Free Damage Control by Robert Dugoni Page A

panels across, and the six panels down. Twenty-four. Simple math. No matter how many different ways she considered it, the end result was always the same. She wondered why her brother had painted the door red—a sharp contrast to the pale green siding, which stood out even more now, like a bloody reminder of what had happened inside.
    She couldn’t recall having ever truly considered the exterior of James’s home. Her brother had often invited her to dinner or to stop by after work or on the weekend, but she rarely did and never stayed long. She was always late picking up Molly from day care, or getting the dry cleaning, or heading home to cook dinner, or trying to finish a rush project Marvin Crocket had sprung on her. James had never complained. He’d never made her feel guilty.
    “Maybe next week,” he’d always say.
    But next week never worked. Now next week would never come. And that wasn’t going to change either, no matter how many ways she tried to consider it.
    She felt herself slipping again into the dark gray vortex of despair and dug in her heels to stop the momentum. Now was not her time to grieve. She needed to get through the details. She retreated from the mist to the shelter beneath the pediment and leaned against the clapboard siding, physically and emotionally spent. She had rushed from the funeral parlor after choosing a simple forest-green casket for her brother’s body. Her next task was gathering his personal papers from his home and determining for the detective what had been stolen. She checked her watch and the tree-lined street. With no sign of the detective, she closed her eyes, seeking a respite, but instead recalled the reception following her father’s funeral. The catered leftovers had been wrapped in clear plastic, the tables and chairs folded and stacked, the guests and relatives gone. Dana and James had sat in the den, James staring at the blue and yellow flames in the brick fireplace.
    “I’m leaving the practice of law,” he’d said without looking at her. “I haven’t been happy for some time.” He sipped a beer from a red plastic cup and sat back, looking up at the painting of a three-masted schooner above the fireplace. “I wouldn’t do anything about it with Dad alive; I was too worried about what he would think. Practicing law was the only part of my life he ever took an interest in.”
    She did not take her brother seriously, believing his emotions to be the product of their father’s unexpected death, a jolting reminder of their own mortality, and that time was the most precious of all commodities. “Take a couple of months, James. Now is not the time to be making life-altering decisions. You’ve been through a lot these past four days. You’re not seeing things clearly.”
    “This is not a spur-of-the-moment decision.” He sat forward, speaking with greater urgency. “I’ve been
thinking
about it for a long time. I don’t have a life. I’m at the office sixty hours a week, and when I’m not there, I’m still there—managing my cases, considering trial strategy, dreading what fires will ignite to ruin my weekend. Look at me.” He pulled his hair. “I’m thirty-two years old and I’m losing my hair. What’s left of it is turning gray. I’m not married. Hell, I don’t even have a steady girlfriend.”
    “You’re up for partner next year.”
    “That’s what
really
scares me. Half the shareholders at the firm are divorced. They make four hundred thousand dollars a year, but their mortgages and child support are killing them.” James picked up his beer and sat back, shaking his head. “I’m not going to die at my desk like Dad.”
    A part of her wanted to tell him that work had not killed their father, far from it, but as angry as she was at her father, telling her brother the truth would only be cruel. Boys put their fathers on pedestals and considered them heroes. Girls had the unfortunate experience of growing up and getting their hearts