LITMIR.BIZ

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office Carol and Shirley, two of the legal assistants, shared.

      She tapped on the door and opened it slowly. Five people stood in a clump in front of Carol’s desk, and as one, they looked at her with a mix of sadness, insecurity and maybe hope.

      That was not helpful.

      “What? What’s going on?” Delainey asked, directing the inquiry to Carol.

      “Shamus is retiring,” cried Patty, the gray-haired sixtyish receptionist, as she rushed over, not quite teary but close, and grabbed Delainey’s arm. “We hoped you’d know what’s happening. Why would he do that to us?”

      Since Patty’s reaction was usually to panic first and seek information second, Delainey decided to remain calm. “He’s been making those plans for years. He’s going to start pulling back in a couple of years and be gone in three or four.”

      Patty just looked at her.

      “Today,” said Shirley, red haired, the youngest office employee and granddaughter of the retiring Shamus Murphy.

      “He’s retiring today?” Delainey looked at each of them. “That can’t happen.”

      “He was here when I arrived, sitting right here drinking that awful tea he likes,” said Carol as she leaned back against her desk. “He didn’t say he was quitting soon and not even today. He said yesterday was his last day as partner.”

      “He’s just stepping down.” A rush of dread made Delainey’s muscles ache and her chest tighten. “He’ll still be here, right?”

      Leaving couldn’t be on the table. He had to keep the position open for her until she finished law school.

      Until she finished. Oh, that sounded selfish, even if it was just inside her head. But if she was going to provide for her daughter, she needed to give up being a paralegal and become the lawyer she had planned on becoming six years ago.

      “‘Stepping out,’ he called it. He’ll be available for consultations for ongoing cases for a while, but he’s retiring. Harriet is now senior partner,” Patty added, and the words felt like a door slamming loudly.

      “But how? Who will be the other partner?” How would they get enough work to keep fourteen full-and part-time people busy with only one attorney? There needed to be two lawyers in the office, at least from a get-the-jobs standpoint. Shamus had to stay.

      “Shamus left for the airport in Portland.” Carol held up a hand. “Said he’d be back after lunch with his replacement.”

      Replacement?

      In her head, Delainey saw this replacement arrive, sit down at the desk that was to have been hers in three years—and the world tilted on one dangerous edge.

      Think. She had to think, not stand there and pull all her hair out with her coworkers watching.

      “I have to get to my office,” Delainey said as she raced out the door, leaving, she was sure, the whole bunch gaping after her.

      She fled to her second-floor office at the back of the building. A lesser ten-by-ten-foot space tucked between two storage rooms. Two walls were blank. The door in one wall was offset from the two main offices on the other side of the hallway, so even if the doors stood open, they could not easily see into each other’s offices. The back wall had two lovely windows, windows that should have a view of the ocean, but they looked out at the fire escape, the parking lot and the dilapidated abandoned warehouse across the alley. But the office suddenly became indispensable to her, a den of retreat.

      She hung her old navy blue quilted winter coat on the hook behind the door and sat down in the chair at her desk. Things were not supposed to change until she was ready.

      Shamus was not supposed to leave. She swung her feet up onto her desk. Her whole plan hinged on having a place to work when she got out of law school, a place in Bailey’s Cove, Maine, where she could raise her daughter among the townsfolk who loved them both.

      Air came hard into her chest. Bailey’s Cove didn’t need another attorney. She wasn’t greedy, but there wouldn’t be enough work for the new person and herself after she graduated and came back to Morrison and Morrison.

      And that was the large and the small of it. There were already more than enough attorneys for the struggling town of fourteen thousand. She had been eking out a living as a single mom for a long time while saving money for school. Her parents helped with her daughter and if this attorney job went away, she’d have to find work elsewhere, away from Bailey’s Cove and everyone she and Brianna loved.

      She rubbed her chest and coaxed herself to relax. This replacement might only be temporary, because why would someone come here to this tiny town, and more importantly, why would they stay here in the back of nowhere?

      She got up and stood at the window. Gulls floated in the sky as if the world were not crumbling. She felt small again, the way she had when her actions kept her from law school the first time.

      Shamus knew she needed the job. Okay, he had never said in so many words the job was hers, but everyone in the office assumed she’d be the next attorney.

      For Shamus to leave so abruptly, there had to be something terribly wrong with him or maybe Connie, his wife, or maybe a grandchild. The thought only tightened the knot in her chest.

      She couldn’t ask Harriet, the other partner, because Harriet had conveniently gone on an impromptu Caribbean cruise. Shamus would have planned this, she was sure. Get Harriet out of the way for her own peace of mind while he dealt with the fallout of whatever this was.

      Oh, Shamus, please be okay.

      She’d just have to pull it together for a while until she found out what was going on and who this was he was fetching from the airport. Probably some young thing fresh out of law school. Get some experience for the résumé in Bailey’s Cove and be gone in two or three years—she could only hope.

      The thought calmed her a bit. That would be perfect. That left only Shamus to worry about.

      But what if the new attorney fell in love with the small coastal town, or even someone in the town? They might want to stay forever.

      The budding calm fled.

      When her phone jangled with her sister’s ringtone, she jumped and grabbed it off the desk. “Good morning, Christina.”

      “Deelee!” Her sister, Christina Talbot, younger by two years, was the only person who called her Deelee. Well, of all the people in the world she had trusted with the moniker, the only person who still lived in Bailey’s Cove. “I got them. All of them. As of today they are mine.”

      “Wait. What did you get?” Her sister had been talking madness about the Three Sisters, three Victorian-style houses built long ago for three siblings. The houses sat side by side on Treacher Avenue a few blocks from the harbor.

      “Dora, Cora and Rose, of course.” Christina’s tone held a touch of smug.

      “Did you sign the contracts already?” She was certain her younger sister didn’t know the meaning of due diligence.

      “I did that a long time ago. Monday I got the money, and at eight o’clock this morning I closed on them.”

      As Christina had retorted more than once during their sisterly discussions, Delainey wasn’t the one to be pointing fingers at decision making, good or bad. The big one Delainey had made had been a whopper. So she kept her mouth shut.

      “I know. I know,” Christina started again. “Owning them is going to be a total drain on my finances, but this is happening. It’s really happening.”

      “Where are you now?”

      “I’m in Cora. She’s a great lady.” Cora was the center and largest of the three houses. Cora had been the oldest daughter, and apparently, Daddy did love her best.

      Delainey had a sudden thought. Her sister’s purchase was the perfect distraction.

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