They Called Me Copy Girl. I Wrote the Law. Chapter 12

They Called Me Copy Girl. I Wrote the Law. Chapter 12: The Letter

Mom.

don’t know how long I cried.

Long enough that the garage lights went dark and clicked back on when someone drove past.

Sebastian reached over at some point and took the letter out of my shaking hand and folded it so I wouldn’t-

ruin it.

“Ivy.”

“She wanted me,” I said. “She wanted me in that room. I spent three years thinking I stole her last chance, and

she she asked.”

“I know.”

“I burned three years.”

“You survived three years,” he said. “There’s a difference, and you’re going to have to learn it out loud.”

I laughed and hiccuped at the same time, which is a horrifying noise.

Then I called Mr. Abernathy back.

“I’ll take the estate,” I said. “The account, the trust, all of it.”

“Ms. Marlowe, that’s-”

“Not for me. Set up a fund. Law school scholarships. Full ride, no debt, for kids who want to be public

defenders and can’t buy their way in.”

“A name for the fund?”

I looked out the windshield at nothing.

“The Celia Marlowe Fund,” I said. “For lawyers who are scared and right at the same time.”

bily Crane had her ankle monitor cut off in a courthouse basement and asked the officer if she could keep it

as a souvenir.” He said no. She took a selfie with it anyway.

She captioned it my lawyer is hotter than yours and it got four hundred thousand views, which is how the legal press found me, which is how, six weeks later, I was standing in a rooftop restaurant with a glass of something expensive being asked the same question for the ninth time that night.

“Ms. Marlowe, the whole profession thought you’d left. Where have you been?”

“The basement,” I said.

They laughed. They thought it was a joke.

Sebastian, three feet away, did not laugh, because he knew it wasn’t.

Later, on the terrace, when everyone else had gone in:

“I want to build something,” he said.

“That’s a terrifying sentence from a man with your money.”

“A defense clinic. Wrongful convictions, bad forensics, the cases nobody takes because there’s no fee in them. Free for anyone under twenty-five who can’t pay.” He turned his glass in his hand. “I want you to run it.”

“Sebastian-”

“Name your salary.”

“You keep saying that.”

“You keep not answering.”

I looked out at the city. Ten million lights, all of them somebody.

“Why?” I said. “And don’t tell me it’s because I’m good. There are twenty good trial lawyers in this city and eighteen of them are easier to be in a room with.”

He set down the glass.

“Because the first time I saw you, you were holding a coffee pot and you’d gone white reading a file you weren’t allowed to read,” he said. “And I have spent my entire life around people who perform competence. You were the first person I’d ever met who had it and was trying to hide it. I couldn’t stop thinking about that. I still

can’t.”