Free Legally Yours by Manda Collins

only
temporary.”
    “That's ridiculous, Julie. And so what if it
is temporary? Don't you want to spend as much time as possible with
him before he goes? And maybe you two can keep on seeing each other
after he goes back. There's this great invention called the
airplane.”
    Julie smiled despite her sadness. “That’s
what Lily said.”
    “ That’s because you raised her to be
brilliant, like you,” the other woman said.
    “It's just too hard, Cis. I do like him. I
even...well, I feel something more powerful for him than I've felt
in a long time. But who's to say I won't find that with someone
else. Someone who lives in Birmingham. Someone who doesn't happen
to belong to a profession I've been trying to get away from for
years.”
    “Oh, come on! Pull the other one. The only
thing about the law you don't like is the fact that you can't
practice it.”
    God, not again. “For the last time, I am not
a wannabe—”
    “How long have you worked here?” Cissy
interrupted.
    “What?”
    “How long have you worked for this firm?” she
repeated.
    “Seven years?” she said it with a questioning
tone, though she knew how long she'd worked here down to the
day.
    “And in all that time, how many vacations
have you taken?”
    “I don't know. Two?”
    “Nope,” the secretary said with a frown.
“One. And that was to help Lily move into her dorm.”
    “Julie,” she continued. “You've put in more
overtime at this firm and produced more billable hours than any
first year associate ever has. The only thing you don't like about
this place is the fact that we represent the big guy against the
little guy.”
    That did surprise her. She thought she'd kept
her distaste for their clients to herself.
    “Maybe,” she conceded, not willing to agree
for fear that Cissy would crow in triumph. Cissy could be loud when
she won an argument.
    “Well, then why don't you go finish your
degree and go get a job helping the little guy like you want
to?”
    “But I don't...” She shook her head. She'd
been so used to scaling down her ambitions to fit her position here
that she hadn't even considered the possibility. “What about Lily?”
she finally asked.
    “What about her?” Cissy, stood, and put her
hands on her ample hips. “I'll bet Lily would cheer if you went
back and got your degree. She'd probably love not having your
watchful eye on her 24/7.”
    Which was true, Julie admitted silently. What
would happen if she went back to school? Could she even do it? Had
too much time passed?
    “You might be right,” she told the other
woman.
    “Of course, I'm right. I just wish you hadn't
given Matt the kiss off. Now you're going to have to do some
serious groveling to get him back.”
    "Damn it, Cissy, I hate it when you
gloat.”
    “Shut up and fix your face,” was the other
woman's tart response. “You need to get in there and convince that
man you made a mistake. And nobody takes a woman with
puffy-eyed-cry-face seriously.”
    Grateful for the tiny essentials bag she kept
in the restroom, Julie set about repairing her makeup and prepared
to change Matt's mind.

 
     
     
     
     

Chapter Eight
     
     
    Julie waited until almost five thirty that evening to seek
out Matt. By that time the secretaries had gone home. And since
she'd seen Gordon and Taylor heading out of the break room with
beers in hand, she figured nobody would interrupt them if she
happened to slip into the office Matt had been using since his
arrival.
    Grateful for the carpet that kept her steps
stealthy, she was a couple of cubicles down from his office door
when she heard his voice. He must be on the phone. Not wanting to
interrupt, she slipped into the tiny area where the office's lone
typewriter was kept for those counties in Alabama that still
required typed forms, and took a seat.
    “I don't think it's her,” she heard Matt say.
Quickly she ran through the RFG cases in her head that had female
plaintiffs. McLendon? Wright? Lewis?
    “No, Mitchell,”