The House on Hope Street - By Danielle Steel Page 0,50
he told her then, volunteering more information than she'd asked for, but she was that kind of person. Her clients always told her more than she needed to know too, but sometimes that was helpful. And she found she wanted to know more about him.
“With no desire to remarry?” she asked with interest.
“Very little. And no time. I think the first time cured me. Our divorce was pretty bitter. She had an affair with my chief resident, which didn't actually sit well with me. Everybody in the hospital knew it before I did, and felt sorry for me. They got married eventually and have three kids. She gave up medicine during her residency, it was just a hobby for her. We were very different.” To say the least.
“My husband and I practiced law together for eighteen years, we had a good time together. It's nice being in the same line of work,” Liz said quietly, trying not to think of him too much. She was tired, and emotional, and she knew she would cry easily if Bill asked the right questions about Jack. “To be honest, he liked family law more than I did. I always liked the philanthropic stuff, and hopeless causes, fighting for the rights of the underdog. But he had a good sense of where the money was, and he was right, we had five kids to think of.”
“And now? You're still doing divorce work?” She nodded. “Why? You could do anything you want.”
“Not exactly,” she smiled. “I still have the same five kids, their feet are bigger, and their shoes are more expensive than ever. So is their education. One of these days I'll have four in college. Jack was right. Family law is very lucrative, even if it gets me down sometimes. In divorce work, you see people at their worst. The nicest people turn into monsters when they're mad at their spouses. But I feel I owe it to my husband to keep our practice going. He worked hard building it, I can't just walk away now.” From that, or their kids, or their house, or their responsibilities, it was all hers now, and Bill got that.
“Do you ever think about doing a different kind of law?” he asked, intrigued by her. She was smart, and nice, and very pretty. There was a softness to her which appealed to him, and a love for her son that touched his heart.
“Sometimes I think about doing something else,” she answered him, “but not very often. Do you?” She turned the question on him, and he poured some more coffee into his mug and shook his head.
“Never. I love this. It's about as high pressure as it gets, you have to make split-second decisions, and they have to be the right ones. The stakes are high, and there's no room for mistakes. It forces me to be the best I can be all the time. I like that.”
“It sounds like climbing Everest every day, and it must be heartbreaking sometimes.” She was thinking of Peter the day before and how easily they might have lost him. And the two children he had lost that night.
“It's heartbreaking too often,” Bill answered. “I hate losing.”
“So did Jack,” she smiled. “I'm not too crazy about it myself, but for him it was a personal affront if he lost a single motion. He had to win every time, which is probably what cost him his life. He played hardball with a man who went berserk over it. I was afraid of it. … I warned him … but he didn't believe me. I guess no one could really have predicted what happened. It was an insane thing for our client's husband to have done. But he was insane. He killed his wife, and then my husband, and then shot himself in our office.” Just saying it reminded her of the grisly scene again and she closed her eyes for a second, as Bill watched her.
“It must have been a nightmare for you and the kids,” he said, sorry for her.
“It still is sometimes. It's going to take us a long time to get over it, but we're doing better. We were married for nineteen years, you don't forget all that in a few months, we were very happy for a long time.”
“You were lucky,” he said quietly. He had never felt that way about anyone, not even the woman he'd married, or the two he lived with after her. And in