Finding You by Daphne Elliot

 

1

ASTRID

January

“Are you sure you’re okay up there? You can come here if you want.” I looked around my new home. It wasn’t bad. It was a far cry from my luxury apartment in downtown Boston, but on the plus side, it had a lovely ocean view.

“Thanks, Emily. I’m fine,” I replied. “The cottage is perfect.”

The little cottage was charming in its shabby-chicness, bursting with pillows, paintings, and tchotchkes. A worn, plush couch faced a brick fireplace in the tiny living room, and there was a small kitchen in the back, stuffed with every possible kitchen tool and gadget known to man. Not that I would be using any of them, but even I could appreciate the value of a well-stocked kitchen. It had a small porch that looked out over the bluffs, and as I stood there, freezing my ass off in the January cold, a sort of calm settled over me. I wasn’t in the city anymore. And I wasn’t necessarily mad about that.

“What can I get you? Do you need anything?” Her kindness meant a lot to me. Emily was my first cousin. We were nothing alike. I was quiet and serious, and Emily was zany and adventurous, but somehow our childhood bond developed into a genuine adult friendship.

I briefly saw red. I was still so angry. How could they treat me like this? After everything I had done for the firm? I could feel the lava travel up my esophagus. I had to unpack and find my heartburn medication. “I’m good. I have everything I need to kick back and unwind for a couple of days.”

The cottage belonged to my aunt Connie. She was my father’s younger sister and the only extended family I had any contact with growing up. She was an eccentric sort, an artist who had fled the city for the idyllic small town of Havenport, Massachusetts sometime in the 1970s. Here she had found some success, opening a gallery and marrying her first husband. Emily and her sister, Grace, grew up here, among the bluffs and the dunes and the charming small-town festivals. I associated this place with fun and freedom, which may have been the reason the first call I made after being fired from my law firm was not to my mother, but to my aunt.

As a kid, I would come visit Havenport in the summer, and I loved every second of it. My cousins lived a few minutes from the historic downtown, and after dinner we would walk to get ice cream cones and watch the fishing boats unload their daily catch. It was an idyllic sort of place—safe, clean, and everyone knew everyone. My cousins had lots of friends, participated in fun activities, and had the kind of free-range, charming childhoods I longed for.

My childhood, by contrast, was one of strict discipline and formality. I was raised in a historic mansion in Brookline, Massachusetts by my mother and a series of nannies. My mother, the right honorable Justice Mary Wentworth, was a judge on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. She was consistently ranked by Boston Magazine as one of the most powerful women in Massachusetts.

She had been nominated to the bench when I was in middle school and worked her way up the courts to her current position. She was widely regarded as a legal genius and a fair and tolerant jurist. Her life was a series of high stakes legal decisions and grand parties and networking events. All of which I hated.

She devoted her life and career to public service and the pursuit of justice. That left very little time for being a mother, a role she outsourced as much as she could. When I was a kid, she never came to parent-teacher nights or to school plays or concerts. She did begrudgingly attend my graduations, but only because I was graduating from prestigious institutions.

I attended private school and left home at fourteen to attend Miss Farmer’s Academy in Connecticut, the preeminent prep school for the daughters of Boston and New York elites. After Miss Farmer’s, it was on to Yale and then to Harvard Law School, where, to the embarrassment of my mother, I only finished fourth in my class. Then I spent one year clerking for a federal judge before starting my career at Burns & Glenn, one of the world’s largest law firms. I had spent six years chained to my desk, churning out billable hours and getting yearly pats on the head. I had skipped vacations, friends’ weddings, holidays, and countless meals, workouts, and nights of sleep. I had one goal—partnership. The brass ring. The ultimate validation of all my hard work and sacrifice. Every minute of my life to date had been precisely calculated to help me achieve my goal.

And it was all for naught. One day I was the hardest-working, highest-achieving senior associate at the firm, and the next I was a liability who required an investigation.

Emily interrupted my thoughts as I stared out the window. “Do you want to tell me what happened? I’m happy to listen.”

I took a deep breath, but it did nothing to calm the angry fire inside me. It wasn’t just my stomach. Every cell in my body burned with rage, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I had spent my entire life with a mask of calm on my face. I sat and negotiated with opposing counsel for hours without so much as a yawn or a pee break. I could pull an all-nighter and charm clients at a seven a.m. breakfast meeting the next day. I was a stone-cold badass and yet it wasn’t enough for them.

Nothing I did was enough for them. Because I was a woman and the deck was stacked against me. Everything I’d worked for since middle school had disappeared in the last seventy-two hours and I was too shocked to cry. But the rage. The rage that had simmered on the periphery for years was starting to bubble up inside me. The volcano of anger and disappointment had been dormant too long, and I knew I was going to blow soon.

“It’s complicated, Em. They fired me.”

“What? Fired you? You are the hardest-working associate they’ve ever had, and your mom is a goddamn judge.”

“I know.” I had given them six years of my life. I had never made a mistake, my reviews were excellent, and my client relationships were strong. I had the makings of an exceptional partner and everyone there knew it. I volunteered for client pitches, wrote academic articles in my nonexistent spare time, and represented the firm at professional conferences and law school recruiting fairs.

And yet, in a few short months I had gone from all-star to pariah. “They said I made a mistake. They said I accidentally sent a confidential document to opposing counsel, jeopardizing negotiations in a billion-dollar merger.”

“What?”

“I know I didn’t. I couldn’t have.” I paced around the tiny living room. “And when I asked for proof—the emails, the metadata, screenshots—they couldn’t give me anything.” As attorneys we were trained to always organize the evidence before making accusations. We were trained to know the answer to questions before you asked them. So why did they come at me with such flimsy accusations and no evidence?

“That is total bullshit…oh crap, I meant caca,” she spat. I heard one of her kids laughing in the background and assumed she would be making a healthy donation to the swear jar tonight.

When the managing partner had sat me down, he seemed so disappointed. “We never expected this from you, Astrid. It’s a shame—you have been such a bright spot in your associate cohort.” John Waterson was a sharp-looking man in his sixties who built his reputation on his aggressive tactics and take no prisoners attitude. He was rich, elitist, out of touch, and just a little bit mean—the perfect BigLaw partner. When I pushed back on him, he acted shocked. Like how dare I ask for concrete evidence of my career-ending mistake? If he was looking for me to sit there and take it, then he was sorely mistaken. I was many things, but a doormat was not one of them.

“When I asked for more information, he noted the poor review I had received from Max Shapiro and some rumblings within the partnership that I was ‘not as committed’ as I used to be.”

“What?”

“It is total bullshit.” My commitment to the firm and my clients was unwavering. “I looked him in the eye and asked for an example of this lack of commitment. He was unable to provide a single one. The real mistake I made was not reporting that smarmy motherfucker Max Shapiro, not anything related to client documents.”

“Good for you. I’m glad you didn’t back down.”

“So I serenely asked him to provide actual facts to back up these assertions, and he told me to ‘calm myself.’”

“You have got to be shitting me. He did the old, sexist ‘calm down, you crazy woman’ play?”

“Yup. Then he suggested that I not get ‘so emotional.’”

“OMG.”

“I wanted to ‘emotionally’ punch him in his wrinkled old man balls.” But, being the consummate professional that I was, I sat quietly and calmly advocated to keep my job. Total coded sexist bullshit. “He seemed so surprised that I wouldn’t go quietly into the good night with the generous severance package and an ironclad noncompete.”

“What happened?”

“I refused to sign the liability waiver that they require before they pay you severance. Basically you waive all your rights to sue the firm.”

“So you don’t get severance?”

“Nope. I have ninety days to sign it, and if I don’t, not only do I not get severance, I won't get a recommendation from the firm. Which I need if I have any hope of getting another job.”

“I am so proud of you for standing up for yourself!” Emily yelled over the sounds of screaming and a dog barking in the background. The four walls of her house could barely contain the chaos most days. “So they want to prevent you from suing them?”

“Bingo. They are trying to cover their asses. The good news is, I didn’t screw up the merger, and they will know that once the investigation begins. The bad news is that Max Shapiro badmouthed me and ruined my reputation after I repeatedly rejected his sexual advances, and I don’t know if I’m ever going to recover from that.”

“Astrid. What happened?”

As if the rage and heartburn weren’t bad enough, a runaway tidal wave of shame crashed over me. I didn’t want to talk about this. I didn't want to relive it all. But Emily was family, and I hadn't been able to confide in anyone about this.

“He came on to me several times, and I politely said no. The intensity increased and I remained professional and pleasant, just as I was taught to.” That wasn't the whole story but it was all I could manage right now. He was a creepy, persistent asshole who terrorized me with texts, emails, and comments for months. Eventually it stopped, and I assumed that he got the message and things would go back to normal. “I thought that was the end of it. But he was sabotaging me behind the scenes for months before I caught on. Blaming this mistake on me was just one of the many things he did to undermine my position at the firm.”

“That motherfucker. That's retaliation.”

“I know.”

“So what are you going to do? We could burn his house down. I’ve always been up for a little light arson.”

I made a mental note to check in with Emily’s husband about her firebug tendencies at a later date. “No, Em. I need to trust the process. Without a recommendation, I won’t get a job at another firm. So I need to wait for them to complete the investigation. Once they realize I didn’t do this and he unfairly blamed me, I’ll be able to leverage that for a recommendation for my next job.”

“But what if they don’t? Shouldn't you sue them or something?” I wasn’t ready to confront that reality. That everything I had spent my life working for was over. And while suing them for sexual harassment and retaliation seemed an attractive option, it would kill any chances I had of getting a position at a rival firm. Law firms may pretend to be bastions of equality, but there was nothing people hated more than a squeaky wheel. Especially when that wheel was a woman.

“I don't know what I’m going to do yet. But right now I’m going to enjoy my break and figure out my next steps.”

“Let me know what I can do to help!”

I laughed. “I’m fine, really. Just need some time and space to think. Actually,” I said, feeling super awkward, “what I need is a date.”

“A date?”

“For this legal gala. I am receiving an award for some pro bono work I did. And, I could skip it…”

“Stop right there. You are not skipping this. You worked your ass off, and you are not going to go run and hide after being fired. You are going to attend and show everyone there what a stone-cold badass Astrid Wentworth is. Got it?”

I smiled. Emily was fiercely loyal, and right now, I needed all the loyalty I could get.

“Yes. But I don't want to go alone.”

“We can take care of that, Astrid. You are gorgeous, and there are loads of single men out there who would happily squire you to your fancy event.” I doubted that very much. I had never had much luck in the dating department. “In fact,” she continued, “you should join some dating apps. Use this time in Havenport to go on some dates, meet some guys, have some fun!”

I shuddered. Dating apps were my idea of hell. But she was right about one thing—I certainly had the time on my hands to actually meet some people.

“Ok. I’ll join one app and see how it goes.”

“Sounds like a plan. Oh shit. Jacob is trying to slice his own strawberries again. I gotta run.”

Since I couldn’t possibly stay in my apartment next door to my office after being fired, I had packed a few bags, called an Uber, and gotten the hell out of the city. What do people do when they are not working? I have slept, gone for a million walks, listened to a few podcasts, and flipped through some of the hundreds of romance novels piled high in the built-in bookcases.

Despite living less than an hour away, it had been years since I had come up here to visit. I forgot how charming this place was. I had only been here a few days, and I could begrudgingly admit that I was already feeling more relaxed. The cottage was outside of the downtown area, but nothing a good brisk walk or an Uber couldn’t fix. And walking! Turns out I loved walking. It may sound strange, but for years, I just walked from the lobby of my apartment building across a tiny side street to the lobby of my office building. I rented an overpriced studio at the Greenside, a luxury apartment building for Boston’s trendy professionals, because it was located directly next to the office tower where Burns & Glenn had its Boston office. I overpaid for the convenience of having a two-minute commute. It made sense at the time. Time spent commuting was time I couldn’t be billing. And billing was the most important and most valuable use of my time. Sleeping? Exercising? Socializing with friends? Nope, my billable time was worth nine hundred dollars an hour, so nothing was worth that much. I spent very little time at the apartment, using it mainly for showering and sleeping. I certainly had never cooked a meal there or even watched a movie, as far as I could remember. Every minute was spent in pursuit of billing more hours, accomplishing more for my clients, and impressing the partners at the firm. Nothing else mattered.

And so there was no time for walks. Or fresh air or exercise. Coming here and just walking had been a revelation. I had been listening to podcasts, reading books, and getting to know the area. I had just signed up for Netflix and was excited to catch up on all the movies and television people had been gushing about for the past decade. I didn’t even own a TV. Now I had all the time in the world to kick back in front of the cottage’s modest-sized flatscreen. These activities were entirely unproductive and a waste of my sterling intellect, but I was enjoying myself.

Adding to the satisfaction, this morning I caught a glimpse of my hot neighbor. It was dark and cold at five thirty in the morning, but I still got a decent look at him. I woke as I usually do, in a panic around four thirty. My heart pounded and my mind raced as I reached for my phone to check my emails. It took a few minutes before I realized they had taken my company phone and so there were no emails to check.

But still, I was jittery and awake so I decided to take a morning walk and was rewarded with a sighting of one of the most attractive men I’ve ever seen. He was tall and broad and exuded masculinity. I had no idea what he did for a living, but I bet he worked with his hands. His strong, fit body indicated a physical job, not just time spent in the gym. He was scruffy, with a full beard and long dark hair pulled back into a bun. I couldn’t tell exactly how old he was, but I’d guess probably in his thirties. He’d run in sweatpants and a faded Navy hoodie. When he got back to his yard, he stripped off the hoodie and started doing pushups in his T-shirt. I could see the faint outlines of tattoos in the early morning light. If I was a religious woman I would have thanked the good Lord for pushups. It seemed like he could do them for ages and ages. And I watched. I watched his arms, back, and shoulders contract and his firm, round ass in those sweatpants. The men in my life never wore sweatpants, so I was not familiar with their allure. Even across the street, they were the hottest thing I had ever seen. He was dirty and sweaty and oh so hot. Not my type at all, of course, but I could appreciate a fine specimen of man when I saw one.

My hot neighbor was one of the only bright spots in the past few days.

But as I stood on the tiny porch, the winter wind burning the skin on my cheeks, I knew coming here was the right decision. My world had completely shifted on its axis, and I needed to regroup and make a plan. What better place than a secluded oceanfront cottage in some small charming town where no one knew who my mother was or about the mistakes I had made?