Her case file was open on her desk, the one she secretly called “The Rabbit Who Ate Tupelo.” Her reception area was empty, her office was empty, her conference room was empty.
B. J. took out a yellow legal pad and made a list of things to do. She wrote “hire legal secretary” at the head of her list. Next she wrote “client contacts,” but her heart wasn’t in it. Her heart was still in Crash’s country retreat.
She made a little moaning sound, and Baxter licked her legs. In the hall, the antique clock she and Maxie had found at an auction bonged the lunch hour.
When she’d been living in Philadelphia she was often too busy to eat lunch. Dinner, too. Sometimes she’d order in, but mostly she’d sit at her desk and work straight through.
“I’ve got to get busy or I’ll never build that kind of practice in Tupelo,” she said. Baxter was the only one there to hear, and he thumped his tail in what she considered an extremely intelligent and understanding manner.
“A power lunch. That’s the ticket.” She went to the closet in her office and took out a navy blazer. It was beginning to get hot in Mississippi, but B. J. knew the rules: To play the power game you had to dress the part.
She put on her blazer, tightened the pins in her French twist, then studied herself in the bathroom mirror. For all appearances she was exactly the same woman who had come to Tupelo weeks ago. On the outside she looked the same. It was the inside that felt different.
Her heart wasn’t in power lunches, either. Her heart was lying crushed on Maxwell Street where Crash had left her three days earlier without even saying good-bye.
B. J. went to her break room and dug around in the refrigerator for some cucumbers. She didn’t hear Maxie come in, didn’t know her sister was in the room till she snatched the bag of cucumbers out of B. J.’s hand.
“Just as I thought,” Maxie said.
“What?” B.J. felt defensive. Ever since her ill-fated evening of attempted seduction she’d been wanting to bite somebody’s head off, and Maxie’s would do. She snatched the cucumbers back. “Do you mind? That’s my lunch.”
“We’re going somewhere that serves real food.”
“Like what? Chocolate almond fudge with marshmallows on the top?” She jerked a chair out from the table and sat down. “No, thank you. I’ve had enough of your interference, Maxie. Go paint dragons on somebody’s walls.”
“I don’t have to paint a dragon. She’s sitting in my sister’s chair.”
B. J. took a vicious bite of her cucumber. “That’s what happens when you turn into a dried-up old maid, Maxie. You start breathing fire and brimstone.”
Maxie sailed her sassy sailor hat onto the table, then straddled a chair facing her sister.
“I suppose it’ll be orthopedic shoes and a walking cane next.”
“Probably. Who cares?”
Maxie peeled a cucumber, then began to munch.
“These aren’t bad,” she said.
“I told you.”
“Big sister knows best?”
“Yes.” B. J. didn’t believe a word she said, but she said it anyhow. She had to get her life back together, and lying was as good a place to start as any.
Maxie grabbed another cucumber. “That’s some example you’re setting. I hate to think that in a few years all I have to look forward to is lunching alone on a bag of cucumbers.”
“I’m not alone.”
“You were until I came along.”
“I have Baxter.”
“Baxter needs a daddy.”
“Maxie, don’t even start.”
“Okay.” Maxie poured two glasses of water. “By the way, do you have any idea where Judge Nathaniel Bridge Beauregard is?”
“I haven’t asked. I don’t want to know.” B. J. had a sudden vision of Crash bending over her on the rug. She saw him, felt him, tasted him. “Why do you ask? Has he gone somewhere?”
“Word on the street this morning is that he’s hung up his robes.”
“That’s his style, I hear. Hang up the robes and take off on that Harley of his.”
“For good,” Maxie said.
“For good?”
“I got it straight from the chancery clerk’s office at the courthouse.”
When Stephen had left her at the altar, B. J. thought she knew the pain of loss. How wrong she’d been. What she’d felt then was nothing compared to the total devastation and complete isolation she felt now. Her heart was uprooted, her soul was lost, her whole world was in shambles.
“Mrs. Parker gave me these.” She held the bag of cucumbers toward Maxie. It gave her something to hang onto.
Maxie tore a paper towel off the rack and handed it to B. J.
“Who is Mrs. Parker?”
“A client. The one with the wild rabbit.” B. J. wiped her eyes, then blew her nose. “This is all she had to pay me with. When she set this little bag on my desk, I felt as if she’d given me a check for a million dollars.”
Maxie knew when to keep quiet. She picked up the paring knife and a medium-sized cucumber. A pile of green peelings grew in the middle of the table as B. J. talked.
“I wasn’t wearing a power suit the day she came to see me. I wasn’t even wearing a jacket.” She sniffed and dabbed at her eyes. “Do you know how it felt to use my skills to help somebody like that?”
“How did it feel, B. J.?”
“The way I imagined when I was twelve years old and trying out my litigation skills on the mules in Grandpa’s barn.” Dreams long forgotten bubbled to the surface, dreams of helping the downtrodden, the underdog. When had the dreams changed? When had dreams of helping to bring justice to the masses turned to dreams of getting the best cases, making the biggest scores?
She looked down at the paper bag on the table. When she’d brought it, Mrs. Parker had been wearing a faded chino dress with a frayed lace collar—her Sunday best.
“It felt the way practicing law ought to feel,” B. J. said softly.
Looking down at her jacket, she added, “What’s the temperature outside, Maxie?”
“Eighty.”
“Too darned hot for this.”
B. J. shucked her jacket and didn’t even bother to hang it up. It slid off the back of the chair and landed on the floor. Baxter promptly dragged it off to his basket.
“Can this be the same woman who only moments ago was contemplating orthopedic shoes?” Maxie said.
B. J. raked the cucumber peelings off the table and put them into the garbage can. Then she looked down at herself and undid the top two buttons on her blouse.
“There... that’s better.”
“Atta girl.” Maxie smiled at her. “You’re going to find him, aren’t you?”
B. J. remembered then, remembered the way he’d looked that night in his house, the fleck of gold in the center of his eyes, the shock of blond hair that always looked windblown as if he’d come down from some distant mountain peak, the gleam of sweat on his body, the slash of red across his left shoulder where her fingernails had dug in.
If I love a woman, he’d said.
“Yes, Maxie. I’m going to find him.”