Free Reasonable Doubt 3 by Whitney Gracia Williams

raised her eyebrow. “That was Miss Everhart’s idea. I told her it was a waste of time, but I guess not. If I have some free hours in between the Doherty case next week I’ll try to do that.”
    “Thank you.” I ignored the fact that my heart skipped a beat when she said Miss Everhart. “You can get out of my office now.”
    I pulled the papers from the file and began reorganizing them. As I clipped all of the witness testimonies together, Jessica cleared her throat.
    “You miss her, don’t you?” she asked.
    “Excuse me?” My head shot up.
    “Aubrey,” she said, smiling. “You miss her, don’t you?”
    I said nothing. I just watched as she sauntered over to me, slowly raising the sides of her skirt to show that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath.
    Smiling, she picked up my coffee cup and took a long, dramatic sip.
    “ Jessica …” I groaned.
    “You don’t have to admit to it.” She plopped her bare ass atop my desk. “But it’s clear that you haven’t been yourself for quite a while...”
    “Are your ass cheeks touching my desk right now?”
    “You don’t even insult me the normal way that you used to,” she said. “I actually miss that.”
    I pulled out a box of Clorox wipes.
    “She doesn’t stay in her old apartment anymore, you know. I think she moved.”
    “What makes you think I care about where an ex-employee lives?”
    “Because the address you gave me for that envelope and red box delivery belonged to her.”
    “That was for an old friend.”
    “Yeah, well…” She slid off my desk. “Your old friend must share an address with Aubrey Everhart because I pulled up her records from HR and she definitely stayed there.”
    Silence.
    “I thought so.” She smirked. “So, since you and I are so close—”
    “We are not close.”
    “It’s my duty as a friend to let you know that you’re really letting yourself go...” She actually looked saddened. “You’re not shaving, you’re coming to work every morning reeking of alcohol, and you’re barely yelling at the interns…I haven’t had a wet dream about you in a very long time.”
    I rolled my eyes and stood up, wiping the part of my desk where her ass had been.
    “But, since I know your secret about Aubrey now, you can know one of mine,” she said, lowering her voice. “Sometimes, in the mornings, when she would bring you your coffee and shut the door, I would stand outside and listen…” Her eyes lit up. “And I would just pretend that it was me…”
    “Pretend what was you?”
    “Aubrey,” she said. “Clearly she was good enough for you to break the ‘I don’t fuck my employees’ rule.” She stepped toward the door. “I knew the second she started here that you liked her.”
    “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    “Of course I don’t.” She looked over her shoulder. “But I do know that the second she quit, you’ve been a shell of yourself. You have yet to realize that you’ve been wearing the same blue suit for two weeks straight.”

    I took a long swig of scotch from the bottle, numbly staring at the images that were playing on my television screen. A little blond girl playing in the rain—stomping her red boots in every puddle she could find.
    “It’s time to go, Emma…”
    I winced at hearing the sound of my old voice, but I continued watching the scene.
    “Five more minutes!” She begged with a smile.
    “You don’t even know what that means. You’ve just heard me say it…”
    “Five more minutes!” She jumped into another puddle, laughing. “Five more minutes, Daddy!”
    “It’s going to rain all week. Don’t you want to go home and—”
    “ No !” She stomped her feet in a puddle again, splashing me. And then she smiled innocently into the camera before running away—begging me to chase her.
    I couldn’t bear to watch anymore. I turned off the TV and knocked the DVD player to the floor.
    Fuck…
    Walking down the hallway, I straightened the “E” and