He smiled weakly, nodding as he sat. “I was standing in somebody else’s line spot. There are a lot of rules in here. Learning them is a process. It’s not as bad as it looks.”
Even injured, Zach’s face was better-looking than I recalled, the angles more defined, stronger after all these years.
“I’m sorry that happened,” I said. “It looks painful.”
“Definitely not your fault,” he said, eyes darting down in that familiar way of his. “Thank you for coming at all. It’s been a long time.” He was quiet for a moment. “Luckily, I don’t make a living as a model. But ideally, I would like to get out of here so that I can keep the rest of my face.”
“A reminder: they’re not supposed to record these conversations, but …”
“Who knows, right?” Zach said. “I’ve got nothing to hide, but I hear you. All due care. I was listening, I promise.”
His eyes shot up to meet mine as his body started to vibrate slightly—that leg of his doing its thing out of sight. Poor Zach. He was in real trouble in there. He smiled then, sad and eager. I felt a queasy sinking in my gut.
“I’m here to help, Zach, in any way that I can,” I began. “But as I said before, I’m not going to be able to represent you myself.”
Zach peered at me through his one good eye, made a helpless gesture with his hands. “Okay. I mean, that’s not what I want to hear, but you can only do what you can do. I guess.”
My chest unclenched a little. I’d been more afraid than I’d realized that Zach would get angry. Not that I’d ever actually seen Zach angry. Did that mean he was incapable of murdering his wife? Of course not. Besides, eleven years was eleven years. I knew nothing about Zach’s life now apart from what I’d read in that New York Times profile that I’d discovered during one of my what-happened-to-every-guy-I-knew-before-Sam retaliatory googling sessions.
“Honestly, it’s my new job,” I said, this very real, very legitimate, and much better excuse having occurred to me on the long ride to Rikers. “I’m a senior associate at Young & Crane. Only partners take on cases. I have to defer to their procedures.”
“How did that firm thing happen anyway?” Zach asked. “All you ever wanted was to be a US attorney. No judgment, but I was surprised when I saw that you’d left.”
“Saw?” I asked.
Then I remembered: the Penn Law Annual class notes. Victoria had an incongruous sorority streak that compelled her to attend every reunion and submit an update to each and every alumni quarterly. I had no doubt she’d been trying to be supportive—a senior associate position at Young & Crane was a prestigious and extremely lucrative job; the complex cases, the sterling reputation, the salary to match. I was even on partner track, albeit a slightly delayed one. But the change in my original plan—to devote my professional life to good work and low pay as a prosecutor at the US attorney’s office—had not been voluntary.
“I would have been less surprised to see that you’d left law altogether than to see that you’d switched to corporate defense.”
I winced, but tried to cover it with a smile. “Life. Things don’t always turn out the way you expect.”
“What does that mean?” Zach asked. “There’s no way you got fired. You’re way too good for that.”
“It didn’t make sense for us to have me stay there.”
That was true, though far from the whole truth: that my husband had driven our life into a ditch that my job at Young & Crane was supposed to dig us out of.
About a year before, Sam had gotten so drunk at a work lunch that he told his editor at Men’s Health to fuck off, then fell asleep on the bathroom floor. Facedown, under a urinal. Men’s Health had already been the last of many stops on a steep slide for a career that had started at the New York Times. The jobs had all been lost in one way or another because of Sam’s drinking—factual errors, missed deadlines. Belligerence.
Fortunately, when Sam was finally fired from Men’s Health, he had a contract for a book based on his popular advice column. Unfortunately, we’d long since spent the modest advance, and he was nowhere near finished with the book. These days, Sam wasn’t writing much at all. Despite all that, we might have been able to squeak by okay on my paltry government salary were it not for the accident.
The weekend after Sam got fired from Men’s Health, we took the jitney out to a friend’s place in Montauk, trying to get our minds off the whole thing with a good meal and a glass of wine. Apparently, sometime after I went to bed, Sam decided he was “totally fine to drive” and “borrowed” our friend’s restored antique convertible to run out and get some more beers. He ended up smashing the car into the Anglers, a historic pub downtown, completely destroying both it and the vehicle. The accident had, remarkably and thankfully, left Sam completely unscathed, but to compensate for the destruction of some priceless family heirlooms we’d been sued personally by the owner of the Anglers for intentional conduct not covered by insurance—in other words, Sam being drunk. The settlement required us to pay $200,000 out of our own pocket over the next two years.
This was a fact I’d intentionally left off my Young & Crane financial disclosure form. The lawsuit was against Sam personally, and hence in a gray area in terms of my own credit history. I did know better, of course. Law firms didn’t want associates in debt because it might make them vulnerable to undue influence, and our sizable debt was a joint obligation. Even with my Young & Crane salary, paying it off would not be easy either. But it could be done over time and without claiming bankruptcy, provided we dispensed with “nonessentials” like the IVF the fertility specialist had recommended as our next step. But then, that did simplify things. The last thing Sam and I could handle was a baby.
Was I angry about all of this? Of course. Sometimes I was positively enraged, but never so much that hope didn’t win the day. After all, if I stopped believing that everything would work out, if I stopped trusting in Sam’s golden-hued worldview, I’d be left only with the reality of the way things were. And that was totally untenable.
“It didn’t make ‘sense’ for you to stay at the US attorney’s office?” Zach pressed. “What does that mean?”
There was that directness I’d always liked.
“We’ve run into some unexpected financial challenges. It’s a long, complicated story. Anyway, working at the US attorney’s office isn’t exactly the best way to earn extra cash.”
“Marriage,” Zach said, then shook his head ruefully.
“It’s obviously not the end of the world,” I said. “I’m working at one of the best law firms in the country, not a salt mine.”
Zach’s one eye looked sad. “Still,” he said. “I know how much that job meant to you. I’m sorry.”
A burn blazed up my throat. I looked away.
“That’s the hardest part about marriage, isn’t it?” Zach went on. “Somebody else’s problems become your own. It doesn’t always feel fair.”
“It doesn’t,” I said. Zach saying the exact right thing was nicer than I wanted it to be.