Chapter 4: The Name on the Door

On Monday morning, I walked into Fessenden Law Group in a navy suit and my own face.

The receptionist looked up and then stood.

"Mrs. Farwell? Mr. Fessenden said you'd be in. He said to send you straight back."

The hallway still smelled of coffee and toner.

Seventeen years, and nothing had moved.

At the end of it, a brass plate on a closed door read A. OTIS.

It had never been taken down.

I stood there with my hand on the knob.

"It sticks if you push," said a voice behind me. "You have to lift."

Simon Fessenden leaned in the doorway of the next office with his glasses pushed up into silver hair.

He was fifty-one now. He had trained me from the day I walked in at twenty-six.

"You kept the plate," I said.

"The cleaners kept polishing it. I never could stop them."

He said it dryly, and he did not look away.

I lifted the knob and the door swung open.

My old desk was clear. A fresh legal pad lay on it, and a pen I recognized from my own drawer.

"I don't understand," I said. "Seventeen years."

"You said you'd be back when she was older." He shrugged. "I took it literally."

I laughed, which surprised both of us.

Then he shut the door and became the best lawyer I had ever worked for.

"Tell me what you need, Abby."

I told him the numbers first.

Twenty years of marriage, a prenup, my father's house in my name and a husband whose firm had lost money every year for six.

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