“I should have realized it when I saw the docket,” Margaret said. “Brooks versus Hamilton. Your daughter is suing you?”
I could hear the disbelief in her voice.
Margaret Walsh had been Margaret O’Brien when I knew her. We were in law school together at Harvard. We studied together in the basement of the library until the janitors kicked us out. We competed against each other in moot court. We graduated in the same class in 1982.
She had red hair back then, and a temper to match, and she used to chew on her pencils until they splintered.
“She thinks I’m an incompetent old woman who stumbled into a fortune,” I said. “She has no idea who I used to be.”
Margaret laughed. It was the same laugh from forty years ago, a big, unladylike bark that used to get us shushed by librarians.
“Dorothy ‘The Destroyer’ Mitchell? Incompetent? Oh, that’s rich. Do you remember the Heartwell case? You took apart three expert witnesses in a single afternoon. The other side’s lawyer went out to the parking lot and threw up.”
I did remember. The Heartwell fraud case had been the biggest of my career. A pension fund manager who’d siphoned $11 million out of a union retirement fund, and the three accounting experts he’d paid to swear the money was simply “misallocated.” I’d had the bank records. I’d had the wire transfers. I’d had the dates. By four o’clock, the jury had stopped looking at the experts at all.
That was the last big case before I met Robert. Before Patricia. Before I became just Mom.
“Margaret,” I said, “I need to ask you something important. Can you ethically hear this case, given our history? I won’t put you in a bad position.”
She was quiet for a moment. I could almost hear her thinking.
“We were classmates, Dorothy. Colleagues once, a long time ago. Not close friends, and we haven’t spoken in more than thirty years. I’ll put our history on the record at the first hearing so both sides know. If their lawyer wants to ask me to step aside, he can. But if you’re planning what I think you’re planning—”
“I’m not planning anything,” I said, “except defending myself against false accusations.”
“With an attorney, I hope.”
I looked at Robert’s photo on the mantel.
“I’ll be representing myself.”
The line went very quiet.
“Dorothy,” she said carefully. “You’ve been out of practice for thirty years. The law has changed. The procedures have changed. Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?”
“I’ve kept my license active the whole time,” I said. “I’ve paid my dues every single year. I’ve done my continuing education credits. I read the advance sheets. I follow the appellate decisions. Old habits die hard, Margaret.”
“Your daughter’s attorney is James Morrison. He’s good. Very experienced in elder law.”
“I know.” I had been researching him since the morning the process server came. “He’s won about eighty percent of his competency cases. He specializes in families who want to put elderly relatives under conservatorship so they can take control of their assets.”
“Then you know what you’re walking into.”
I stood up and walked across Robert’s study to my own bookshelf in the corner. It was full of law books I’d never had the heart to give away. Casebooks from law school, their margins crowded with my notes. Old treatises on evidence and fraud. Three decades of bar journals.
“Margaret,” I said. “Do you remember what Professor Williams used to tell us?”
She didn’t even hesitate.
“Never let them see you coming.”
“Exactly.”
Lila Hart is a dedicated Digital Archivist and Research Specialist with a keen eye for preserving and curating meaningful content. At TheArchivists, she specializes in organizing and managing digital archives, ensuring that valuable stories and historical moments are accessible for generations to come.
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