out? Cheating? Joined the foreign legion?”
Her face twists angrily. “He jumped off a bridge, actually.” She puts a false brightness into her tone, and I know I’m about to find out just how badly I fucked up by joking about him. “That’s what years of alcoholism and depression will do to you. Well, that and getting screwed by Cooper fucking Holdings who stole twenty years of his life and gave him chronic, degenerative illness as a parting gift. He should’ve taken the watch, I guess.”
I want to say something, but for once I’ve no idea what. Fuck, no wonder she got all pissy about the case. I can resent her all I want, but no one deserves that. I open my mouth a couple of times, but all I produce is, “I’m sorry.” It sounds pitifully inadequate.
“Yeah.” Her eyes are far away. “By the time they let him go, he was slurring his words and his hands shook all the time. And he didn’t get a dime from them.” She plops into her chair, her gaze locking on the picture. “They said there was no concrete evidence that his problems were work related. Like they hadn’t done the same to his buddies two years before. We didn’t have the money to fight it. You know better than anyone how much they are willing to pay to make this go away.”
I lean up against the wall, watching her blink back tears. Her fingers are tearing at a piece of paper off her desk, making tiny strips out of it. I want to comfort her, but this is uncharted territory for us and I’m complete shit at this emotional stuff. “Sounds like a raw deal. No one could help?”
She sniffs. “What do you do when someone doesn’t want to be helped? He ran off when I was twelve, but he was never far away. I’d meet him in the park a lot and we’d sit together. I tried to drag him home over and over but he’d stay for a few days and then take off again as soon as we started talking about getting him help.
“Right before... the call, he’d been home for two weeks and I honestly thought things would be better. I had these dreams about him and Mom getting back together, and it all working out. Then one morning he was gone and a couple days later...” She looks down at her hands, dropping the shreds of paper as if she didn’t know she was even holding them.
“The bridge?”
Claire nods.
“I’m sorry. I really am.” Mom’s face flashes before my eyes. “Losing a parent sucks.”
She looks up, and for the first time since our night together, something real solidifies between us. A tenuous bond between two victims of unfair loss. Then my phone rings. Pulling it out of my pocket, I look at the display. Carl. I hit the button and answer. “Yeah, Declan.”
“Your guest is here.”
Right. “Thanks, Carl. We’re on our way.” I glance at Claire, her face a mask again. The moment’s passed. “We gotta go.”
She nods without much conviction, probably dreading this meeting. “Okay.”
Drawing a deep breath and letting it out, she’s totally unaware of how badly I want to grab her and take her somewhere, anywhere, else. She thinks I’m a greedy dickhead, and maybe she’s right, but while teasing her and making her angry is fun, watching her hurt isn’t.
She picks up a pen and a pad from her desk, then looks up, her face hard in determination. “I’m ready.”
Our walk is long and quiet.
Spotting our client, I wonder if maybe she’s right. Maybe it isn’t worth it, but we have a contract, and in this business, someone always ends up getting hurt. In the end the courts will decide, and what I believe doesn’t really matter.
Time to go make some money.
Declan
“So basically, we’re fucked. Some asswipe didn’t keep his trap shut and now it’s all over the goddamn news.”
Harry Cooper Jr. isn’t what I’d call a charmer. He’s crude, obnoxious and constantly fiddling with his cigar like he’s about to light that turd shaped stink bomb up in our meeting room. I try not to judge our clients, but I’m finding very little to like about him. His beady little eyes are fixed on me, ignoring Claire completely. He seems like an ass all around, and I’m not finding the accusations of screwing over his employees hard to believe.
He took over from his father about fifteen years ago, and from what I can tell, he’s been slowly running it into the ground ever since. If Claire’s dad worked for this guy, it doesn’t surprise me she resents him. If anything, I’m amazed that the company’s still around. There must be just enough people left who know what they’re doing to somehow protect him from himself.