I Confessed My Love To The Wrong Woman—Now The City’S Scariest Lawyer Won't Let Me Go

JournalismJourney

Transcript

00:00:00The bar was the kind of dim-lit, dark wood, Manhattan-gent finance district place where lawyers went after losing

00:00:05big and pretended they had won.

00:00:07I had lost big. I had spent four months building a motion to suppress that should have been granted, and

00:00:13now my client was facing a trial I had spent a year telling him we would never see.

00:00:17So I was three drinks in when the woman in the charcoal suit sat down at the end of the

00:00:21bar, and four drinks in when I decided I had been quietly, ruinously in love with my paralegal for 14

00:00:27months, and tonight was the night I would finally say it.

00:00:30The woman in the charcoal suit was not my paralegal. If you want to hear uncensored, too hot for YouTube

00:00:35stories, check out my Patreon in the description, tell us where you are watching from, and subscribe.

00:00:41The thing you have to understand about Marlo Sterling is that I had constructed an entire silent architecture around her

00:00:46over the course of 14 months and I had never told a single person about any of it.

00:00:50Not my best friend. Not my sister. Not the firm therapist they made us see after the Henderson case. The

00:00:56architecture was elaborate. It had load-bearing walls.

00:01:00It included the way she organized my exhibits before I asked, the way she remembered which witnesses I needed coffee

00:01:05for and which ones I needed to keep waiting in the lobby on purpose, the way she said good morning

00:01:09at 6.45 and good night at 9, and never once made the words mean more than the words.

00:01:14I had been in love with her since the morning of the Varick deposition, when she handed me my red

00:01:19lines five minutes before the witness arrived, and her thumb had brushed my thumb on the top of the folder,

00:01:24and she had not moved her hand for one second longer than was strictly necessary.

00:01:28One second. Fourteen months. I had been carrying that one second around like a small radioactive object, and I had

00:01:35never once asked her if it had meant anything, because asking would mean knowing, and knowing might mean that the

00:01:41answer was no, and the firm conference room at 6 in the morning with her standing at the long table

00:01:45reviewing my outlines was the safest thing in my life and I was not going to set fire to it

00:01:49for the sake of clarity.

00:01:50That was the plan. The plan had survived three drinks. The plan did not survive four. The bar was called

00:01:57Halloran's. It was on the ground floor of a building two blocks from my firm, and it had the kind

00:02:02of dark wood booths and brass railings and reading lamps that made it look like a place where someone might

00:02:06write a letter that would still be there in 50 years, even though everyone in the place was on a

00:02:10phone.

00:02:11I was at the bar proper. The bartender was a woman in her 50s with reading glasses on a chain,

00:02:16who had been pouring me whiskey neat for two hours without commenting on it. I was looking at my phone.

00:02:22I was specifically looking at the chain of texts between me and Marlo, a chain that ran back 14 months

00:02:27and contained 3,002 messages, of which approximately 2,800 were case-related, and approximately 200 were the kind of

00:02:35messages that made the case-related ones feel slightly different.

00:02:38The kind that said, drive safe at 11 at night when she knew I had a hearing in the morning.

00:02:43The kind that said, your hair was good today once and then never again, as if she had said the

00:02:48thing and decided she had said too much.

00:02:50I was scrolling slowly through 14 months of those messages and getting drunker by the minute, and I was on

00:02:55the verge of doing something I had spent 14 months not doing.

00:02:58Then the woman in the charcoal suit sat down two stools away. I noticed her the way you notice things

00:03:03when you are drunk peripherally first and then all at once.

00:03:06She was tall. She was sitting on a barstool the way some people sit on furniture, like the furniture was

00:03:12lucky to have her.

00:03:13She was in a charcoal three-piece suit that fit the way three-piece suits fit when somebody had measured

00:03:17the wearer with a tape and not a guess.

00:03:20Her hair was the color of polished walnut, pulled back severely from her face, and her face was the kind

00:03:25of face that does not give you anything for free.

00:03:27She was also, I noted in the dim back of my brain where actual cognition was still running, wearing a

00:03:33watch on her right wrist, a Cartier tank, the kind of watch that women wear when they have decided to

00:03:38spend a small four-figure number on a piece of metal that tells time.

00:03:42She ordered a single old-fashioned. She did not look at me. She did not look at her phone. She

00:03:47put her hands flat on the bar like a person who had decided to be present.

00:03:51The bartender brought her drink and she nodded once. I should have left her alone. I was going to leave

00:03:56her alone. I had a paralegal to text.

00:03:58I had a 14-month silent architecture to finally either burn down or move into. I was halfway through composing

00:04:05the message I had spent a year and a quarter not sending.

00:04:07And the message in front of me on the screen said,

00:04:10Marlo, I have been in love with you since the Varick deposition and I cannot sit at that table at

00:04:14six in the morning anymore without saying it.

00:04:16I read it. I read it again. I closed my eyes for a second.

00:04:20When I opened them, the woman in the charcoal suit was looking at me.

00:04:23She had the kind of look that is not asking and not offering. She was a person who had registered

00:04:28another person at the bar and had decided that the registration was permanent until something interrupted it.

00:04:34Her eyes were gray. Or possibly green.

00:04:37The lighting was bad and I was drunk. I am going to say something embarrassing, I said.

00:04:42It came out of my mouth before I had given the words permission.

00:04:45The whiskey had made the executive function loose. The executive function was on a long lead and the dog had

00:04:50already left the yard.

00:04:51She tilted her head one degree. Said nothing.

00:04:54I have been in love with my paralegal for 14 months, I said.

00:04:58She blinked. Once. The kind of blink that was not surprise.

00:05:01The kind of blink that was a person updating an internal file.

00:05:04I said, I have not told her. I have not told anyone.

00:05:09I drafted a message. I drafted it tonight. I drafted it about 10 minutes ago.

00:05:15I have been looking at it for 10 minutes and I am about to send it.

00:05:18I held up my phone. She looked at the phone. She did not lean over. She did not ask to

00:05:24see it.

00:05:24She just acknowledged the phone with her eyes the way she might acknowledge an exhibit being entered into evidence.

00:05:30How drunk are you? She said.

00:05:32Her voice was a register I had not been prepared for.

00:05:36Low. Specific.

00:05:37A voice that did not waste itself.

00:05:39The voice of a person who said exactly what she meant and never said it twice.

00:05:44Approximately four whiskeys, I said. Possibly closer to four and a half.

00:05:48There was a pour at three that the bartender did not measure.

00:05:51She nodded slowly.

00:05:52How long have you known her? She said.

00:05:55Fourteen months.

00:05:56She came to the firm last March.

00:05:57She is a paralegal in our litigation group.

00:05:59She is 29.

00:06:01She is from a town in Connecticut that I cannot name without her present because I am afraid I will

00:06:05get the spelling wrong.

00:06:06She runs the document review on every case I have.

00:06:09She is the most competent human being I have ever stood next to.

00:06:13I was not crying.

00:06:14I was, however, doing something with my voice that was adjacent to crying, in the way that the second drink

00:06:20is adjacent to the third.

00:06:21The woman in the charcoal suit picked up her old-fashioned, took one slow sip, set it down.

00:06:26She said, you are going to send that message tonight.

00:06:29I am, I said.

00:06:31You should not.

00:06:32I should, I said.

00:06:33I have spent 14 months not sending it.

00:06:35I have organized my entire interior life around not sending it.

00:06:39I have decided that tonight I am going to send it.

00:06:42And either she will say yes or she will say no.

00:06:45And either way, I will be able to walk into the conference room on Monday and know what I am

00:06:49walking into.

00:06:50She looked at me for a long moment.

00:06:52You are a litigator, she said.

00:06:54I am.

00:06:55You build the case before you ask the question.

00:06:57I do.

00:06:58What is the case here?

00:07:00I stared at her.

00:07:01What?

00:07:02She said,

00:07:03More patiently than I deserved.

00:07:04You are a person who has spent 14 months not asking a question.

00:07:08That is unusual.

00:07:09People in love do not generally take 14 months to ask.

00:07:13So either you have not asked because you do not actually want the answer,

00:07:16or you have not asked because you have a body of evidence that suggests the answer is no and you

00:07:21have been suppressing it.

00:07:22Which is it?

00:07:23I felt the whiskey warmth go cold for one second.

00:07:26Excuse me, I said.

00:07:28I am asking you, she said.

00:07:30What the evidence looks like.

00:07:32I sat with that.

00:07:33The bar hummed around us.

00:07:35Somebody two booths over laughed too loud.

00:07:37The bartender refilled a glass on the far end and the ice cracked in the way ice cracks in a

00:07:41quiet room.

00:07:42The evidence, I said slowly, is mixed.

00:07:45Mixed how?

00:07:46She brought me coffee three times in the first month.

00:07:49Twice in the second.

00:07:50Then she stopped.

00:07:52She used to say goodnight when she left the office, and she stopped doing that around month seven.

00:07:56Around month nine, she changed her hair and I told her I liked it and she said thank you the

00:08:00way you say thank you to a doorman.

00:08:02Around month 11, she started leaving at six instead of nine.

00:08:05She does not look at me in the conference room except when she is handing me something.

00:08:09She handed me a folder 14 months ago, and her thumb stayed on the folder for one second longer than

00:08:14it needed to.

00:08:15And that one second has been the structural support of the entire 14 months.

00:08:20And I do not know if I have built a cathedral on a single second or if the second was

00:08:24real.

00:08:24I had not meant to say all of that.

00:08:26The woman in the charcoal suit took it in.

00:08:28She did not move.

00:08:30Then she said, your evidence is that she withdrew.

00:08:33Yes.

00:08:34You read the withdrawal as restraint.

00:08:36Yes.

00:08:37It is more likely, she said, that the withdrawal was a withdrawal.

00:08:41The whiskey went colder.

00:08:42I said, you do not know her.

00:08:44I do not, she said.

00:08:46But I know what withdrawal looks like in the discovery file of every case I have ever worked.

00:08:51And the pattern you just described is the pattern of a person who was open in the first eight weeks

00:08:55and then made a decision and is now executing the decision.

00:08:59I felt something complicated happen in my chest.

00:09:02What kind of decision, I said.

00:09:04The kind, she said, where she decided that whatever she had been feeling for you

00:09:07was not going to be something she acted on.

00:09:09And the decision is not necessarily about you.

00:09:12It might be about her.

00:09:14It might be about the firm.

00:09:16It might be about a partner she has at home that you do not know about.

00:09:18It might be about the fact that she is 29 and you are, how old are you?

00:09:2336, I said.

00:09:25And she is your paralegal.

00:09:26She is.

00:09:27You see the problem?

00:09:28She said.

00:09:29I have seen the problem, I said.

00:09:32I have seen the problem since the Varick deposition.

00:09:35The problem is one of the things I have been not sending the message about.

00:09:38She nodded.

00:09:40She said, I am not going to tell you what to do.

00:09:42I appreciate that.

00:09:43But I will tell you, she said, that if you send that message tonight in this state,

00:09:49after four whiskeys, on a Tuesday at 1047 in the evening, she is going to read it tomorrow

00:09:54morning at 645 at the firm conference room with her coffee and her red lines, and the

00:09:59message is going to do something to her that you cannot take back, and you will not be able

00:10:03to be in that conference room with her ever again the way you have been for 14 months.

00:10:08That is what I want, I said.

00:10:10Is it?

00:10:11She said.

00:10:11I looked at her.

00:10:13She said, maybe it is.

00:10:15Maybe you are tired of the architecture and you want to burn it down.

00:10:18That is a real desire and I am not going to tell you it is not legitimate.

00:10:22But I am going to ask you, as a stranger at a bar who has no investment in your decision,

00:10:26whether the version of yourself that is sending that message tonight is the version of yourself

00:10:31you want making a decision with this much load on it, I sat with that.

00:10:35I sat with it for a long time.

00:10:37The bartender came by and asked if I wanted another.

00:10:39I shook my head.

00:10:40The woman in the charcoal suit asked for water.

00:10:43The bartender brought it and put it in front of me, not her.

00:10:46I said, who are you?

00:10:48She said, a person at a bar.

00:10:50I said, you are a lawyer.

00:10:53She said, I am.

00:10:54What kind?

00:10:55She said, the kind that wins.

00:10:58I almost laughed.

00:10:59The whiskey warmth came back, a little in the form of something approaching humor.

00:11:03That is, I said, the most lawyer answer anyone has ever given me.

00:11:08The corner of her mouth moved, one millimeter.

00:11:11I had been a litigator for ten years and I had learned to read millimeters.

00:11:15She said, drink the water.

00:11:17I drank the water.

00:11:19She said, delete the message.

00:11:21I looked at my phone.

00:11:22The message was still there.

00:11:24Marlo, I have been in love with you since the Varick deposition.

00:11:2823 words.

00:11:2914 months of architecture compressed into 23 words.

00:11:33I deleted it.

00:11:34The phone screen went blank.

00:11:36I felt simultaneously relieved and bereaved, which is, I have learned, what it feels like

00:11:41to make a correct decision under the influence of grief.

00:11:44She said, good.

00:11:46I said, I do not know your name.

00:11:47She said, I do not know yours.

00:11:50I said, I am Sutton Hale.

00:11:52She said, Ren Callahan.

00:11:53The name landed in my drunk brain and ricocheted off something.

00:11:57Ren Callahan was a name.

00:11:59Ren Callahan was a name I had heard in conference rooms.

00:12:02Ren Callahan was, in fact, the name of the litigator that the older partners at my firm

00:12:06referred to in lowered voices, the name of the woman who had, two years ago, dismantled

00:12:12a co-counsel arrangement with our firm so completely that we had quietly stopped doing

00:12:17M&A litigation against her practice.

00:12:19Ren Callahan was the name of the most feared trial attorney in the city.

00:12:23Ren Callahan was 41 years old and ran a boutique firm with 18 lawyers in it and had a closing

00:12:29argument record that the partners at my firm cited the way Catholic school children cite

00:12:33saints.

00:12:34Ren Callahan, I said.

00:12:35Yes.

00:12:36You are Ren Callahan.

00:12:38I am.

00:12:39You have just talked me out of sending a text message to my paralegal.

00:12:42I have.

00:12:43I sat very still for a moment.

00:12:45I said, I am going to need a moment.

00:12:48Take it, she said.

00:12:50She picked up her drink.

00:12:51She drank slowly.

00:12:53She did not look at me.

00:12:54She gave me the dignity of a few seconds to assemble the wreckage of the last 20 minutes

00:12:59into something I could carry out of the bar.

00:13:01I said, eventually, why?

00:13:03Why what?

00:13:04Why did you talk me out of it?

00:13:05She set the glass down, looked at me directly.

00:13:09Because, she said, you were about to do something irreversible in front of a stranger and the

00:13:14stranger had time.

00:13:15That is the only reason I would intervene in any decision a person was making at a bar.

00:13:19I had time.

00:13:20You were about to do something you could not take back.

00:13:22The intervention cost me nothing.

00:13:25I said, you could have let me send it.

00:13:27I could have, she said.

00:13:29I said, most people would have.

00:13:31I am not most people, she said.

00:13:33She said it without performance.

00:13:35The way she said everything.

00:13:37Like she was stating a fact that did not need her endorsement to be true.

00:13:41I looked at her for a long time.

00:13:43I said, I should pay for your drink.

00:13:45She said, I have already paid for mine.

00:13:48I said, I should pay for it anyway.

00:13:50Anyway, she said, you can buy me a different drink some other time.

00:13:54If you want.

00:13:55The if you want sat in the air.

00:13:57It was carefully constructed.

00:13:59It was not flirtation.

00:14:00It was not absence of flirtation.

00:14:02It was the kind of sentence that a litigator builds when she is making an offer and giving

00:14:07the other party complete permission to refuse it.

00:14:09I said, I would like that.

00:14:11She nodded.

00:14:12She slid a card across the bar to me.

00:14:14It was Matt Black with white text.

00:14:16Wren Callahan, Callahan and Voss, litigation.

00:14:20There was a phone number.

00:14:21There was an email.

00:14:22There was no firm slogan, no tagline, no extra information of any kind because Wren Callahan

00:14:28was the kind of person whose card did not need to explain itself.

00:14:31She said, drink water tonight.

00:14:33Eat something before you sleep.

00:14:35Tomorrow morning at 645.

00:14:36Walk into the conference room.

00:14:38Hand your paralegal the red lines you have.

00:14:40Do not look at her any longer than you would have looked at her last week.

00:14:43Sit with what she is and what she is not until the case is over.

00:14:47Then decide.

00:14:48I said, that is approximately the most lawyer advice I have ever received.

00:14:52She said, you came to a lawyer.

00:14:54I said, I came to a bar.

00:14:56She said, you came to a bar where lawyers drink.

00:14:59The result was statistically likely.

00:15:01The corner of her mouth moved again.

00:15:03One millimeter.

00:15:04Two.

00:15:05I picked up the card.

00:15:06I put it in the inside pocket of my jacket, against the lining, the way you put something

00:15:10you are not going to lose.

00:15:12I said, thank you.

00:15:14She said, you are welcome, Sutton Hale.

00:15:16She said my name the way she had said her own.

00:15:19Like a fact.

00:15:20Like a thing that had now been placed on the record and could be referred to later.

00:15:24I left.

00:15:25I walked out of Halloran's into the November cold and stood on the sidewalk for a full

00:15:29minute trying to remember which direction the subway was.

00:15:32The cold was useful.

00:15:34The cold made the four whiskeys feel like three.

00:15:36I started walking toward the C train with my hands in my coat pockets and my phone,

00:15:42mercifully, untouched.

00:15:43I got home at 1130.

00:15:45I drank two glasses of water.

00:15:47I ate a piece of toast standing up over the kitchen sink.

00:15:49I sat on the edge of my bed for a long time looking at the matte black card on my

00:15:53nightstand.

00:15:54I did not text Marlo.

00:15:56I did not text anyone.

00:15:57I went to sleep.

00:15:58And I dreamed about the Varick deposition.

00:16:01And I woke up at 530.

00:16:03And I went to the firm conference room at 645.

00:16:06And Marlo was already there with two coffees and the red lines.

00:16:09And I handed her the file.

00:16:11And I did not look at her any longer than I would have looked at her the week before.

00:16:14And the architecture, miraculously, held.

00:16:18It held all of Wednesday.

00:16:20It held all of Thursday.

00:16:21It held until Friday afternoon, when my managing partner walked into my office without knocking

00:16:26and said,

00:16:27Sutton, we have a problem with the Brennan matter.

00:16:30Opposing counsel just sent over their notice of appearance.

00:16:33It is Callahan and Voss.

00:16:35It is Wren Callahan herself.

00:16:37I had been holding a pen.

00:16:39The pen rolled out of my hand and onto the desk and off the desk and onto the floor.

00:16:43My managing partner looked at me.

00:16:45You okay?

00:16:46He said.

00:16:47I am fine, I said.

00:16:48He said,

00:16:49I need you ready for a meet and confer on Tuesday.

00:16:51She is going to come in here and try to take this case apart in 20 minutes.

00:16:55Be ready.

00:16:55He left.

00:16:56I sat at my desk for a long time, looking at the pen on the floor.

00:17:00Marlo came in at 4 o'clock with a stack of pleadings for me to review.

00:17:04She set them on my desk.

00:17:05She paused.

00:17:06You alright?

00:17:07She said.

00:17:08She had not said anything beyond good morning and good night in three weeks.

00:17:11She said it now in the way she had used to say it, at month two, when the architecture

00:17:16had been newer and less load-bearing and she had still been making coffee runs.

00:17:20I am fine, I said.

00:17:22She looked at me for one second, maybe two.

00:17:25Then she said,

00:17:26Brennan came in.

00:17:27I started organizing the discovery binders.

00:17:29Callahan and Voss usually moves fast on document requests.

00:17:32I will have everything in chronological order by Monday.

00:17:35I said,

00:17:37She said,

00:17:38You sure you are okay?

00:17:39The architecture wobbled.

00:17:41One small wobble.

00:17:42Just enough.

00:17:43I said,

00:17:44I had a long week.

00:17:46She said,

00:17:47Yeah, I noticed.

00:17:48She left.

00:17:49I picked up the pen.

00:17:50The meet and confer was scheduled for Tuesday at 10 in the morning.

00:17:54Ren Callahan was going to walk into our conference room and sit down across from me and try to

00:17:58dismantle the Brennan matter.

00:17:59And the last time she had seen me, I had been four whiskeys deep in a bar telling her about

00:18:03the paralegal who was, at this exact moment, three doors down from my office organizing the

00:18:09discovery binders for the case Ren Callahan was about to open against us.

00:18:12I went home Friday night and sat on my couch for an hour without turning on a light.

00:18:16I called the Matt Black card.

00:18:18She picked up on the second ring.

00:18:20Callahan, she said.

00:18:22It is Sutton Hale, I said.

00:18:24A pause.

00:18:25Brief.

00:18:25The kind that is not surprise but is acknowledgement.

00:18:28She said,

00:18:29I was going to call you Monday.

00:18:31I said,

00:18:32You took the Brennan matter.

00:18:33She said,

00:18:34I did.

00:18:35I said,

00:18:36You did not mention that on Tuesday.

00:18:37She said,

00:18:39On Tuesday, I was a person at a bar.

00:18:41The Brennan retainer was signed Wednesday morning.

00:18:43I did not know I was going to be opposite you when we spoke.

00:18:46I sat with that.

00:18:47I said,

00:18:48Are you telling me the truth?

00:18:50She said,

00:18:51Yes.

00:18:51The word landed exactly the way she had said her own name.

00:18:55Flat.

00:18:56Final.

00:18:56The kind of yes that did not need argument because it was not making any.

00:19:00I said,

00:19:01Okay.

00:19:02She said,

00:19:03You can have the meet and confer reassigned to your second chair if you would prefer.

00:19:06There is no professional rule that requires you to handle it personally.

00:19:10I will not raise the prior contact.

00:19:12Nobody at my firm knows we met.

00:19:14Nobody at your firm needs to.

00:19:16I said,

00:19:17You are giving me an out.

00:19:18She said,

00:19:19I am giving you an option.

00:19:20There is a difference.

00:19:22I said,

00:19:22What is the difference?

00:19:24She said,

00:19:25An out is something you take to escape something.

00:19:28An option is something you choose when you have looked at the alternatives.

00:19:31I said,

00:19:32You are exhausting.

00:19:34She said,

00:19:35I have been told.

00:19:35I said,

00:19:36I am going to handle the meet and confer.

00:19:39She said,

00:19:40Are you sure?

00:19:41I said,

00:19:42I am the lead on Brennan.

00:19:44Reassigning it would tell my managing partner something I do not want to tell him.

00:19:47And I,

00:19:48I do not want to take the out.

00:19:50She said,

00:19:51Okay.

00:19:52I said,

00:19:53Tuesday at 10.

00:19:54She said,

00:19:55Tuesday at 10.

00:19:56I said,

00:19:57Ren.

00:19:58She said,

00:19:59Yes.

00:20:00I said,

00:20:01Thank you for Tuesday night.

00:20:02She said,

00:20:03You are welcome.

00:20:04I hung up.

00:20:06I sat on the couch in the dark for another 20 minutes.

00:20:08Then I got up,

00:20:10made a pot of coffee,

00:20:11opened my laptop,

00:20:12and started reading the Brennan file.

00:20:14Tuesday morning came the way Tuesday mornings come when you have been preparing for one specific person to walk into

00:20:19a room for 96 straight hours.

00:20:22I had read every piece of paper in the Brennan file twice.

00:20:25I had read three of Ren Callahan's prior briefs in unrelated matters.

00:20:29I had read the closing argument in the case the partners at my firm cited the way Catholic schoolchildren cite

00:20:34saints.

00:20:35I had not slept much.

00:20:36I had not slept badly either.

00:20:38I had slept the way you sleep before a trial,

00:20:41which is the only kind of sleep that actually replenishes a litigator,

00:20:44the kind where your body knows you are about to need it.

00:20:47I wore the navy,

00:20:48the one with the sharp lapels,

00:20:50the one I wore for hearings I needed to win.

00:20:52Marlowe came in at 6.45 with the Discovery binders.

00:20:56She set them on the conference table.

00:20:57She did not say good morning.

00:20:59She said,

00:21:00I made you a binder of her last six dispositive motions.

00:21:04I cross-indexed by argument structure.

00:21:06The third tab is the closing arguments from her last four trials.

00:21:10I thought you might want them.

00:21:11I looked at her.

00:21:12She was wearing a dark gray skirt and a cream blouse,

00:21:15and her hair was up the way it was up when she had not slept enough.

00:21:18She had stayed late.

00:21:19She had built me a binder I had not asked for.

00:21:22I said,

00:21:23Thank you, Marlowe.

00:21:24She said,

00:21:25You are welcome.

00:21:26I said,

00:21:27You did not have to stay late for this.

00:21:29She said,

00:21:30I know.

00:21:30She did not look at me for any longer than she had been looking at me for the last three

00:21:34weeks,

00:21:35which was already longer than she had been looking at me for the eight weeks before that,

00:21:39which was a pattern I had cataloged and was not going to interpret.

00:21:42Not today.

00:21:43Not at 6.45 in the morning on the day Ren Callahan was walking into my conference room at 10.

00:21:49She left.

00:21:50I sat with the binder for two hours.

00:21:53At 9.58, the receptionist called my line.

00:21:56Miss Callahan is here.

00:21:58I said,

00:21:59Send her in.

00:22:00I stood up.

00:22:01I straightened my jacket.

00:22:02I walked to the conference room and opened the door.

00:22:05Ren Callahan was standing at the window with her back to me.

00:22:07Charcoal suit again.

00:22:09Different one.

00:22:10Same precision.

00:22:10Her hair was up sleek, tight, the kind of up that makes you forget she had been sitting

00:22:15on a barstool five days ago with her hand flat on the wood.

00:22:18She turned.

00:22:19Her face did exactly what her face did.

00:22:22Nothing.

00:22:23A quarter millimeter of acknowledgement.

00:22:25She said,

00:22:26Good morning, counselor.

00:22:27I said,

00:22:28Good morning, counselor.

00:22:29She crossed to the table.

00:22:31She set down a slim leather folio.

00:22:33She sat.

00:22:34She waited for me to sit.

00:22:35She had brought no second chair.

00:22:37No associate.

00:22:38No paralegal.

00:22:39She had walked into the most prestigious litigation firm in the city alone, with a folio, and she

00:22:44was about to take apart a case I had been building for six weeks.

00:22:47I sat down.

00:22:49I opened my binder.

00:22:50The door opened.

00:22:51Marlo came in with a tray of coffee.

00:22:53She set it on the credenza.

00:22:56She poured one for me.

00:22:57She poured one for Ren.

00:22:59She said,

00:23:00Cream and sugar, Miss Callahan?

00:23:01Ren said,

00:23:02Black.

00:23:03Marlo handed her the coffee.

00:23:05Ren said,

00:23:06Marlo said,

00:23:08You are welcome.

00:23:09Marlo turned toward the door.

00:23:10She paused.

00:23:11She glanced at me.

00:23:12She glanced at Ren.

00:23:14She looked for one second at the way Ren and I were sitting across from each other at

00:23:18the conference table.

00:23:19Something in her face moved.

00:23:21It was small.

00:23:22It was almost nothing.

00:23:24It was the kind of small that I would not have caught if I had not spent 14 months cataloging

00:23:28the millimeters of her face.

00:23:30It was the look of a woman who had walked into a conference room expecting one configuration

00:23:34of the world and had found, instead, a different one.

00:23:37She said,

00:23:38I will be in the bullpen if you need anything.

00:23:40She left.

00:23:41The door closed.

00:23:43Ren looked at me.

00:23:44She said,

00:23:45That was her.

00:23:45I said,

00:23:46Yes.

00:23:47She said,

00:23:48She read us in two seconds.

00:23:49I said,

00:23:50I know.

00:23:51She said,

00:23:52Are you okay?

00:23:53I said,

00:23:54We are about to start the meet and confer.

00:23:56She said,

00:23:57I am asking as a person.

00:23:59I said,

00:24:00Ask me again at noon.

00:24:01She nodded.

00:24:02Once.

00:24:03She said,

00:24:04Shall we?

00:24:05I said,

00:24:06Let us.

00:24:07She opened her folio.

00:24:08The meet and confer ran 98 minutes.

00:24:11She was exactly the lawyer everyone had said she was surgical, prepared, not interested

00:24:16in winning the meet and confer because she was already calculating the trial.

00:24:19She did not raise the prior contact.

00:24:22She did not look at me for any longer than she would have looked at any opposing counsel.

00:24:26She made three demands that I had anticipated and one I had not.

00:24:29The one I had not anticipated was about a custodian I had not flagged.

00:24:33And she had flagged him because of a footnote in a deposition transcript that had been filed

00:24:38in a different case three years ago, which meant she had read the deposition transcript

00:24:42in a different case three years ago, which meant her preparation was the kind of preparation

00:24:46that nobody at my firm could match.

00:24:48I lost two of the four issues.

00:24:50I won the other two on the merits, which surprised her.

00:24:53I saw it surprise her.

00:24:55In the fractional way her eyebrow moved when I cited the Second Circuit case,

00:24:59she had not expected me to know.

00:25:00At 11.38, she closed her folio.

00:25:03She said,

00:25:04We will take Tuesday's privilege issues to the magistrate if you cannot move on the custodian

00:25:08by Friday.

00:25:09I said,

00:25:10Friday is fine.

00:25:11She said,

00:25:12Good.

00:25:13She stood.

00:25:14She said,

00:25:15Miss Hale.

00:25:16I said,

00:25:17Miss Callahan.

00:25:18She said,

00:25:19You handled that well.

00:25:20I said,

00:25:21I had good preparation.

00:25:23She said,

00:25:24I noticed.

00:25:25She walked to the door.

00:25:26At the door,

00:25:27she paused.

00:25:28She did not turn around.

00:25:30She said,

00:25:31Into the door.

00:25:31You should talk to her.

00:25:33I said,

00:25:34Excuse me.

00:25:35She said,

00:25:36You're paralegal.

00:25:37You should talk to her.

00:25:38She is not the woman from Tuesday night.

00:25:40The woman from Tuesday night is a woman who has been organizing herself around silence

00:25:44for 14 months.

00:25:45The woman who walked in with that binder this morning is a different woman.

00:25:49The binder was the first piece of evidence I have seen in this case,

00:25:53and it was not a piece of evidence about Brennan.

00:25:55Talk to her.

00:25:56She opened the door.

00:25:57She left.

00:25:58The door closed behind her.

00:26:00I sat in the conference room alone.

00:26:02The coffee on the credenza was cold.

00:26:04Marlo's binder was open on the table.

00:26:06The custodian I had lost was already on Ren Callahan's plane back to her firm,

00:26:11where she would be drafting a discovery letter that I would have on my desk by close of business

00:26:15Friday.

00:26:15The paralegal I had been in love with for 14 months was three doors away,

00:26:19and she had read the room in two seconds,

00:26:21and Ren Callahan had told me to talk to her.

00:26:24I closed my binder.

00:26:25I stood up.

00:26:26I walked out of the conference room.

00:26:28I walked down the hallway.

00:26:30The bullpen was three doors down.

00:26:31I could see Marlo through the glass.

00:26:34She was at her desk.

00:26:35She was on her computer.

00:26:36She had not looked up when I had come out of the conference room.

00:26:40She was very deliberately not looking up.

00:26:42I stood in the hallway outside the bullpen for a long moment.

00:26:45Then my phone buzzed.

00:26:46I looked down.

00:26:48It was a text from a number I had saved on Friday night.

00:26:51Ren Callahan.

00:26:52It said,

00:26:53Whatever you are about to do, do it sober.

00:26:56I looked at the message.

00:26:57I looked at Marlo through the glass.

00:26:59I put my phone in my pocket.

00:27:01I walked back to my office.

00:27:03I closed the door.

00:27:04I sat at my desk.

00:27:05I did not talk to Marlo.

00:27:07Not yet.

00:27:08I sat at my desk for 43 minutes.

00:27:10I know it was 43 minutes because I watched the clock on my computer the entire time.

00:27:15The way you watch something you do not want to look away from in case looking away gives

00:27:19the next minute permission to behave differently.

00:27:21The numbers ticked over.

00:27:22The sounds of the firm went on around the office door, the printer down the hall, the elevator

00:27:27chime, somebody laughing in the kitchen, a phone ringing twice and being answered before

00:27:32the third ring the way phones got answered at this firm because we trained the associates

00:27:35that way.

00:27:36I did not move.

00:27:37At 1241, my managing partner knocked on the door.

00:27:41Walter Bramwell, who was 62 and had three decades of trial work behind him and the kind

00:27:46of face that registered things before he said them.

00:27:48He opened the door without waiting for me to answer.

00:27:51How did it go, he said.

00:27:52I said, we lost the custodian.

00:27:55We held the privilege.

00:27:56She is going to push us on Friday and I am going to push back on Monday.

00:27:59He nodded slowly.

00:28:01He said, you held the privilege against Wren Callahan.

00:28:04I said, I did.

00:28:06He said, on the merits.

00:28:08I said, on the merits.

00:28:10He looked at me for a moment longer.

00:28:12Then he said, Sutton, are you all right?

00:28:14I said, I am fine.

00:28:17He said, you do not look fine.

00:28:19I said, I am fine, Walter.

00:28:21He said, okay.

00:28:23He said it the way he said okay when he meant we were going to have a different conversation

00:28:27about this later.

00:28:28Then he said, good work this morning.

00:28:31And he closed the door.

00:28:32I sat with that for another two minutes.

00:28:34Then I picked up my phone and I texted Wren Callahan back.

00:28:38I wrote, I did not talk to her.

00:28:40I sent it.

00:28:41Three minutes later, my phone buzzed.

00:28:43She wrote,

00:28:44Good.

00:28:45She wrote, I am sending the discovery letter on Friday at four.

00:28:49You will have all weekend.

00:28:51I wrote, thank you.

00:28:52She wrote, for the discovery letter.

00:28:55I wrote, for all of it.

00:28:57She did not write back.

00:28:58She was not the kind of person who wrote back when the conversation had reached its natural

00:29:02end.

00:29:03I had known her for a week and I already understood that about her, which was, I thought, possibly

00:29:08the most efficient piece of professional intelligence I had ever absorbed about another human

00:29:12being.

00:29:13I put my phone in my desk drawer.

00:29:15I worked.

00:29:16I worked for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening and through the night, the

00:29:20way I worked when a case had teeth.

00:29:22I read the privilege issues again.

00:29:24I drafted the response to the custodian dispute.

00:29:26I made notes on the four most likely lines of attack Ren would open with on Friday and prepared

00:29:31the counter arguments.

00:29:32I did not look at the bullpen.

00:29:34I did not text Marlo.

00:29:36I left the office at 9.45 and Marlo's desk lamp was off, which meant she had left at some

00:29:41point in the previous two hours, which was an hour earlier than I would have expected on

00:29:46a meet and confer day.

00:29:47I went home.

00:29:48I ate cold pasta out of a container at the kitchen counter.

00:29:51I went to bed.

00:29:52I did not dream.

00:29:54Wednesday, I worked from home in the morning and went into the office at 2.

00:29:58Marlo was not in the bullpen when I walked past.

00:30:00Her computer was on.

00:30:02Her bag was under her desk.

00:30:03The chair was empty.

00:30:05I assumed she was in the document room or with another associate.

00:30:08I went into my office and closed the door and worked.

00:30:11At 4.30, there was a knock on my door.

00:30:13Come in, I said.

00:30:15It was Marlo.

00:30:16She stood in the doorway with a folder in her hand.

00:30:18She did not come in.

00:30:20She said, I have the cross-reference for the privilege log.

00:30:23I can leave it on your desk or I can walk you through it.

00:30:26Whatever you prefer.

00:30:27I said, walk me through it.

00:30:30She came in.

00:30:31She closed the door behind her, which she did not always do, but it was 4.30 and the

00:30:35conversation was going to be detailed, and she was a paralegal who knew how to manage

00:30:39her time.

00:30:39She sat in the chair across from my desk.

00:30:42She walked me through the cross-reference.

00:30:44She had organized it by custodian, and then by date, and then by privilege type, which

00:30:49was the way I would have organized it if I had had four hours to spare, which I had not.

00:30:53The work was meticulous.

00:30:55The work was the work she always did.

00:30:57When we finished, she did not get up immediately.

00:30:59She said, can I ask you something?

00:31:02I said, yes.

00:31:04She said, how do you know Wren Callahan?

00:31:07I felt something happen in my chest.

00:31:09The small drop that happens when an elevator lurches on a floor, it has not stopped on

00:31:13in a while.

00:31:14I said, why are you asking?

00:31:16She said, because she walked into the conference room yesterday and looked at me for one second,

00:31:20and the look was a look that meant something.

00:31:23And you looked at her when she came in, and you looked at her in a way that you do

00:31:26not look

00:31:27at other opposing counsel.

00:31:28So I am asking how you know her.

00:31:30I sat with the question.

00:31:32I had two options.

00:31:33I could lie.

00:31:35I could say I had met her at a CLE.

00:31:37I could say I had seen her speak at a panel.

00:31:39I could say we had been on opposite sides of a case three years ago, and she remembered

00:31:42me.

00:31:43Any of these were defensible.

00:31:45Any of these were the kind of answer that would close the door on the question.

00:31:48Or I could tell her the truth.

00:31:50The architecture I had spent 14 months building was already wobbling.

00:31:54Wren had told me to talk to Marlowe, and I had not, and the not talking was its own

00:31:59kind of architecture, and I was not sure it was going to hold either.

00:32:02I said, I met her last Tuesday at a bar.

00:32:04Marlowe said, Halloran's.

00:32:06I said, yes.

00:32:08She said, you were there after the Westover ruling.

00:32:11I said, yes.

00:32:13She said, you sat at the bar and you drank for two hours, and a woman in a charcoal suit

00:32:18sat down two stools away from you, and that was Wren Callahan.

00:32:21I said, yes.

00:32:23How do you...

00:32:24She said, because I was at Halloran's on Tuesday.

00:32:27The air in the office went thin.

00:32:29She said, I was in a booth.

00:32:31In the back.

00:32:32With a friend from law school.

00:32:34I saw you come in.

00:32:35I saw you sit at the bar.

00:32:37I saw you drinking.

00:32:38I saw the woman in the charcoal suit sit down.

00:32:41I watched you talk to her for 40 minutes.

00:32:43I watched you give her your card or take her card.

00:32:46I could not tell which.

00:32:47I watched you leave and walk past the booth I was in, and you did not see me because you

00:32:51were drunk and looking at the floor.

00:32:53And I sat in the booth for another 20 minutes after you left and did not say anything to

00:32:57my friend.

00:32:57And then I went home.

00:32:59I could not speak for a moment.

00:33:01She said, on Wednesday morning when you walked into the conference room at 6.45 with the red

00:33:05lines, I had been awake since 4.

00:33:08I had not slept.

00:33:09I had spent the night sitting on my couch in the dark trying to figure out what I had seen.

00:33:13I said, Marlowe.

00:33:14She said, I am not done.

00:33:16I said, okay.

00:33:18She said, on Friday afternoon when Walter walked into your office and said Callahan and

00:33:23Voss had filed a notice of appearance on Brennan, I was at my desk.

00:33:26I heard him through the door.

00:33:28I sat at my desk for 10 minutes and then I stayed late on Friday.

00:33:31And I built that binder for you.

00:33:33Because if you were going to be opposite Ren Callahan in a meet and confer on Tuesday,

00:33:37then I was going to give you the best possible binder I could give you.

00:33:40Because I am your paralegal and that is what I do.

00:33:43I said, Marlowe.

00:33:44She said, and on Tuesday morning when she walked into the conference room and I brought

00:33:48the coffee in and I saw you sitting across from her, I read the entire situation in two

00:33:52seconds.

00:33:53I read that you had not known on Tuesday night that she was about to be opposing counsel.

00:33:58I read that she had not known either.

00:33:59I read that you had told her something at the bar that you had not told me.

00:34:02I read that whatever you had told her had to do with me because of the way she looked

00:34:07at me when I came in.

00:34:08And I have been holding all of that for 26 hours and I would like to know what you told

00:34:12her.

00:34:12She said it without raising her voice.

00:34:14She said it the way she said everything calmly, completely, with the kind of sentence structure

00:34:19that came from a paralegal who had been drafting deposition outlines for 10 years and had learned

00:34:24how to ask a question the way you ask a question when you do not want to leave any room

00:34:28for evasion

00:34:29in, the answer.

00:34:30I sat in my chair.

00:34:31I said, you watched me at Halloran's.

00:34:34She said, yes.

00:34:36I said, you watched me for 40 minutes.

00:34:39She said, yes.

00:34:41I said, why did you not come over?

00:34:42The question came out before I had decided to ask it.

00:34:45It was the question I had not been able to ask in the conference room at 645 on Wednesday

00:34:50or any morning since.

00:34:51She looked at me for a long moment.

00:34:54She said, because I did not know if I had the right to.

00:34:57I said, Marlo.

00:34:58She said, I have worked for you for 14 months.

00:35:01I have organized your exhibits.

00:35:03I have remembered which witnesses you take coffee with.

00:35:06I have stayed late when you needed me to and I have left at 6 when you needed me to

00:35:10leave

00:35:10you alone.

00:35:10I have learned the rhythm of how you work and I have arranged my days around it because

00:35:14that is my job and because she stopped.

00:35:17She said, because I am very good at my job.

00:35:20She said it with the small bitter humor of a person who has chosen the safer of two true

00:35:24sentences.

00:35:25She said, do you want to know what I told her?

00:35:28I said, what?

00:35:29She said, at the bar.

00:35:31The woman in the charcoal suit.

00:35:33Wren Callahan.

00:35:34Did you tell her something about me?

00:35:36I said, yes.

00:35:38She said, what did you tell her?

00:35:40I sat with the question.

00:35:42The architecture of the firm conference room at 6 in the morning was a building I had built

00:35:46and inhabited and it had been the safest thing in my life and I was about to set it on

00:35:50fire and Wren Callahan had told me to do it sober and it was 4.30 in the afternoon on

00:35:55a Wednesday and I had not had a drink in eight days and the room was very quiet and Marlo

00:36:00was looking at me with the small precise stillness of a person who had asked the only question

00:36:04that mattered and was waiting for the answer.

00:36:07I said, I told her that I have been in love with you since the Varick deposition.

00:36:12The room did the thing rooms do when something has been said that cannot be unsaid.

00:36:16The air did not move.

00:36:17The clock on the wall did not move.

00:36:20Somewhere down the hall a printer started up and I heard it and Marlo heard it and neither

00:36:24of us moved.

00:36:25She said, the Varick deposition.

00:36:27I said, the morning of, you handed me my red lines five minutes before the witness arrived.

00:36:33Your thumb brushed my thumb on the top of the folder.

00:36:36You did not move your hand for one second longer than was strictly necessary.

00:36:40She said, you remember that.

00:36:42I said, I have remembered that for 14 months.

00:36:46She closed her eyes.

00:36:47She said Sutton.

00:36:48She had never said my first name in the office before.

00:36:51Not once.

00:36:52In 14 months, she had said counselor and miss.

00:36:56Hail and, in the privacy of the conference room at 645, sometimes nothing at all.

00:37:00And now she was sitting across from me on a Wednesday afternoon and she had said my first

00:37:05name and I felt it the way you feel.

00:37:07A door opening in a building you thought was sealed.

00:37:09She opened her eyes.

00:37:11She said, I withdrew at month eight because I thought I was going to lose my job.

00:37:15I said, Marlo.

00:37:16She said, I started doing the math on month seven.

00:37:19Seven months of working with you and I knew that what I was feeling was not appropriate for

00:37:23a paralegal to be feeling about a senior associate.

00:37:25And I knew that you were going to make partner the next year.

00:37:28And I knew that if anybody in HR ever read my text to you, they would see what I had

00:37:32been

00:37:32writing between the lines.

00:37:34And I made a decision.

00:37:35I made a decision at month eight to stop.

00:37:38I changed the way I said goodnight.

00:37:40I stopped bringing you coffee.

00:37:41I stopped staying late on the nights you stayed late.

00:37:44I rebuilt my entire pattern of behavior toward you so that nobody in this firm, including you,

00:37:49would ever have a piece of evidence that could be used against either of us.

00:37:52I said, Marlo.

00:37:53She said, I have been managing this for 14 months, the same way you have, from a different

00:37:59angle.

00:37:59The architecture I had built was not, it turned out, an architecture at all.

00:38:04It had been a duplex.

00:38:05I had been living in the upstairs unit.

00:38:07She had been living in the downstairs unit.

00:38:10We had each been arranging our furniture around the same load-bearing wall and we had

00:38:13each thought we were alone in the building.

00:38:15I sat in the chair across from her and I felt the floor of the building I had been living

00:38:19in for 14 months drop two inches, the way old buildings drop when somebody finally takes

00:38:24the weight off a wall they did not know was load-bearing.

00:38:26I had spent 14 months convinced I was carrying the entire weight of what was between us alone.

00:38:32I had felt the weight of it as a private thing, a personal failure of professional discipline,

00:38:37a problem I was managing with the tools available to a senior associate who did not want to lose

00:38:42her career or her shot at the partnership or her place in the conference room at 6.45

00:38:46in the morning.

00:38:47I had carried the weight as if I were the only person in the building who knew the weight

00:38:51existed.

00:38:52She had been carrying half of it.

00:38:54She had been carrying half of it from a different angle, from a different floor, with a different

00:38:58set of tools and a different set of consequences if the wall ever came down.

00:39:02She had been 29 when I had hired her and she was 31 now and she had been the one

00:39:07in the

00:39:07more vulnerable position the entire time because she was the paralegal and I was the

00:39:11senior associate and the institutional weight of that imbalance had been on her side of

00:39:16the building and she had carried it.

00:39:18I had not seen her carrying it.

00:39:20I had not seen her carrying it because I had been watching for the wrong thing.

00:39:23I had been watching for evidence that she felt what I felt and I had read every withdrawal

00:39:28as an absence rather than as a presence she was holding back.

00:39:31When she had stopped bringing me coffee, I had read it as cooling.

00:39:35When she had changed the way she said goodnight, I had read it as professional recalibration.

00:39:40When she had cut her hair at month 9, I had read it as a personal choice unrelated to me.

00:39:45I had read all of these things wrong because I had been reading them through the lens of

00:39:49a person who was watching for arrival rather than a person who was watching for departure

00:39:54as restraint and the entire vocabulary of restraint had been invisible to me because I had been

00:39:59speaking the same language and had never thought to listen for it in somebody else.

00:40:03I said,

00:40:04You changed your hair at month 9.

00:40:06She said,

00:40:07I cut it because I thought if I looked different, I might feel different.

00:40:11I said,

00:40:12You said goodnight the way you say goodnight to a doorman at month 7.

00:40:15She said,

00:40:16I practiced it in front of the mirror.

00:40:17I said,

00:40:18You leave at 6 now.

00:40:20She said,

00:40:21Because if I stayed until 9, I was going to do something I had decided not to do.

00:40:24I said,

00:40:25Why did you decide not to?

00:40:27She said,

00:40:28Because I love this job, Sutton.

00:40:29I have been a paralegal for 10 years and I have worked at 3 firms and this is the first

00:40:34one where I have walked into the office in the morning and felt like the work I was doing

00:40:37was worth the hours I was putting in.

00:40:39I came here because the litigation group has the best reputation in the city and I came here

00:40:43specifically to work with Walter and the partner team and I came in a strong position

00:40:47because of the work I did at my last firm.

00:40:49And I was not going to throw all of that away because I caught feelings for a senior

00:40:53associate in my first 30 days.

00:40:55I said,

00:40:56Then why are you telling me now?

00:40:58She looked at me.

00:40:59She said,

00:41:00Because you told a stranger at a bar on Tuesday what you would not tell me on Wednesday morning

00:41:04at 6.45 at the conference table.

00:41:06And Ren Callahan walked into our conference room yesterday and she looked at me for one

00:41:10second and the look told me you had told her,

00:41:13And now I am sitting in your office at 4.30 in the afternoon and you have just told me

00:41:17that the second on the folder at the varic deposition was the second I thought it was

00:41:21and I have nothing left to manage.

00:41:23I said,

00:41:24Marlo.

00:41:25She said,

00:41:26I have nothing left.

00:41:27I stood up.

00:41:28I came around the desk.

00:41:29I did not touch her.

00:41:30I did not sit on the desk.

00:41:32I stood about three feet from her chair and I looked at her with everything I had been

00:41:35keeping below the surface for 14 months and she looked at me with everything she had

00:41:39been keeping below the surface for the same 14 months and neither of us said anything

00:41:44for a long time.

00:41:45Then she said,

00:41:46We cannot do this.

00:41:48I said,

00:41:48I know.

00:41:49She said,

00:41:51You are going to be a partner next year.

00:41:53I am your paralegal.

00:41:54Even if HR did not have a written policy about it, the partners would have an unwritten

00:41:58policy about it.

00:41:59You would not make partner.

00:42:01I would lose this job.

00:42:02And the legal market would know within a month.

00:42:05I said,

00:42:05I know.

00:42:06She said,

00:42:07So we cannot do this.

00:42:08I said,

00:42:09I know that too.

00:42:10She said,

00:42:11I am going to ask Walter to reassign me to the corporate group.

00:42:14I said,

00:42:15Marlo.

00:42:16She said,

00:42:17It is the right call.

00:42:18I have been thinking about it since Tuesday morning.

00:42:20The corporate group needs a senior paralegal.

00:42:23I have the experience.

00:42:24The reassignment is defensible on its face.

00:42:27And it removes the conflict.

00:42:29I said,

00:42:30You should not have to leave the litigation group because of me.

00:42:33She said,

00:42:34I am not leaving because of you.

00:42:36I am leaving because of us.

00:42:37Those are different things.

00:42:39She stood up.

00:42:40She was,

00:42:41I noticed,

00:42:41eye to eye with me at this exact distance.

00:42:44I had never noticed that before because I had spent 14 months not standing this close

00:42:48to her on purpose.

00:42:49She was wearing a small silver chain with a small silver pendant on it that I had never

00:42:53seen before and that was,

00:42:55I realized,

00:42:56half tucked into the collar of her blouse as if she had been touching it absently while

00:42:59she had been talking.

00:43:01She said,

00:43:01I am going to leave the office now.

00:43:03I said,

00:43:04Okay.

00:43:04She said,

00:43:05I am going to go home and I am going to drink a glass of wine and I am going

00:43:09to sit on my

00:43:10couch for a while and I am going to be sad about this in private the way I have been

00:43:14sad about this in private for 14 months and tomorrow morning I am going to walk into

00:43:18Walter's office and I am going to ask for the reassignment.

00:43:21I said,

00:43:22Marlo.

00:43:23She said,

00:43:24Yes.

00:43:25I said,

00:43:26I am sorry.

00:43:26She said,

00:43:28For what?

00:43:28I said,

00:43:29For going to the bar on Tuesday.

00:43:31For drinking too much.

00:43:32For telling a stranger something I should have told you.

00:43:35For all of it.

00:43:36She said,

00:43:37Sutton.

00:43:38She said it gently.

00:43:39She said,

00:43:40The bar is the only reason we are having this conversation.

00:43:43If you had not gone to the bar, I would still be at my desk pretending I did not feel

00:43:47anything and you would still be at the conference table at 645 pretending the same.

00:43:52And we would have spent another 14 months that way and neither of us would have been

00:43:56honest.

00:43:56So do not apologize for the bar.

00:43:58The bar is the only thing that worked.

00:44:01She walked to the door.

00:44:02At the door she paused.

00:44:04She did not turn around.

00:44:05She said,

00:44:06Win the Brennan case.

00:44:07I said,

00:44:08I will.

00:44:09She said,

00:44:10And tell Ren Callahan thank you.

00:44:12I said,

00:44:13For what?

00:44:14She said,

00:44:15For not letting you send the message.

00:44:16She opened the door.

00:44:18She closed it behind her.

00:44:20I stood in the middle of my office in the silence she had left behind and I understood.

00:44:24In a way I had not understood when I had been sitting at the bar at Halloran's on a

00:44:28Tuesday with four whiskeys in me, exactly what Ren Callahan had been protecting me from.

00:44:33She had not been protecting me from sending a text message to a paralegal.

00:44:37She had been protecting me from sending a text message to a paralegal who had loved me

00:44:41back, who would have read the message at 645 the next morning, and who would not have

00:44:46been able to keep her job, or mine, intact in the wreckage of that knowing.

00:44:50The text would have said everything.

00:44:52The text would have come from a drunk 46-year-old at a bar to a sober 29-year-old

00:44:56at a conference

00:44:57table, and the only paper trail of what was between us would have been a one-sided declaration

00:45:02sent at 1047 on a Tuesday night by a senior associate who was about to be considered for

00:45:07partnership.

00:45:08It would have ended both of us.

00:45:10Ren had seen it.

00:45:11In the first 30 seconds of looking at me at the bar, she had seen the entire collapse

00:45:16and had walked me away from it without telling me she was walking me away from it.

00:45:19I sat down in the chair Marlo had been sitting in.

00:45:22I sat there for an hour.

00:45:23Then I went home.

00:45:25Marlo asked Walter for the reassignment on Thursday morning.

00:45:28Walter approved it on Thursday afternoon.

00:45:30He did not ask why.

00:45:32He did not need to.

00:45:33Walter had been running litigation groups for 30 years, and he could read the surface of a

00:45:37request the way a sommelier could read the surface of a wine.

00:45:40He approved the reassignment with one sentence.

00:45:43She has earned her preference.

00:45:45Send her to corporate.

00:45:46By Friday, she had a new desk in the corporate paralegal bullpen on the floor below mine, and

00:45:51a new senior associate to support, and a new set of cases that had nothing to do with me.

00:45:55I won the discovery dispute on the custodian on the following Tuesday.

00:45:59Ren came back for the second meet and confer, and I held three of the four issues this time

00:46:03and lost only the privilege issue I was going to lose anyway.

00:46:06She did not look at me any longer than she had looked at me at the first meet and confer.

00:46:11She did not ask about Marlo.

00:46:13She did not, at the end of the meeting, linger at the door.

00:46:16She took her folio, and she left.

00:46:18And the only acknowledgement I got from her that anything had happened between November

00:46:22and that meeting was the small, fractional nod she gave me on her way out the door,

00:46:27the kind of nod a partner at a different firm gives another partner at the end of a productive

00:46:31afternoon.

00:46:32I went home that night and sat on my couch in the dark for an hour without turning on a

00:46:36light.

00:46:36I did not call her.

00:46:38I did not call anyone.

00:46:39The architecture I had spent 14 months building was not the building I lost.

00:46:44The building I lost was the one I had built without knowing I was building it, the one

00:46:48that had been constructed brick by brick out of the small accommodations I had made every

00:46:51day to keep Marlo at exactly the distance I had been, trying to keep her at.

00:46:56Every redirect.

00:46:57Every casual instruction I had given her that I had drafted carefully in my head before I

00:47:02had said it.

00:47:03Every text I had not sent.

00:47:05Every glance I had not held.

00:47:07Every time I had said good morning at the conference table and made the words mean exactly

00:47:11the words.

00:47:12The building had been a building made of a 14-month accumulation of small disciplines,

00:47:16and the disciplines had become a person, and the person had been the version of me who

00:47:20could walk into the firm at 6.45 in the morning and operate at the highest level my profession

00:47:25demanded.

00:47:26When the building came down, what was left was not me.

00:47:29What was left was a 46-year-old woman who had spent 14 months arranging her professional

00:47:34life around a paralegal she could not have, and who now had to figure out who she was in

00:47:38the absence of that arrangement.

00:47:40It turned out that I did not know.

00:47:42I did not know in the way that people who have not had to ask the question for a long

00:47:45time do not know.

00:47:46I had been a litigator for 10 years, then 12, then 15.

00:47:50I had been the kind of associate who built her practice around a particular handful of

00:47:54partners and a particular handful of clients, and the particular kind of case the firm was

00:47:58known for.

00:47:59My identity had been the work.

00:48:01The work had been more than enough.

00:48:03The work had been a building of its own, and inside the building of the work I had built

00:48:07another building, the building about Marlowe, and now both of those buildings had a different

00:48:11shape and I was going to have to figure out what was actually load-bearing in either

00:48:15of them.

00:48:15I started seeing a therapist in late November.

00:48:18Her name was Dr. Aline Vasquez.

00:48:20She was in her 60s.

00:48:22Her office was on the Upper West Side, on a corner of West 81st Street, in a brownstone

00:48:26with a buzzer that did not always work.

00:48:28The first session I told her I was a senior associate at a litigation firm, and I had recently

00:48:33been through what I called a complicated professional situation.

00:48:36She let me use that phrase for the first three sessions.

00:48:39On the fourth session she said,

00:48:41Sutton, you can call it what it actually was.

00:48:43And I said, what was it?

00:48:45And she said, you tell me.

00:48:47And I said, I almost destroyed a young woman's career because I had been in love with her

00:48:51for 14 months and I had never told her, and a stranger at a bar talked me out of it.

00:48:55Dr. Vasquez said, tell me about the stranger.

00:48:59I told her about Ren.

00:49:00Ren, she listened the way she listened.

00:49:02She did not write anything down.

00:49:04She nodded twice.

00:49:06When I finished, she said, you have not spoken to her since November.

00:49:10I said, I texted her once.

00:49:12To tell her I had not talked to Marlo.

00:49:15She said, and the not talking to Marlo lasted 26 hours.

00:49:18I said, yes.

00:49:20She said, so in some sense you talked to Marlo because Ren told you to talk to her,

00:49:25and you did not talk to her because Ren told you to wait.

00:49:28Both things were Ren.

00:49:29I said, I had not thought of it that way.

00:49:32She said, Sutton.

00:49:34I said, yes.

00:49:35She said, how are you with women who tell you what to do?

00:49:39I sat with the question for a long time.

00:49:41I said, Ren is not the first woman who has told me what to do.

00:49:45Dr. Vasquez said, tell me about the others.

00:49:48I told her, about my mother, who had been a county prosecutor for 35 years and who had

00:49:54raised me on the ethics of evidence and the discipline of the brief and the cold-eyed

00:49:58pragmatism of women who survived in courtrooms by being twice as prepared as the men across

00:50:03from them.

00:50:04About the partner who had hired me out of law school, a woman named Kestrel Vance, who

00:50:09had taught me how to think on my feet and how to make arguments in writing and how to

00:50:13say no to a client without losing the client.

00:50:15About the federal judge I had clerked for in my first year, the Honorable Sarah Whitfield,

00:50:20who had told me once, in chambers, that the difference between a good lawyer and a great

00:50:24one was not knowledge or rhetoric but discipline.

00:50:27About the first woman I had ever loved, in law school, a quiet, brilliant student named

00:50:32Linnea who had broken up with me at a coffee shop in Cambridge in our third year because

00:50:35she had said, Sutton, you do not let me know you, and I had not understood what she

00:50:40meant and had not asked.

00:50:42Dr. Vasquez listened to all of it.

00:50:44She said, you have been in the company of formidable women your entire life.

00:50:48I said, yes.

00:50:50She said, and you have learned, from each of them, that the way to be respected is to

00:50:55be excellent and self-contained.

00:50:57I said, yes.

00:50:59She said, excellent and self-contained is a survival strategy.

00:51:03I said, yes.

00:51:05She said, it is also a wall.

00:51:07I said, yes.

00:51:09She said, Ren is the first woman in a long time who has told you to do something that

00:51:13required you to be neither excellent nor self-contained.

00:51:16She told you to drink the water.

00:51:18She told you to delete the message.

00:51:20She told you to talk to your paralegal.

00:51:22None of those instructions had to do with being excellent.

00:51:25All of them had to do with being honest.

00:51:28I said, yes.

00:51:29She said, Sutton.

00:51:31I said, yes.

00:51:33She said, how does that make you feel?

00:51:35I sat with the question for a long time.

00:51:38I said, like somebody finally walked into a room I had been sitting alone in for 46 years

00:51:43and turned the light on.

00:51:44Dr. Vasquez did not write anything down.

00:51:47She did not nod.

00:51:48She just held my gaze with the steady attention of a 60-something woman who had been doing

00:51:52this work for 35 years and had learned, somewhere in those years, the difference between what

00:51:57to say and what to let stand on its own.

00:51:59She said, we will come back to Ren next week.

00:52:02We did.

00:52:03We came back to Ren the next week and the week after and the week after that.

00:52:07We came back to Ren for the entire winter.

00:52:10Dr. Vasquez was not interested in whether I was going to call Ren or whether Ren was going

00:52:15to call me.

00:52:15She was interested in why I had spent 46 years building walls that worked too well and what

00:52:21I was going to do with the rest of my life now that I knew the walls were walls.

00:52:24In December, I started running.

00:52:26Not the casual three times a week run I had been doing on and off since law school.

00:52:30Real running.

00:52:31Six in the morning.

00:52:32Riverside Park.

00:52:33The dark blue cold of the river at six in December.

00:52:37The headlamps on the bridges.

00:52:38The steam off my breath.

00:52:40I ran until my legs hurt and then I ran until my legs stopped hurting.

00:52:43Which was a different kind of hurt and a different kind of clarity.

00:52:47I lost eight pounds I did not know I had been carrying.

00:52:49I slept better.

00:52:50I ate better.

00:52:51I started cooking on Sunday afternoons, which was something I had not done in 15 years.

00:52:56In January, I made partner.

00:52:58The vote was unanimous.

00:53:00Walter told me about it on a Tuesday morning at nine.

00:53:02He came to my office, closed the door, sat down across from my desk and said,

00:53:07Sutton, the partners voted last night.

00:53:09It was unanimous.

00:53:11You will be announced at the firm-wide meeting on Friday.

00:53:14I sat with that for a moment.

00:53:16He said,

00:53:17Are you going to say something?

00:53:18I said, thank you, Walter.

00:53:20He said,

00:53:21You have earned this.

00:53:23I want you to hear me say it.

00:53:24The Brennan case was a textbook trial.

00:53:27The way you handled the privilege dispute,

00:53:29the way you tried the case in September,

00:53:31the way you wrote the partial summary judgment motion in October,

00:53:34it was the cleanest piece of litigation work I have seen out of an associate at this firm in a

00:53:39decade.

00:53:39I said,

00:53:40I had a lot of help.

00:53:41He said,

00:53:42You did.

00:53:43You also had the kind of help anybody on the partner track has.

00:53:46The difference is that you used it.

00:53:48I said,

00:53:49Walter.

00:53:49He said,

00:53:50Yes.

00:53:51I said,

00:53:52Did you ever think in the last year that I might not get the vote?

00:53:56He said,

00:53:57No.

00:53:57I said,

00:53:58Why?

00:53:59He said,

00:54:00Because I have been watching you for 15 years,

00:54:02and you are the most disciplined associate I have ever had.

00:54:05The kind of discipline that makes partners.

00:54:07The kind of discipline that does not break under pressure.

00:54:10I said,

00:54:11You have not seen me under pressure.

00:54:13He looked at me for a long moment.

00:54:15He said,

00:54:16Sutton,

00:54:16I have watched you handle every kind of pressure this firm has put on you for 15 years.

00:54:21I watched you handle the Henderson case.

00:54:24I watched you handle the Varick deposition.

00:54:26I watched you handle the Brennan trial.

00:54:28And I watched you,

00:54:29in November of last year,

00:54:31handle a different kind of pressure that the firm did not see and that I did see.

00:54:35I said,

00:54:36Walter.

00:54:36He said,

00:54:37We do not need to talk about it.

00:54:39I am only telling you that I saw it.

00:54:41And that you handled it.

00:54:42And that the partnership vote was unanimous.

00:54:45Because every partner in this firm respects what you have built and how you have built it.

00:54:49I said,

00:54:50Thank you,

00:54:50Walter.

00:54:51He said,

00:54:52Now get out of my office.

00:54:53I have work to do.

00:54:54So do you.

00:54:55I went back to my desk.

00:54:57I worked through the morning.

00:54:58At noon,

00:54:59I went down to the cafeteria on the 43rd floor.

00:55:01And I sat by the window and ate a salad and looked out at the city.

00:55:05I did not text Ren.

00:55:07I did not text my mother.

00:55:08I did not text my sister.

00:55:10I sat at the window and ate the salad and watched the snow on the rooftops melt in the noon

00:55:15sun.

00:55:15The Brennan case had taken nine months from the first meet and confer to the partial summary judgment ruling.

00:55:21It had been the largest case I had handled as lead counsel.

00:55:23The client was a mid-cap pharmaceutical company that had been sued by a former research director for breach of

00:55:29contract and tortious interference.

00:55:31And the case had involved approximately 11,000 documents and 43 depositions and three different expert witnesses on three different

00:55:40specialties.

00:55:41Ren had been opposing counsel from the first meeting confer through the trial and into the post-trial motions.

00:55:46And across those nine months,

00:55:48I had developed a particular and specific understanding of how she worked,

00:55:51which was the understanding you developed about a litigator when you had been trying a case against her for nine

00:55:56months

00:55:57and had learned every move she had and every move she had decided not to make.

00:56:02She was,

00:56:02as everyone said,

00:56:03the most prepared litigator in the city.

00:56:06She was also,

00:56:07as I had come to understand,

00:56:08the most precise.

00:56:09She did not waste a question on cross-examination.

00:56:12She did not waste a sentence in a brief.

00:56:15She had a particular gift for finding the one weakness in your case that your client had not told you

00:56:19about

00:56:19and asking the witness about it in such a way that the answer to the question

00:56:23would have been damaging if the answer had been

00:56:25honest,

00:56:27which forced your witness to be either evasive or wrong.

00:56:30And either of those answers was a different kind of damaging.

00:56:32She had tried to do that to my expert witness in September.

00:56:36She had asked him,

00:56:37on cross,

00:56:38a question about a paper he had co-authored 11 years ago in graduate school,

00:56:43a paper I had reviewed but had not pressed him on because the paper was old

00:56:47and the methodology was different from the one he had used in his expert report.

00:56:51Wren had read the paper.

00:56:52Wren had memorized one footnote in the paper.

00:56:55Wren had asked my expert about the footnote,

00:56:57and my expert had paused for two seconds before answering,

00:57:00and the two-second pause was the kind of pause that a careful jury notices,

00:57:05and the jury in this case had been a careful jury,

00:57:07and the two-second pause had cost me a credibility point on cross.

00:57:11I had won the case anyway,

00:57:13partial summary judgment on the breach of contract claim,

00:57:16defense verdict on the tortious interference claim.

00:57:19The pharmaceutical company sent me a fruit basket the size of a small filing cabinet.

00:57:23The general counsel sent me a personal email.

00:57:26The trial team had a celebratory dinner at a steakhouse in Midtown.

00:57:29Wren did not attend.

00:57:31Wren had filed her notice of appeal three days after the verdict

00:57:34and was already preparing the briefing.

00:57:36I had not seen her in person since the trial.

00:57:38I had not texted her.

00:57:40She had not texted me.

00:57:41It was the longest stretch of silence between us since November,

00:57:45and the silence felt,

00:57:46in a way I could not fully explain,

00:57:49like a thing she was doing on purpose.

00:57:51I had asked Dr. Vasquez about it in late October.

00:57:54I had said,

00:57:55Wren has not contacted me since the trial.

00:57:58I do not know if I should reach out.

00:58:00Dr. Vasquez had said,

00:58:01What do you think she is doing?

00:58:03I had said,

00:58:04I think she is letting me focus on the post-trial work.

00:58:07I think she is letting me make partner.

00:58:09I think she does not want to be a complication in my life

00:58:11until the partnership vote is over.

00:58:13Dr.

00:58:14Vasquez had said,

00:58:16And how does that make you feel?

00:58:17I had said,

00:58:18Like she understands me better than anyone has understood me in a very long time.

00:58:23Dr. Vasquez had said,

00:58:24Sutton, that is the most important sentence you have said in this office.

00:58:28She had said,

00:58:29Hold on to it.

00:58:30I had held on to it.

00:58:31Through November and December and into January.

00:58:34Through the late nights and the appellate briefing on the Brennan case

00:58:37and the holiday parties and the firm-wide email about the partnership vote

00:58:41and the morning Walter had sat down in my office and told me the vote had been

00:58:45unanimous.

00:58:46I went back to my desk after the cafeteria

00:58:48and I worked for the rest of the afternoon

00:58:50and at 6 o'clock I closed my laptop and I picked up my phone

00:58:53and I called Ren Callahan.

00:58:55She answered on the second ring.

00:58:57Callahan, she said.

00:58:58I said,

00:58:59It is Sutton Hale.

00:59:01She said,

00:59:01How did the vote go?

00:59:03I said,

00:59:04Unanimous.

00:59:05She said,

00:59:06Of course it was.

00:59:07I said,

00:59:08Buy you that drink?

00:59:09She said,

00:59:10You owe me one.

00:59:11I said,

00:59:12Hallorans.

00:59:13She said,

00:59:14Hallorans at 8.

00:59:15I hung up.

00:59:16I sat at my new desk and I looked out the window at the city

00:59:19and I thought about everything that had brought me to this desk on this day

00:59:22and the thing I thought about most was a woman at a bar in November

00:59:25who had asked me,

00:59:27What is the case here?

00:59:28and had made me do the work I had been refusing to do for 14 months.

00:59:32I was at Hallorans at 7.50.

00:59:34I sat in a booth in the back this time,

00:59:36not at the bar.

00:59:37I ordered a club soda with lime.

00:59:39I had not had whiskey since November.

00:59:41The booth I had chosen was the one in the deepest corner of the back,

00:59:44the one with the small reading lamp on the wall

00:59:46and the dark green leather banquette that had been sat on by enough lawyers

00:59:50over enough decades to have developed a particular dip in the middle.

00:59:53I had picked the booth on purpose.

00:59:55The booth was the kind of booth you sat in

00:59:57when you wanted to have a long conversation with somebody

00:59:59you intended to keep having long conversations with.

01:00:01I had not articulated that to myself when I had picked the booth.

01:00:05I had picked the booth and then I had sat in it

01:00:07and then I had understood why I had picked it.

01:00:10The bartender at the front of the bar was the same bartender from November,

01:00:13the woman in her 50s with the reading glasses on a chain.

01:00:17She did not recognize me at first when I had come in.

01:00:20Then she had looked at me a second time

01:00:21and her face had done a small, careful thing

01:00:23that meant she remembered exactly who I was

01:00:26and exactly the night I had been in here last

01:00:28and she had not said anything

01:00:30because she was the kind of bartender

01:00:32who had been pouring whiskey for lawyers for 30 years

01:00:34and she knew which lawyers wanted to be remembered

01:00:36and which did not.

01:00:38I had ordered the club soda.

01:00:39She had brought it.

01:00:40She had said,

01:00:41Ma'am.

01:00:42She had not said anything else.

01:00:44I appreciated her for that more than she would ever know.

01:00:47Wren walked in at 8 exactly.

01:00:49She was in a charcoal suit.

01:00:50She had the watch on her right wrist.

01:00:52Her hair was up.

01:00:53She slid into the booth across from me.

01:00:55She said,

01:00:56You did not order me a drink.

01:00:58I said,

01:00:59I do not know what you drink in March.

01:01:00She said,

01:01:02Old fashioned in November.

01:01:04Manhattan in March.

01:01:05I waved to the bartender.

01:01:07I ordered a Manhattan for her

01:01:08and another club soda for me.

01:01:10She said,

01:01:11You are not drinking.

01:01:12I said,

01:01:13I have not had whiskey since November.

01:01:15She said,

01:01:16Why?

01:01:17I said,

01:01:18Because the last time I had whiskey,

01:01:20I almost destroyed a woman's career and my own

01:01:22and you stopped me.

01:01:23And I decided that whatever I needed alcohol for that night

01:01:26was not something I should need alcohol for in the future.

01:01:29She said,

01:01:30That is a very lawyer answer.

01:01:31I said,

01:01:33I came to a lawyer.

01:01:34She said,

01:01:35You came to a person.

01:01:36She held my gaze across the table for one moment longer

01:01:39than she had ever held my gaze in a conference room.

01:01:42The drinks came.

01:01:43She picked up the Manhattan and held it up to the light.

01:01:46She said,

01:01:47To unanimous votes.

01:01:48I picked up the club soda.

01:01:50I said,

01:01:51To people at bars.

01:01:52We drank.

01:01:53She set her glass down.

01:01:55She said,

01:01:55How is Marlo?

01:01:56I said,

01:01:57She is in the corporate group.

01:01:58She is being supported by an associate

01:02:00who is going to make partner in two years.

01:02:02She has filed three flawless discovery responses

01:02:05in the last six months.

01:02:06We say good morning when we see each other in the elevator

01:02:09and it is the kind of good morning

01:02:10that two professional adults say to each other in an elevator.

01:02:13Nothing more, nothing less.

01:02:15She said,

01:02:16And how are you?

01:02:17I said,

01:02:19I am the youngest woman to make partner

01:02:20in the litigation group in this firm's history.

01:02:23She said,

01:02:24That is not what I asked.

01:02:25I said,

01:02:26I know.

01:02:27She said,

01:02:28Sutton.

01:02:28She said it the way she had said my name

01:02:30in the conference room nine months ago.

01:02:32Carefully.

01:02:33Without any pressure.

01:02:34She said,

01:02:35How are you?

01:02:36I said,

01:02:37I am better than I was in November.

01:02:39She said,

01:02:40Tell me how.

01:02:41I said,

01:02:42I do not look at the bullpen on the 41st floor

01:02:44when I walk past it on my way to the elevator.

01:02:46I walk a different route now.

01:02:48I take the stairs up to 42 from the 43rd floor cafeteria,

01:02:52which means I never have to walk past the corporate paralegal area.

01:02:55I go to the gym at 6 in the morning instead of the office.

01:02:58I sleep more.

01:02:59I read more.

01:03:00I stop drinking.

01:03:01I see a therapist on Tuesdays.

01:03:03She said,

01:03:04Are those things working?

01:03:06I said,

01:03:07They are working.

01:03:08She said,

01:03:09You are sure.

01:03:10I said,

01:03:11I am sure that they are working in the sense that I am functional and successful

01:03:14and I am not in crisis.

01:03:16I am less sure that they are working in the sense that I stopped.

01:03:19She said,

01:03:21In the sense that,

01:03:22What?

01:03:22I said,

01:03:23In the sense that the architecture I built around her for 14 months

01:03:27was not just an architecture about her.

01:03:29Some of it was about me.

01:03:31About the version of me that needed an architecture.

01:03:33And that version of me does not just go away because the architecture came down.

01:03:37She looked at me for a long moment.

01:03:40She said,

01:03:40That is a more accurate answer.

01:03:42I said,

01:03:43Therapy is helping with that part.

01:03:45She said,

01:03:46Good.

01:03:47I said,

01:03:47How are you?

01:03:48She said,

01:03:49I am Wren Callahan.

01:03:50I said,

01:03:52That is not what I asked.

01:03:53She almost smiled.

01:03:54The corner of her mouth.

01:03:56One millimeter.

01:03:57She said,

01:03:58I am the same as I was in November.

01:04:00I have been the same for a long time.

01:04:02I said,

01:04:03Why?

01:04:04She said,

01:04:05Because I figured out a long time ago what I am willing to do and what I am not willing

01:04:09to do and I built my life around those decisions and the decisions have not changed.

01:04:14I said,

01:04:15What are you not willing to do?

01:04:17She said,

01:04:18I am not willing to be inside any structure that requires me to manage another person's

01:04:22life.

01:04:23I am not willing to be anybody's second priority.

01:04:26I am not willing to be the person somebody settles for because the right person was unavailable.

01:04:30And I am not willing to be the person somebody chooses because they were drunk and I happen

01:04:35to be at the bar.

01:04:36I said,

01:04:37Wren.

01:04:38She said,

01:04:38I am telling you this so you do not misunderstand what is happening at this table.

01:04:42I said,

01:04:43I do not think I am misunderstanding it.

01:04:46She said,

01:04:46Tell me what you think is happening.

01:04:49I said,

01:04:50I think I am buying a drink for a woman who saved my career four months ago and I think

01:04:54she is letting me and I think we are not at this table because either of us is making

01:04:58a move on the other one.

01:04:59We are at this table because she did something for me that I cannot fully repay and because

01:05:03I want her in my life as something other than the lawyer who almost beat me on the privilege

01:05:07issue in the Brennan matter.

01:05:09She said,

01:05:10Good.

01:05:10I said,

01:05:12Was that a test?

01:05:13She said,

01:05:14It was a clarification.

01:05:15I said,

01:05:17You are exhausting.

01:05:18She said,

01:05:19I have been told.

01:05:20I said,

01:05:21By whom?

01:05:22She said,

01:05:23By every person I have ever sat across from at a table.

01:05:26I said,

01:05:27Have you ever sat across from someone at a table and let them be exhausting back at you?

01:05:31She held my gaze.

01:05:32She said,

01:05:33Once or twice.

01:05:34I said,

01:05:35How did it work out?

01:05:36She said,

01:05:38It worked out the way these things work out,

01:05:40which is that the people involved either learned how to be honest with each other or

01:05:43they did not.

01:05:44And the ones who did stayed in my life and the ones who did not, did not.

01:05:48I said,

01:05:49Which category am I in?

01:05:50She said,

01:05:51You are in the category of person who is currently in the process of finding out.

01:05:55I said,

01:05:56How do I find out?

01:05:58She said,

01:05:59By continuing to be honest with me at this table for the next two hours,

01:06:02and then by deciding,

01:06:04On your way home,

01:06:05whether you want to see me again next month or not,

01:06:07and by telling me your decision when you have made it.

01:06:10Not before.

01:06:11Not in a moment.

01:06:12Not when the bartender comes by with the bill.

01:06:15After.

01:06:16With time.

01:06:17I said,

01:06:17That is the most lawyer instruction I have ever received about how to manage a personal relationship.

01:06:22She said,

01:06:23You came to a lawyer.

01:06:25I said,

01:06:26I came to a person at a bar.

01:06:27She said,

01:06:28Same person.

01:06:29We sat at the booth for two hours.

01:06:31We talked about the Brennan case and her closing argument record and my partnership and the cases I was about

01:06:37to inherit and the cases she was about to file and the one judge in the Southern District who hated

01:06:42us both for entirely separate reasons.

01:06:44We talked about the books we were reading.

01:06:47She was reading a biography of a federal appellate judge from the 1970s.

01:06:51I was reading a novel I had been meaning to read for 10 years and had finally bought in December

01:06:55at a small bookstore on Lexington that I had walked past every day for nine years and had never gone

01:06:59into.

01:07:00We talked about her boutique firm and how she had built it and the fights she had had with the

01:07:04partner whose name was on the door with hers.

01:07:06The partner's name was Voss, Margaret Voss, who had been at a much larger firm before she and Ren had

01:07:12decided, at a dinner one Tuesday night six years ago, to leave and start their own shop.

01:07:17Ren told me about that dinner.

01:07:18About the way Margaret had said, Ren, we are going to do it or we are going to spend the

01:07:23rest of our careers wondering if we should have.

01:07:25And Ren had said, then let us do it.

01:07:28And they had paid the check and walked out into the November night and the next morning they had started

01:07:32writing the resignation letters.

01:07:34We talked about the way Manhattan looked from the 42nd floor of my building at 8 in the evening.

01:07:38And the way it looked from the 11th floor of her building, which was where her office was, and how

01:07:44the difference between 42 and 11 was a different kind of city than people from outside the city understood.

01:07:49We did not talk about Marlowe.

01:07:51We did not talk about what the table was or what it was not or what we wanted from each

01:07:55other.

01:07:56At 10 o'clock, the bartender came by with the bill.

01:07:58I paid it.

01:07:59Ren did not argue.

01:08:00We walked out into the March night.

01:08:02The air was cold the way March is cold in the city, which is the kind of cold that remembers

01:08:07winter but is not winter anymore.

01:08:09The streets were full of people.

01:08:11The cabs were lined up at the curb.

01:08:12She stood on the sidewalk with her hands in her coat pockets.

01:08:16She said, take a cab home.

01:08:17Do not walk.

01:08:18It is too cold.

01:08:19I said, yes, ma'am.

01:08:21She said, and think about what I said.

01:08:24I said, about the next month.

01:08:26She said, about all of it.

01:08:28I said, I will.

01:08:30She said, Sutton.

01:08:31I said, yes.

01:08:33She said, you did the work.

01:08:35I said, what work?

01:08:37She said, the work between November and now.

01:08:40The not drinking.

01:08:41The therapy.

01:08:42The walking the long way past the bullpen.

01:08:44The making partner without burning down the building on your way up.

01:08:47That is the work.

01:08:48Most people do not do that work.

01:08:50They send the text.

01:08:52They lose the job.

01:08:53They lose the woman.

01:08:54They lose the partnership.

01:08:55They tell themselves a story about how they could not help themselves.

01:08:59You did the work.

01:09:00I am telling you that I see it.

01:09:02I felt something complicated happen in my throat.

01:09:04I said, thank you.

01:09:06She said, you are welcome.

01:09:08She turned and walked toward the corner.

01:09:10I watched her go.

01:09:12I took a cab home.

01:09:13I sat in the cab and I looked out the window at the city and I thought about the work.

01:09:17And the version of me that had needed the architecture and the version of me that was

01:09:22slowly not needing it anymore.

01:09:24I thought about Wren on the sidewalk in the March cold, telling me to think about all of it.

01:09:28I thought about it for two weeks.

01:09:30At the end of the two weeks, I called her.

01:09:33I said, I would like to see you again next month.

01:09:35I would like to see you the month after that.

01:09:37I would like to see you regularly, with no pressure on either of us about what it is,

01:09:42for as long as both of us are exhausting at each other in a way we both find useful.

01:09:46She said, that is the most lawyer answer anyone has ever given me.

01:09:50I said, I came to a lawyer.

01:09:52She said, you came to a person.

01:09:54She said, yes.

01:09:56She said, we will figure out the rest.

01:09:58We started having dinner once a month, then twice.

01:10:01We did not talk about it.

01:10:02We did not name it.

01:10:04We did not put it on a calendar with a label.

01:10:06We just kept showing up to dinners, at the same booth at Halloran's most of the time

01:10:10because Halloran's was where it had started, and neither of us was sentimental enough

01:10:13to pretend the place was not where it had started.

01:10:16The first dinner after the March one was in early April.

01:10:18We met at the booth at 7.

01:10:20We ate.

01:10:21We talked.

01:10:22We split the bill at 10 and walked to the corner, and she got into a cab heading downtown,

01:10:26and I got into a cab heading uptown, and that was the entire evening.

01:10:30The second dinner was in late April.

01:10:32The third was in early May.

01:10:33By the time the fourth dinner happened, in mid-May, the dinners had developed their own architecture,

01:10:38which was different from any architecture I had ever built before,

01:10:42because this architecture was being built by two people instead of one.

01:10:46Wren did not text me between dinners.

01:10:48I did not text her either.

01:10:49We had agreed to this without agreeing to it.

01:10:52The dinners were the dinners.

01:10:53The space between the dinners was the space between the dinners.

01:10:56Neither of us tried to fill the space, and the not filling was, I came to understand,

01:11:01a discipline of its own, the discipline of letting a thing be what it was without forcing

01:11:06it to be more.

01:11:07Dr. Vasquez asked me about it in late April.

01:11:09She said,

01:11:10How does it feel to not text her between dinners?

01:11:13I said,

01:11:14It feels strange.

01:11:15I said,

01:11:16I have spent 46 years either texting people too much or texting them not at all.

01:11:21The middle thing is a thing I have not done before.

01:11:23Dr. Vasquez said,

01:11:25And how does the middle thing feel?

01:11:27I said,

01:11:28Like learning to use my non-dominant hand.

01:11:30Doctor.

01:11:31Vasquez said,

01:11:32That is a perfect description, Sutton.

01:11:34She said,

01:11:35Hold on to it.

01:11:36In June, I saw Marlowe at a bar association event.

01:11:39She was there with the senior associate from the corporate group who was supporting her.

01:11:43She looked good.

01:11:44She looked rested.

01:11:45She had a small silver chain around her neck and a different pendant on it.

01:11:49She saw me from across the room and she nodded once.

01:11:51And I nodded back.

01:11:52And that was the entire exchange.

01:11:54And it was the right exchange.

01:11:55And I felt nothing in my chest that I had not been prepared to feel.

01:11:59I told Wren about it at our dinner the next week.

01:12:02I said,

01:12:02I saw Marlowe at the bar association thing.

01:12:04I said,

01:12:05We nodded.

01:12:06Wren said,

01:12:07How did that feel?

01:12:08I said,

01:12:09Like the right register.

01:12:11Wren said,

01:12:11Good.

01:12:12We did not talk about it after that.

01:12:14In July, Wren and I had dinner at a place that was not Halloran's for the first time.

01:12:18It was a small Italian place in the West Village with bad lighting and good pasta.

01:12:23She had picked the restaurant.

01:12:24She had texted me three days before the first text she had sent me between dinners since March.

01:12:28And the text had said,

01:12:30There is a place I want to take you on Tuesday.

01:12:32Are you free?

01:12:33I had said yes.

01:12:34The text had been the first concrete piece of evidence that the thing between us was changing.

01:12:39And we had both registered the change.

01:12:41And neither of us had named it.

01:12:42We walked back to her apartment after dinner because it was the closer of our two apartments.

01:12:46And because she had a book she had been telling me about for three weeks.

01:12:49And I had told her I wanted to read.

01:12:51At her door, she gave me the book.

01:12:53She said,

01:12:54Take it home.

01:12:54Bring it back when you are done.

01:12:56I said,

01:12:57Or

01:12:57She said,

01:12:58Or what?

01:12:59I said,

01:13:00Or I could read it here.

01:13:02She looked at me for a long moment.

01:13:04She said,

01:13:05Sutton.

01:13:05I said,

01:13:06I know.

01:13:07She said,

01:13:08We have been doing this for four months.

01:13:10I said,

01:13:11I know.

01:13:11She said,

01:13:12I am not going to be the person you accidentally fall into.

01:13:16I said,

01:13:16I know that too.

01:13:17She said,

01:13:19Then what are you asking?

01:13:20I said,

01:13:21I am asking if I can come in and read the book on your couch for an hour.

01:13:25Not because I am drunk.

01:13:26Not because I have decided something I have not told you about.

01:13:29Because I would like to sit on a couch in a room with you and read a book and not

01:13:33be in a bar or a restaurant or a sidewalk.

01:13:35She held my gaze for a long moment.

01:13:38Then she opened the door.

01:13:39I came in.

01:13:40Her apartment was on the 11th floor of a pre-war building on the Upper West Side.

01:13:45The living room had a window that looked at the river and a bookshelf that ran the length of one

01:13:49wall and a couch that was clearly the most used piece of furniture in the apartment.

01:13:53The dining table at the other end of the room was where she worked.

01:13:56The kitchen was small and clean.

01:13:58There was a single framed photograph on the bookshelf, a black and white picture of a woman in her 60s,

01:14:03in a garden, with a watering can.

01:14:05I did not ask about the picture.

01:14:07I assumed I would, eventually, but not tonight.

01:14:10I sat on her couch.

01:14:11She made tea.

01:14:12I read the book for 40 minutes while she answered emails at her dining table.

01:14:16The lamp on the side table next to the couch threw a warm yellow light across the page.

01:14:21The city moved outside the window in the steady way the city moves at 9 on a July evening.

01:14:26At 10, she came over and sat next to me and looked at the page I was on.

01:14:30She said,

01:14:30You are reading slowly.

01:14:32I said,

01:14:33I am reading carefully.

01:14:34She said,

01:14:35Same thing.

01:14:36I said,

01:14:37Different things.

01:14:38She said,

01:14:39Tell me the difference.

01:14:40I said,

01:14:41Slowly is about pace.

01:14:43Carefully is about attention.

01:14:44I am reading the way I want to read this book, which is the way I want to do most

01:14:49things now, with attention.

01:14:51She looked at me.

01:14:52She said,

01:14:53Sutton.

01:14:53I said,

01:14:54Yes.

01:14:55She said,

01:14:56I am going to kiss you.

01:14:57I am going to do it once.

01:14:59If you do not want me to do it again, you will tell me, and we will go back to

01:15:03having dinner once a month and walking each other to cabs in the cold.

01:15:07If you want me to do it again, you will tell me that too, and we will figure out the

01:15:11rest.

01:15:11I said,

01:15:13That is the most lawyer offer anyone has ever made me.

01:15:15She said,

01:15:16You came to a lawyer.

01:15:17She kissed me.

01:15:18It was the way she did everything.

01:15:20Carefully.

01:15:21Completely.

01:15:22Without any wasted motion.

01:15:24Her hand at my jaw.

01:15:26Warm.

01:15:26Steady.

01:15:27Not asking.

01:15:28Not taking.

01:15:30Just present.

01:15:30The kind of kiss that made a 46-year-old woman who had spent 14 months arranging her face around

01:15:36a paralegal at a conference table understand,

01:15:38for the first time in a long time,

01:15:41what it felt like to be kissed by somebody who had decided to kiss her on purpose,

01:15:45with intention,

01:15:46with the same surgical care she brought to everything else she did.

01:15:49She sat back.

01:15:51She said,

01:15:52Well,

01:15:52I said,

01:15:53Do it again.

01:15:54She did.

01:15:55We sat on her couch for another hour.

01:15:58We did not do anything else.

01:15:59We drank our tea.

01:16:00I read another 20 pages of the book.

01:16:03She finished her emails.

01:16:04At 11 I stood up and put on my coat and she walked me to the door and she said,

01:16:08Go home.

01:16:09Sleep.

01:16:10Call me tomorrow.

01:16:11I said,

01:16:12Okay.

01:16:13I went home.

01:16:14I slept.

01:16:15I called her in the morning.

01:16:16I said,

01:16:17I am still here.

01:16:18She said,

01:16:19Good.

01:16:20She said,

01:16:21So am I.

01:16:22The architecture I had built at the firm conference room at 6 in the morning was a building I had

01:16:27loved in its way.

01:16:28But it had been a building made of silence.

01:16:30And the silence had been load-bearing.

01:16:32And load-bearing silence is a structural condition that always eventually fails.

01:16:37The building Ren and I built was not made of silence.

01:16:40It was made of the 10,000 small sentences that we said to each other across the booth at Halloran's

01:16:45and across the dining table at her apartment and across the phone line at 11 at night when one of

01:16:49us could not sleep and the other one could.

01:16:51It was a slower building.

01:16:53It took longer to build.

01:16:54The walls went up one careful layer at a time and we did not skip ahead and we did not

01:16:58pretend it was already built when it was not.

01:17:01It is still being built.

01:17:02I am still in it.

01:17:03Marlowe was promoted to senior paralegal in the corporate group in October.

01:17:07The firm sent around a memo.

01:17:09I forwarded it to Ren.

01:17:11She wrote back,

01:17:12Tell her congratulations.

01:17:13I did not.

01:17:14I did not because Marlowe and I had agreed, without saying so, that the elevator nod was the right register

01:17:21and I was not going to violate the register because Ren had told me to.

01:17:25But I sat at my desk on the day of the memo and I thought about the woman who had

01:17:29walked into my office on a Wednesday afternoon in November and sat in the chair across from my desk and

01:17:34told me she had been managing a feeling for 14, months from a different angle.

01:17:38I thought about the chair she had sat in.

01:17:40I thought about the way she had stood at the door and said win the Brennan case.

01:17:44I thought about her telling me to thank Ren Callahan for not letting me send the message.

01:17:49I had thanked Ren.

01:17:50I had thanked her every month, in some way or another, for almost a year.

01:17:54But I had never thanked Marlowe.

01:17:56I picked up a piece of firm stationery.

01:17:58I wrote on it,

01:17:59M. Congratulations on the promotion.

01:18:02You earned every step.

01:18:03Thank you for the binder.

01:18:05S. I put it in an inter-office envelope and I sent it down to the corporate floor.

01:18:10Two days later, an inter-office envelope appeared on my desk.

01:18:13It contained a piece of firm stationery that said,

01:18:16S. Thank you.

01:18:17The binder was easy.

01:18:18The harder thing was Wednesday afternoon.

01:18:20I am glad we both did it.

01:18:22M.

01:18:22M. I read the note.

01:18:24I folded it.

01:18:25I put it in the drawer where I kept the matte black card.

01:18:28I closed the drawer.

01:18:29I went to dinner with Ren that night.

01:18:31She said,

01:18:32How was your day?

01:18:33I said,

01:18:33Quiet.

01:18:34She said,

01:18:35Good kind of quiet.

01:18:36I said,

01:18:37The right kind.

01:18:39She said,

01:18:39Tell me.

01:18:40I told her.

01:18:41She listened the way she listened.

01:18:43She did not interrupt.

01:18:44When I finished,

01:18:45she said,

01:18:46Good.

01:18:47I said,

01:18:47Good.

01:18:48We ate.

01:18:48We talked about other things.

01:18:50We walked back to her apartment.

01:18:52We sat on her couch.

01:18:53I read a different book this time.

01:18:55A book she had not given me.

01:18:56A book I had picked out for myself,

01:18:58which felt important in a way I could not fully explain.

01:19:01She graded a brief on her tablet.

01:19:03The room was quiet.

01:19:05The lamp was on.

01:19:06The city moved outside the window.

01:19:08At 11, she looked over at me.

01:19:09She said,

01:19:10You are home.

01:19:11I said,

01:19:12Yes.

01:19:13She said,

01:19:14Stay.

01:19:15I said,

01:19:15Yes.

01:19:16I stayed.

01:19:17The next morning,

01:19:18she made coffee.

01:19:19I read the paper.

01:19:20We sat across from each other at her dining table in the early light,

01:19:23and we did not say much,

01:19:25because we did not need to,

01:19:26because the architecture of the silence between us was not load-bearing anymore.

01:19:30The silence was a different kind of silence.

01:19:33The kind that holds a room up because both people in it are choosing to be there,

01:19:37and have chosen,

01:19:38and will choose again tomorrow,

01:19:40and the silence is not a wall,

01:19:41but a window.

01:19:42I drank my coffee.

01:19:43I looked at her across the table.

01:19:45She looked back.

01:19:46She said,

01:19:47What?

01:19:48I said,

01:19:49Nothing.

01:19:50I said,

01:19:51You.

01:19:52She said,

01:19:52Lawyer.

01:19:53I said,

01:19:54Person.

01:19:54She said,

01:19:55Same.

01:19:56I said,

01:19:57Different.

01:19:57She said,

01:19:58Tell me the difference.

01:20:00I said,

01:20:01A lawyer is somebody who builds a case.

01:20:03A person is somebody who lives in a house.

01:20:06She said,

01:20:06Which one are you this morning?

01:20:08I said,

01:20:09A person.

01:20:10She said,

01:20:11Good.

01:20:11She said,

01:20:13So am I.

01:20:13We finished our coffee.

01:20:15I went home to my apartment to change,

01:20:17and then I went to the firm,

01:20:18and I sat in my partner office on the 42nd floor,

01:20:21and I worked on a brief,

01:20:22and at noon,

01:20:23I looked out the window at the city,

01:20:25and I thought about the night at Halloran's a year ago,

01:20:27when a stranger in a charcoal suit had asked me what the case was,

01:20:30and I had not been able to answer,

01:20:32and she had taught me,

01:20:34slowly,

01:20:34over a year,

01:20:36how to ask the question of myself.

01:20:37The case I had finally come to understand was not about Marlowe.

01:20:42The case had never been about Marlowe.

01:20:44The case had been about the version of me who had needed an architecture of silence to feel safe,

01:20:49and the version of me who had needed to drink four whiskeys before saying a true thing out loud,

01:20:54and the version of me who had spent a year learning how to be a person at a table instead

01:20:58of a litigator at a desk.

01:20:59The case was one.

01:21:01The case was one in November,

01:21:02on a barstool at Halloran's,

01:21:04when a woman I did not know yet had told me,

01:21:06drink the water,

01:21:07delete the message.

01:21:09Everything since had been the appeal,

01:21:10and I had won the appeal,

01:21:12and Wren Callahan was sitting in a different building right now,

01:21:15in a different conference room,

01:21:16drafting a different brief,

01:21:18and tonight at seven we were going to have dinner,

01:21:20and at the end of dinner I was going to go home to her apartment with her,

01:21:23because that was where I went home to now.

01:21:25I picked up the phone.

01:21:27I called her.

01:21:28She answered on the second ring,

01:21:30Callahan,

01:21:31she said.

01:21:31I said,

01:21:32It is Sutton Hale.

01:21:33She said,

01:21:34I know.

01:21:35I said,

01:21:36Seven o'clock.

01:21:37She said,

01:21:38Seven o'clock.

01:21:39I said,

01:21:40Wren.

01:21:40She said,

01:21:41Yes.

01:21:42I said,

01:21:43I love you.

01:21:44A pause.

01:21:45Brief.

01:21:45The kind of pause that was not surprise.

01:21:48The kind of pause that was a person taking the words out of the air

01:21:51and setting them down carefully on the desk in front of her,

01:21:53because the words had weight,

01:21:55and the weight deserved a pause.

01:21:57She said,

01:21:58I know.

01:21:58I said,

01:21:59Say it back.

01:22:00She said,

01:22:00I love you,

01:22:01Sutton Hale.

01:22:02I said,

01:22:03She said,

01:22:04You are welcome.

01:22:05She said,

01:22:06Now go win us some cases.

01:22:08I hung up.

01:22:09I sat at my desk on the 42nd floor,

01:22:11and I looked at the city.

01:22:13The city did what the city does at noon,

01:22:16on a Wednesday in October.

01:22:17The light moved across the buildings the way it moves in October.

01:22:21Slanted,

01:22:22gold-edged,

01:22:23a little melancholy,

01:22:24and a little victorious.

01:22:25The kind of light you only get in the city for about six weeks a year,

01:22:28and that you spend the rest of the year either remembering or waiting for.

01:22:32I went back to work.

01:22:33I worked through a brief I had been drafting since the morning.

01:22:36The brief was for a case that had nothing to do with Wren,

01:22:39and nothing to do with Marlowe,

01:22:40and nothing to do with anything except the work I was paid to do.

01:22:44And the work was good.

01:22:45And the work was enough.

01:22:46That night I went to her apartment.

01:22:48She opened the door.

01:22:50She kissed me at the threshold.

01:22:51I came in.

01:22:52I closed the door behind me.

01:22:54I was home.

01:22:55I had been home for a long time.

01:22:57I just had not had the language for it until a stranger at a bar had given me the language,

01:23:01one careful sentence at a time,

01:23:03and had let me build the rest of the sentences myself.

01:23:06That, in the end, was the case.

01:23:08The case rested.

01:23:10The verdict came back the way verdicts come back

01:23:12when the lawyers have done the work slowly,

01:23:14deliberately,

01:23:15with the kind of finality that comes from the foreman

01:23:17standing up and reading the words that the parties have known for weeks

01:23:21were the words that were going to be read.

01:23:22The verdict was that I was a person who could be loved without the architecture of silence.

01:23:27The verdict was that Wren was a person who could love

01:23:29without managing somebody else's life.

01:23:31The verdict was that the case had been honestly tried

01:23:34and had been honestly won,

01:23:36and the appeals were not coming.

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