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answers, then get my head back in the legal game.
    I was about to give Angel some measure of assurance that I wasn’t about to self-destruct when there was a knock at my door and my administrative assistant Patty’s muffled voice said, “Charlie, you’re going to be late for your five o’clock.”
    I looked at my watch. It was ten minutes to five in the afternoon. I’d been asleep for nearly an hour.
    “Thanks, Patty,” I called. I got up from my desk, grabbed my jacket, and said, “Gotta run, Angel. You going to that charity thing on Sunday?”
    “The thing for the arts? I don’t know. You?”
    “Well, Lippincott’s speaking, so it seems like a good idea politically. Either way, I’ll call you that night. You can psych me up for Monday.”
    Angel turned in his chair as I hurried past him. “But wait, where are you going? I thought this case was your life for the immediate future. I thought you’d be here all night again, despite my sage advice.”
    “I’ve got to meet someone. Talk to you Sunday.”
     
    * * *
     
    I wasn’t on the street for more than a minute when I realized I was being followed. I was absolutely sure of it this time. Of course, it made it easier for me to be so certain when someone was calling, “Charlie, wait up!”
    I smiled and turned as my fiancée, Jessica, trotted up to me, a little out of breath. I watched her slow to a stop and brush a little of her shoulder-length auburn hair—hair the color of the richest, most lustrous cherry wood—from the corner of her mouth. I wondered, as I often did when I’d see her for the first time on any given day, whether there was even one strand of her father’s DNA in her. I guess they were both on the thin side, but that was where the similarities ended. Andrew Lippincott was short, sharp, and angular, while Jessica, standing almost five-nine, was gracefully long and lithe. Lippincott’s face was a little hard, while Jessica’s was soft and beautiful. It wasn’t perfect, not by Cosmopolitan magazine standards—her nose was probably a touch too long, her eyes just a fraction of an inch too close together—but she turned way more than her fair share of heads. And though I’d heard people opine that Jessica had inherited her father’s gray eyes, I privately disagreed. Lippincott’s eyes were a smoky, gunmetal gray while Jessica’s, I always thought, were like mood rings. When she laughed they looked like soft gray cashmere. When she was mad they turned the gray of an angry, turbulent sea. And I swear those eyes could sparkle in absolute darkness. I’d never seen her father’s do that, though I tried not to find myself with him in absolute darkness. Finally, while Lippincott moved deliberately, each gesture or step calculated and efficient, Jessica had somehow acquired a dancer’s grace without ever donning a tutu or tap shoe.
    Come to think of it, there was one way in which they were similar, I guess. They were both terrific lawyers. Jessica practiced securities law at Hudson Kain LLP, the fifth-largest firm in Boston, and was, by all accounts, a lock to make partner in a few months.
    When she reached me she tilted her chin up and waited for my kiss. I didn’t make her wait long.
    “What are you doing here?” I asked.
    “Well, hello, sweetie,” she said, smiling, “how nice it is to see you, too.”
    “Sorry. Of course it’s great to see you. It always is. But why am I seeing you?”
    She hooked her arm in mine, spun me around in the direction I’d been headed before she called to me, and we started walking.
    “I know you have your monthly appointment today, so I decided to surprise you. The grindstone has worn your nose down to a nub lately, Charlie. We’re getting behind on together time. I left the office a little early to buy a dress for the charity dinner on Sunday. I’ll shop while you get your head shrunk and we can meet up after your appointment. What do you think? Grab a little takeout, bring it back to your