The Restoration of Celia Fairchild - Marie Bostwick Page 0,11

of time preparing for this meeting, I guessed about three years, starting on the day he’d watched me sign a contract that he knew I didn’t completely understand.

For a moment I was struck dumb, overwhelmed by the realization of my own stupidity and the depth of Dan’s deceit. How could he have done something so . . . so evil? Then I thought about the adoption attorney and the bigger apartment I needed to convince her that my home would be a fit place to raise a child and that I would be a fit parent. But was I? With no husband, no job, no visible future in front of me? How was I going to support a baby if I couldn’t even support myself?

Maybe I should sign the letter. The severance wouldn’t get me into a better apartment—every building in town would want confirmation of employment—but a year’s salary wasn’t exactly chump change. Could I walk away from that? On the other hand, how could I walk away from Calpurnia? If not for her, I wouldn’t even be in the running for this baby. Without Calpurnia, I was nothing and nobody.

I considered my options, which were precisely none. Dan held all the cards. Maybe if I told him about the baby? Appealed to his sense of decency?

Then I remembered: he had none.

How could I ever have trusted him? And why, oh why, after advising so many of my readers to have an attorney look over any contracts before signing, hadn’t I done so myself? Because I had trusted him, that’s why.

Which was stupid. Really, really stupid.

I dropped my head and saw the Tiffany’s box sitting in my lap. So he’d bought me jewelry because he appreciated me? And he’d fought to get me a year’s severance because I’d been with him from the first?

Bull. I wasn’t the one who should be embarrassed here.

I stood up and dropped the blue box onto Dan’s desk. It landed with a thud.

“You can’t fight this, Celia. It’s already done,” he said as I crossed the room. “Don’t be an idiot. Sign the letter and take the money.”

I opened the door.

“Hey, Dan. About your boat? I hope it sinks.”

Twenty minutes later, escorted by a security guard who had watched me pack the contents of my desk into a box, I exited the offices of McKee Media. I’d started the day resolved to transform myself entirely. Now it had happened.

I walked in the door as Dear Calpurnia.

I walked out as Celia Fairchild, a woman I used to know but had lost touch with a long, long time ago.

Chapter Four

Lawyers in Manhattan must all use the same decorator.

In the six days since I’d been unceremoniously escorted out of the offices of McKee Media, I’d had meetings at eight different law firms. Every one of them had glass coffee tables and painted portraits of the founding partners in the lobby, glassed-in conference rooms lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves of hardbound law books that I’m sure were just for show (Seriously, isn’t all the research done on computers by underpaid, overworked associates these days?), and plush, expensive, red Oriental rugs with fringed edges. I’m not making that up: it was almost the exact same rug! And the lawyers appeared to be just as generic, even Carlotta Avilla.

I had hoped that a female attorney would be a bit more sympathetic to my cause, or somewhat more willing to take a chance. But I guess you don’t pay for ten-thousand-dollar rugs, walls of books that nobody ever reads, or office suites on high floors by taking on cases that are anything less than a slam dunk, especially when the client is an out-of-work advice columnist who has big alimony payments and next to nothing in savings.

But at least the coffee was good. Apparently, really great coffee is something else you can afford to buy when you only bet on sure things.

“The thing is,” Ms. Avilla said, putting a blue demitasse cup of espresso down on the glass conference table after I finished my story, “you did sign the contract. No one made you do it.”

I nodded. I’d heard this before. “But I never would have done it if I’d seen the part about them getting the rights to my pen name. Dan never mentioned anything about that during our negotiations, and the first draft of the contract didn’t include that clause.” I’d confirmed this. In the original contract Dan had emailed for me to look over, clause sixteen didn’t have a