Unfit to Practice

Cody Stinson got out of jail free. Heritage Insurance released Mrs. Vang’s share of the money, and Marilyn Rose called Nina.

Bruce Ford had a minor surgical procedure, no complications.

Andrea had given birth to a beautiful baby girl in March. She named her June.

After the dust settled, at the end of May, Nina closed up her office in the Starlake Building.

She offered Sandy a generous severance package, which Sandy rejected. “Severance? That sounds like broken, and we’re not.” She had groused and dragged her feet about the changes until she realized Nina was happy, then cheered right up. On her last day at the office, Sandy appeared in brand-new te

Bob went to Sweden.

Nina put him on a plane, breathing a sigh of relief that she had taken care of the Nikki problem. The day after he arrived in Stockholm, he called to check in. Voices laughed and roughhoused in the background, low hums, high giggles.

“Who’s that?” Nina had asked.

“Oh, Mom, in the rush and everything did I forget to tell you? That Swedish hard-core crust band Nikki’s been working with on the Web site-well, they invited her here for a month, and here she is.” Something jostled the phone, and he came back on a moment later. “They’re all here right now. Kurt’s letting them practice in the rehearsal room at the symphony today. Awesome acoustics!”

Paul hired Wish to summer in Carmel as a paid intern, to run his office and help oversee some of the subcontractors that he hired for routine security jobs. Wish arranged for college credit for his work and was learning to surf. At the moment, he was renting a room in the house Nina had inherited from her aunt Helen in Pacific Grove, sharing with two other students who needed a roommate and were renting from her.

Leaving Tahoe turned out to be as hard as she had expected.

Closing up the office, farming out her cases, painful good-byes Nina could not escape because the small legal community knew everything that had happened, all these acts came hard. The concern and good wishes almost overwhelmed her decision to leave. Almost.

“Will you be back?” they all asked. “What will you do?” they said.

So she told them the truth. She would never quit law. She had thought over the past months and realized Brandy was set to get happily married. Mrs. Vang had begun a new life in a new country. Kevin’s children had a devoted parent, not him, but then, he didn’t deserve them.

Once again, she had reached down into the insane disorder of human relations, twisted, pried, and fought for a fair outcome. She had done more good than harm. That was all she could ever hope for. Like a California condor overcoming a brush with extinction, soaring on the wind, she had proven she could survive on her own. She also knew she didn’t have to anymore. She would never give up law. But now, with her heart clamoring for attention, she decided to listen to it.

Leaving the house could have been terrible, but Paul and Matt and Jack had her packed and out in a jiffy, laughing and teasing, music loud, dust flying, boxes accumulating as high as Mount Tallac. Andrea would be using Nina’s cabin to house a mother and her four children for a few months because the shelter couldn’t accommodate so many comfortably. After that-

“You’ll come back, Nina, won’t you?”

Nina parked in a lot across from the bookstore cafe on Lighthouse Boulevard in Pacific Grove, went inside, and ordered two coffees. Where was Paul? He should be here by now. Outside, wispy fog flowed down the street. Now an ocean, not an ancient lake, bounded her town.

Drinking the milky brew, she felt a moment’s dislocation. She had returned to her old town, down the hill from Pacific Grove Elementary, where she had gone to school. So much had happened in the years in between.

From behind her magazine, she watched a mother dump sugar into her daughter’s cup of milk at the end of the counter, the little girl smiling and begging for more until the mother finally called a halt to the sugar feast, promising more, all the sugar she wanted in the next cup. Nina walked to the front and looked out the window. Night had fallen and the silver lights decorating the cafe windows blinked on.

Where was he? When she didn’t see him on the street, she returned to the counter to wait, her heart at ease for the first time in a long time. He would come, and they would take a long walk through the town, stop at the Pier One, maybe go to the movies, then go over the hill to Carmel, home.

She could count on him.

Waiting, happy, she swung on her stool, back and forth. The delighted little girl a few stools away observed her, then spun, too, but in circles, her legs kicking out and in, long after Nina had stopped.

Watching the girl turning, hands gripping the spi

She wondered what the future would bring.

She swung around all the way around, just once. Simple thoughts swung through her head:

My name is Nina and I live down the street.

I am me.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

WE WOULD LIKE TO OFFER OUR SPECIAL THANKS to Peter von Mertens and Ly

Our brother, Patrick O’Shaughnessy, contributed the usual spice to our characters and plot, and continues to be the best worker’s comp attorney in California, in our opinion.

Brad Snedecor was, as always, an indispensable creative accomplice.

Thanks to the California State Bar court perso

The California Bar Journal was a source for information about bar court proceedings. We consulted a number of informative Web sites and books about the Hmong people for the story of the Vang family, including www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/8725/unip2001.htm and I Begin My Life All Over: The Hmong and the American Immigrant Experience by Ghia Xiong (contributor), Lillian Faderman. For Mrs. Gleb’s testimony, we wish especially to acknowledge The Psychology of Handwriting: Secrets of Handwriting Analysis by Nadya Olyanova, ©1960, Sterling Publishing Company.

Our greatest respect and admiration go to our terrific agent, Nancy Yost, and to our perceptive editor, Danielle Perez. Many thanks to Irwyn Applebaum for his patient and benevolent style, and to everyone else at the Bantam Dell Publishing Group for all their hard work on our behalf-what good people.

And finally, an escapist lift of the coffee cup to the fine and clever company in the back booth at the Plantation Cafe: Bill Cheney, Ruth and Bill Dawson, Laura Ferrari, Jim Nicholas, Pat Spindt, and Sylvia Walker.

All mistakes are our own.