Free A Walk Across the Sun by Corban Addison Page B

sofa. He crossed his legs and tented his hands, looking at Thomas with his piercing hazel eyes.
    â€œHow are you?” he asked. “It was September, wasn’t it, when you lost your little girl?”
    Thomas took a deep breath and nodded. “I have good days and bad days. It’s about what you would expect.”
    â€œHmm.” Junger paused reflectively. “When Margie and I lost Morgan, I felt like I was underwater. I had no idea where the surface was.”
    Thomas had heard the story from his father. Junger’s sixteen-yearold daughter had been killed in a head-on collision with a logging truck a decade ago.
    â€œAn apt description,” Thomas replied, wishing Junger would get on with it.
    â€œDo you know what brought me back, what gave me a sense of purpose again?”
    Thomas shook his head.
    â€œIt was Margie’s idea. She told me I needed to take a break from the firm. I remember laughing at her. When you’re a partner, you’ll understand: there is never a good time to get away. In the end, though, she didn’t leave me much choice. So I called up Bobby Patterson, who was then dean at Virginia, and asked if he could use an old warhorse in the classroom for a year. Teaching was the best decision I could have made. It gave me new life.”
    Junger fell silent, and Thomas waited for the axe to fall. A clock ticked nearby. It was the only sound in the office, other than the hammering of his heart.
    â€œI spoke to Mark Blake,” Junger said, confirming Thomas’s suspicions. “He told me about the Samuelson case.”
    Thomas pursed his lips but made no preemptive defense.
    â€œMy sense is that Mark overreacted, but you have to understand the pressure he’s been under, leading the effort in the courtroom. Wharton Coal has paid this firm over twenty million dollars in the course of our representation—a huge fee. Jack Barrows, Wharton’s chief, desperately wanted us to keep the jury from seeing that morbid simulation of the blowout. All those computer-generated children running for their lives. The sludge catching up to them. The little markers where the bodies lay, red for boys, blue for girls. It was inflammatory, prejudicial, and predicated on any number of unprovable assumptions. You know the argument. You wrote the brief.”
    Thomas nodded.
    â€œThe Samuelson case was the linchpin of Mark’s argument. Who can blame him? The judge who wrote the opinion was a friend of Judge Hirschel’s. It had all that beautiful language about the dangers of unscientific evidence designed to exploit the jury’s passions. As you can imagine, Mark was humiliated when Judge Hirschel told him the Third Circuit had overturned the decision. And Jack Barrows was apoplectic. I think Jack overreacted too. My guess is that the judge would have let the plaintiffs show the simulation to the jury anyway. But Barrows blamed Mark for the fact that the simulation came into evidence.”
    Junger eyed him closely. “None of this is surprising to you, I imagine.”
    Thomas shook his head.
    â€œBut there’s more, and this is confidential. After the verdict was handed down, Barrows threatened to sue the firm for malpractice. The threat is still on the table. Only a few people know that at this stage. We’re hopeful the appeal will sort things out.”
    Thomas blanched. He had no idea the coal company had taken the issue so far.
    â€œIn any event,” Junger went on, “I’m sure your perspective of what happened is different from Mark’s. But none of that matters. Mark has taken a beating, and the client needs to be reassured. There were some who suggested drastic measures, but I intervened. I told them it wasn’t your fault. It was the fault of the firm. We made the mistake together.” Junger held out his hands magnanimously. “And we have to bear the consequences together.”
    Junger paused and then changed