Free Thorns of Truth by Eileen Goudge Page A

everyone else had missed it.
    Like with Ackerman v. Brushrite Industries —Max pinpointing the source of his client’s lead poisoning by having not only the paint currently manufactured by Brushrite tested, but the layers of Brushrite paint on the factory’s walls, some of which dated back to the time of Ackerman’s claim.
    But if there was a magic bullet buried somewhere in Esposito v. St. Bartholomew’s , she had yet to find it. Against the team of ambulance chasers representing Mrs. Esposito, a half-paralyzed old lady in a wheelchair, Rose would have to come up with an argument so compelling it would make a multi-million-dollar institution look like the underdog.…
    She was going over the anesthesiologist’s deposition—fifty pages of truly numbing transcript, no pun intended—when her intercom beeped. “Rose? I have that file you wanted Xeroxed. You asked me to give it to Mandy … but she’s not in her office yet.” She sounded apologetic, but it wasn’t her fault Mandy wasn’t in. Hell, she probably felt guilty for failing to cover for her.
    Rose tapped her pencil against the desktop in annoyance. Her stepdaughter had promised to go over next year’s proposed budget before their partners’ meeting at eleven. Rose needed the figures on Mandy’s department. It would have been helpful, too, to get some overall feedback on the firm. Like her father, Mandy had always been good at spotting places where they could trim back a bit; and since she was generally the first to show up in the morning, and the last to leave at night, she had a pretty good perspective on things.
    Except, lately, Mandy hadn’t been quite as available as usual.
    Come to think of it, Rose wondered, when had she last seen her stepdaughter? Whenever she buzzed Mandy at her desk, or stopped by her office. Rose was informed that Mandy was either in a meeting, or in court, or having lunch with a client. Was family law such a booming enterprise these days? Or was Mandy simply avoiding her?
    Rose made a mental note to invite her stepdaughter over for dinner one night next week. For hadn’t she been avoiding Mandy, too? When was the last time she’d suggested even a cup of coffee? Mandy was also grieving, she reminded herself. Maybe that was why they’d been subconsciously keeping one another at arm’s length: each was for the other too painful a reminder of the husband and father they’d lost.
    It wasn’t that Rose didn’t care; she just didn’t feel she could handle more than what was on her own plate. When the simple act of weeding out a closet seems like the excavation of Troy, you don’t have a lot left over for your family, she acknowledged ruefully.
    “Ask her to stop by my office when she gets in,” Rose directed her secretary—a bright-eyed Sarah Lawrence graduate whose anal doggedness secretly drove her a little nuts. “And— Mallory?—what is this on my calendar about a speech I’m supposed to give tomorrow afternoon?”
    “The Chelsea Tenants Association,” Mallory reminded her. “Something to do with legal rights in landlord disputes, I think.” She added nervously, “You spoke to the woman in charge, remember?”
    “Of course. It’s coming back to me now,” Rose lied.
    “Do you want me to see if I can reschedule it?”
    “No … I’m sure it’s in their bulletin already. I’ll squeeze it in somehow.” Running around like a chicken with its head cut off was better than having too much time to think, she’d found.
    “Oh, and one other thing,” Mallory remembered to tell her. “Before, when you were on the phone with Judge Henry’s office, there was a call. Some man—he said he was a friend.”
    Rose felt herself grow warm. Eric? Like an uninvited guest, he’d been on her mind since Saturday night. When he didn’t call on Sunday, she’d figured that was the end of it. She should have been relieved … but, instead, she’d been secretly disappointed. Now, perversely, what she felt was pure