No Matter, You Don't Have to Wait for Me novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Reference

The firm took up four floors of a glass tower in Midtown, and the conference room was on the thirty-second.

Three partners sat on one side of a long table, and a chair for me stood at the other.

At the far end, with a legal pad he had not written on, sat Sergio.

I had not known he would be there.

"It's the firm's custom," the managing partner said. She was a woman in a gray suit with a level voice. "The candidate hears his references. We find it keeps everyone honest."

Sergio wouldn't look at me.

"Thank you for coming, Ms. Halstead. You've known Mr. Caruso how long?"

"Since college. We shared an apartment for most of it."

"Tell us about his character."

I had spent the whole subway ride deciding what to say.

I decided to say all of it, the good and the bad, in that order.

"He's careful," I said. "He reads the footnotes, and he reads the footnotes of the footnotes. When he says he will do something for a client, it gets done."

The partner on her left wrote that down.

"He's loyal. Once, when his mother was in the hospital, he had the LSAT in four days and no way to study. I sat with her for three nights so he could."

Sergio's pen stopped moving.

"I never told him what that cost me. That part is on me. I let him think it was nothing."

"Thank you. That's useful."

"There's more," I said. "You asked about his character, and this is the other half."

The managing partner folded her hands.

"For six years, Sergio knew something about his best friend's family that concerned the woman his best friend was about to marry. It was not his secret, and it was not his to keep from me. He knew I was planning a wedding around a table with a person at it I hadn't been told about."

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