I clasp my hands beneath my chin and watch Caleb squirm next to his filthy, disgusting wife.
“The current DA has the highest prosecution rate in the state of Florida. They are going to come after you for this with their guns pointed, do you understand that? Everything that you are, who your father was—it’s all going to come out in court. When they are done, there won’t be a lie left to expose.”
Leah stares at me blankly. I know I have scared her far worse than I should have. There are tears swimming in her eyes. I go in for the kill.
“You don’t always win,” I say, looking at her pointedly. She looks up at me, recognition fresh in her eyes. The room is quiet. Everyone is either aware that there is something going on or they are asleep. I don’t move my eyes from Leah.
“Can you help me?” she says, finally and I hear the desperate strain in her voice. I sit back in my chair.
This is something—my nemesis asking me for help. I knew karma would come for both of us but geez, it’s really kicking her ass. I have control of her life. I look at Caleb. I have control of his life too. I take my time answering her. Standing up, I walk with my hands clasped behind my back.
“I can.”
She seems to visually sag in relief. “What are you willing to do to be found innocent in this case?” She was silent for a moment as she studied my face, the same way I was studying hers. Then, she leans forward in her seat, resting her bright red fingernails on the conference table like she is touching piano keys.
“Anything. I’ll do anything.” And as I sit there bound in a moment so frigidly tense I get goose bumps. I believe her. We are the same. Both of us are willing to barter with our souls to ensure our happiness. We’ve loved the same man. We’ve engaged in a dirty, tug-of-war to possess him, and we both have something to atone for.
I take the case. I will have to discredit their witnesses, demonize her father and paint Leah into the good person that she is not. I’m not doing this for my career—despite what Caleb thinks. I’m doing this for the time he pulled over and refused to keep driving until I sang along with “Achey, Breaky, Heart,” and for the time he kissed me on his bedroom floor while holding my hands above my head. I am doing this because he still calls me Duchess.
It’s the same guilty game I’ve been playing all along, to be near Caleb regardless of the circumstance or cost.
Caleb, Caleb, Caleb.
We end our meeting with plans for the next and we all make a big to-do about shaking hands. Bernie is big on shaking hands. Afterwards, I rush to the bathroom and stick my hands underneath the scalding water until they turn bright red. I hate it that I had to touch her. Bernie is waiting for me at my office.
“What was that about?” she snaps, which is very uncharacteristic of her.
“None of your business. I have the case and I’m going to win it, so back off.”
“That‘s my girl,” Bernie croons, and then she walks off without anything else from me.
Chapter Sixteen
After nine months of preparation, the case goes to trial. One of the prosecution’s witnesses is male. When I cross examine him he gets angry at my accusation that he was jealous of Leah’s promotion, and calls her a spoiled bitch from the stand. The second of the witnesses was laid off by Leah’s father a few months into the clinical trials of Prenavene. I show the jury five separate letters the witness wrote to Leah’s father, first begging for her job back, and then threatening to destroy him in any way she could. The third witness was not at work the day she claims she saw Leah changing the trial results in the computer. I have a speeding ticket and a video of her auditioning for American Idol to prove it.
I am master of the façade; when Olivia the lawyer walks into the courtroom, she is poker faced and collected, a poster child for female equality and young strength. I am so good at pretending, that sometimes I lose track of who I really am. In the evenings after court, I unravel my bun, run my fingers though my hair and walk down to the ocean to cry (Yes, I am still melodramatic). I wish that my mom was still alive. I wish that—
Caleb is in the courtroom every single day. I am forced to see him, smell him, interact with him…
He still spins his thumb ring. I notice that he does it most when I am talking. He’s waiting for me to do something crazy and irrational, I know. But, I am in control, I have a job to do and no, it’s not about winning the case for me anymore. It’s about him and my atonement.
My witnesses take the stand one by one, and my case builds muscle. I handpicked the desperate—the people who have the most to lose if Leah loses, the retiree’s that will not see their pension, the young chemists who are just beginning to propel their careers.
Leah watches me through narrowed snake eyes as I carefully clip the strings of incrimination from around her. Sometimes I swear I see admiration there, too.
On my birthday, I am early to the courtroom because there are some things I want to go over before the trial starts. Caleb is sitting in his usual spot without Leah.
“Happy Birthday,” he says as I snap open my briefcase.
“I’m surprised you remembered,” I say, not looking at him.
“Why is that?”
“Oh, you’ve just been forgetting an awful lot of things over the last couple of years.”
“I never forgot you,” he says, and it looks as if he’s about to say something else, but then the prosecutor walks in and he clamps his mouth shut.
By week nine of the trial, I have called seven witnesses to the stand. Out of the thirty employees who worked under my client to formulate Prenavene, only seven are willing to come forward and testify on her behalf. Of those seven, are three whose loyalties to her are unwavering and four I manipulated onto the stand.
I take what I can get and spin their testimonies to my advantage. When the prosecutor places his witnesses on the stand, I discredit them. A woman has lost her husband to a heart attack, brought on by the premature launching of Prenavene. I showcase her husband’s pre-existing heart condition and his unhealthy diet. A Veteran has hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills due to his treatment, after the drug ate through his liver and he needed a transplant. I bring to light his alcohol addiction which destroyed his liver long before Prenavene had a go at it.
We paste the weight of the blame onto her father, who cannot suffer the consequences from his grave. It grieves her to do this, to tarnish his name, but I remind her that if he were alive, he would be sitting where she is and would have gladly taken the fall for his little girl.
Leah takes the stand last. We contemplate not putting her up there at all, but decide it necessary for the jury to hear her sweet voice and look into her terrified eyes. She plays vulnerable well.
“Were you aware, when you signed the release forms, Mrs. Smith, that it was not Prenavene that was handed over to the FDA, but in fact it’s non-generic version-Paxcilvan?” I stand slightly to her left, my eyes reminding her to remember how to answer the questions, which we had rehearsed a dozen times.
“No, I was not.” She raises a pink tissue to her inflamed nostrils and blows gently. I look at the jury out of the corner of my eye. They are watching her carefully, probably wondering if she was capable of such deceit—this delicate girl in her lavender dress. I remember the time in my apartment when she was blowing smoke from her crimson lips, her eyes lined in black kohl. She is capable, I tell them in my mind, of that and so much more.
“What did your father, the late Mr. Smith,” I say looking at the jury, “tell you that you were signing?”
“Releases,” she admits weakly.
“And did you read these releases before adding your signature to the page? Did you observe the results yourself in the lab?”
“No,” she looks at her lap and sniffles, “I trusted my father. If he needed my signature, I gave it to him without question.”
“Do you believe that your father was aware of the inaccurate results of the testing of the drug Prenavene that was in those documents?” This was it—the hard part. I see Leah struggling with herself, trying to coerce the words from her lips. It made it all the more believable to the jury, her hesitancy to badmouth her daddy.
“Yes, I think he was aware,” she says looking directly at me. Tears are pooling in her eyes. Cry them out, I will her with my mind, let them see how destroyed you are over this. Her tears gush down her cheeks and I see her again standing on my doorstep the night Caleb was at my apartment for dinner. Manipulation tears.
“Ms. Smith,” I say finally giving her a second to compose herself, “do you have anything to say to the families of the victims of this drug—the families who lost their loved ones due to the deceitful, careless behavior of OPI-gem?”
“Yes.” At this point she breaks down, hugging herself and sobbing, her tears dripping from her face into her lap. “I am so sorry. I am disgusted and deeply remorseful at the fact that I took part in their deaths. I would do anything to change what happened. I want them to know that I recognize that my apology is worthless, that it will never bring mothers and fathers and daughters and sons back, but that I will see their faces till the day I die. I am sorry,” her hands come up and cradle her face. Bravo.
I breathe a sigh of relief. She did it—she pulled it off.
“Thank you, Ms. Smith. That will be all Your Honor.”
The prosecutor cross-examines Leah next. She stands firm. She plays dumb so well. I silently applaud her wide-eyed terror.
When she walks down from the stand and takes her seat, our eyes meet in a knowingness that transcends a normal lawyer/client relationship. Did I lie okay? Her lashes ask me. Am I being soft enough to convince the jury? Her mouth pouts.
You are a gifted actress. I say with a flick of my eyes. And I hate you.
I turn in my seat to look at Caleb. He is looking at me and not his wife. He acknowledges the success with a tight lipped nod of his head.
We break from trial on the first of September. In the morning Leah’s verdict will be read. I am a mess. I am lounging around in my condo. It is dark outside and I can see a few twinkling boat lights creeping along the ocean’s surface. I haven’t washed my hair since yesterday and I am wearing sweats and an old t-shirt when the doorbell rings. Funny. Usually if I have a guest, the front desk will call up before opening the elevator. I plod to the door in my socks and open it without looking through the peephole which is a very bad habit. Caleb is standing in my doorway in a wrinkled suit, with a bottle of wine in one hand and a greasy bag of take-out in the other. I let him in without a word. I am not surprised, I am not mortified. I am Olivia and he is Caleb.
He follows me to the kitchen and he lets out a low whistle when he sees my view. I grin and toss him a corkscrew for the wine. He opens the cork, while I go to the cabinet for two glasses. I start carrying everything to the table, but he points to my balcony. It faces the ocean and the only way to get there is by walking through my bedroom.
We carry everything outside and sit at the wrought iron table that has never been used. He brought sushi. We prop our feet up and eat in silence, watching the waves lick at the sand. There is a heaviness between us, but isn’t there always? After tomorrow there will be no more excuse to see each other and though we have not said much on a personal level, there have been looks exchanged, small words…
I am so tired of this cycle, this constant struggle to breathe the same air as him. I look over and see that he is watching me.
“What?”
“Don’t marry Turner.”
“Pfffff,” I say. “Why do you hate him so much?”
Caleb shrugs and looks away. “He’s not your type.”
“Really,” I mock. “What do you know anyway? You have terrible taste.”
We sit in silence for another few minutes, and then he says, “If you’ve never trusted me on anything, trust me on this.”
I sigh, and change the subject.
“Remember our tree?”
“Yea, I remember,” he says softly.
“They cut it down.”
His head snaps over to look at me.
“I’m just kidding,” I giggle.
He smiles and shakes his head.
“What difference would it have made? Our whole relationship was cut down,” he grins, but it is a bitter grin.
“Put through the grinder,” I remark.
“Pulverized,” he adds.
He leaves after that. Hours after he’s gone, I can still smell him in my halls. My condo feels cold and empty without him. I would give it all up, the money, the fancy job, the condo….I could live in squalor with him and be happy. I think. Why didn’t I realize that before? Before, I screwed it all up. I can’t sleep, so I sit on the couch and stare at the ocean. I am still sitting there when the sun rises. I get ready for court, make myself some coffee, and walk out my door. Today is the last day.
We win the case.
Leah is found not guilty of falsifying documents, not guilty of clinical trial fraud, and guilty of ethical misconduct of responsibilities. She pays a fine of one million dollars for the latter and is sentenced to two hundred hours of community service. I am not celebratory. I could have put that bitch in prison and stolen her husband.
The victory dinner is held at a posh restaurant in South Beach. I am extricating myself from a handful of well-wishers when I spot her sashaying over to me. I eye her sexy black dress with distaste. She is so polished and coiffed, she looks like a magazine cutout. I am wearing a simple, cream sheath dress. She is the Devil tonight and I am the Angel.
“Olivia,” she purrs, sauntering up with a glass of wine in her hand, “cheers to our win. It was all very well done.” She clinks her glass with mine and I smile tightly.