I put my drink down. And my eyes travel back to the photographs of baby Bailey. I notice one of her in a party dress, a bow wrapped around her head.
It provides me some comfort, which Nicholas seems to notice. He picks it up and hands it to me.
“That was Kristin’s second birthday. She was already talking in full sentences. It was amazing. I took her to the park, maybe the week after that, and we ran into her pediatrician. He asked her how she was doing and she gave him a two-paragraph answer,” he says. “He couldn’t believe it.”
I hold the photograph in my hands. Bailey stares back at me, those curls a prelude to her whole personality.
“I believe it,” I say.
Nicholas clears his throat. “I take it she’s still like that?”
“No,” I say. “Monosyllables are more her speed these days, at least when it comes to me. But, in general, yes. In general, she is a star.”
I look up and see Nicholas’s face. He looks angry. I’m not sure why. Is he mad that I have done something to make Bailey not like me the way I wish she would? Or is he mad he has never been given the chance himself?
I hand him back his photograph. He places it back on his desk, moving it obsessively to the place where it was before, keeping each piece of her that he has exactly where he can find it. It feels like a bit of magical thinking, like if he holds on to her just so, that will help him find her again.
“So, Hannah, what can I do for you, exactly?”
“Well, I am hoping we can come to an agreement, Mr. Bell.”
“Nicholas, please,” he says.
“Nicholas,” I say.
“And no.”
I take a breath, moving forward in my seat. “You didn’t even hear what I have to say yet.”
“What I mean is no, that’s not why you’re here, to come to an agreement,” he says. “We both know that. You’re here in the hopes that I’m not who everyone is telling you I am.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “I’m not interested in who was right or who was wrong here.”
“That’s good,” he says, “because I don’t think you’d like the real answer. People don’t tend to work that way. We have our opinion and we filter information into a paradigm that supports it.”
“Not a big believer that people can change their minds?” I say.
“Does that surprise you?”
“Not usually, but you’re a lawyer,” I say. “Isn’t convincing people a large part of the job?”
He smiles. “I think that you’re confusing me with a prosecutor,” he says. “A defense attorney, at least a good defense attorney, never tries to convince anyone of anything. We do the opposite. We remind everyone you can’t know anything for sure.”
Nicholas reaches for the brown box on his desk, a smoke box. He opens the lid and takes out a cigarette.
“I won’t ask if you want one. Disgusting habit, I know. But I started smoking when I was a teenager, there wasn’t much else to do in the town I came from. And I started smoking again in prison, same issue,” he says. “Haven’t been able to kick it since. When my wife was still with us, I’d try. Got those nicotine patches. Have you seen those? They help if you have the discipline, but I don’t pretend to anymore. Not since I lost my wife… What’s the point? Charlie gives me grief about it, but there isn’t much he can do. I figure I’m an old man. Something else will get me first.”
He puts the cigarette to his mouth, silver lighter in hand.
“I’d like to tell you a little story, if you’ll indulge me,” he says. “Have you heard of Harris Gray?”
“I don’t think so,” I say.
He lights up, takes a long inhale.
“No, of course not. Why would you have? He introduced me to my former employers,” he says. “He was twenty-one when I first met him and very low on the totem pole. If he had been any more senior, the gentlemen at the head of the organization would have called in one of their in-house lawyers to help him out and I wouldn’t be sitting across from you now. But he wasn’t. And so I was called in to defend him by the city of Austin. Random assignment sent to the public defender’s office on a night I was working late. Harris was caught with some OxyContin. Not a ton, but enough. He was charged with intent to distribute. Which, needless to say, was his intent.” He takes another drag. “My point is, I did my job, maybe a little too well. Usually Harris gets locked up for a period of time, thirty-six months, maybe seventy-two in front of the wrong judge. But I got him off.”
“How did you do that?” I ask.