Page 1 of Finding You
PROLOGUE
ASTRID
March
Just my luck.The day I realized I was in love was also the day I got arrested. When I woke up this morning, I did not expect this day to end with me getting my mug shot taken, but given how my life had been going, it was not a shock.
I was a planner. I carefully examined every decision and its statistical implications before implementing and executing with precision. Needless to say, I had never imagined getting myself into a situation that culminated in my arrest. On the bright side, I was wearing a gorgeous evening gown and had professional hair and makeup done, so the odds were good it would at least be a decent photo. I wonder if I could get a copy of it? I could post it to my Instagram.
Getting arrested sucked. And I was pretty sure it would ruin my career and reputation. But damn, it also felt really good. After years of taking other people’s shit and smiling politely, it felt good to finally fight back a little. To do what I wanted to do, what I needed to do. It was about time I reclaimed some of the dignity that had been stolen from me. And if a criminal record was the consequence, so be it.
The holding cell was pretty gross. There were a bunch of other women in here with me. Everyone seemed like they were keeping to themselves. Yes, I was dressed like a beauty queen, but I was also pretty tall, and years of being a lawyer had helped me develop an excellent “don’t fuck with me” face, so I was fine. I knew I would be bailed out soon. I was only going to get slapped with assault and battery, nothing crazy. Even murderers made bail sometimes.
If anything, the greatest tragedy of the night was the loss of my shoe. My new friends Christian and Dante had given them to me as a gift, and they were sparkly Louboutin perfection. A four-inch platform stiletto with a delicate sling back, the toe box was covered with small crystals that created a purple and blue ombre effect. My toenails were painted a perfect purple to match, and they set off my eggplant gown beautifully. They were the most perfect shoes I had ever seen. And now I only had one of them. Apparently, my right shoe was evidence, so the odds of me getting it back were slim. As I sat in the grimy holding cell, wearing one shoe and waiting to be bailed out, I realized that this had been one of the most memorable days of my life.
1
ASTRID
January
“Are you sure you’re okay up there? You can come here if you want.” I looked around my new home. It wasn’t bad. It was a far cry from my luxury apartment in downtown Boston, but on the plus side, it had a lovely ocean view.
“Thanks, Emily. I’m fine,” I replied. “The cottage is perfect.”
The little cottage was charming in its shabby-chicness, bursting with pillows, paintings, and tchotchkes. A worn, plush couch faced a brick fireplace in the tiny living room, and there was a small kitchen in the back, stuffed with every possible kitchen tool and gadget known to man. Not that I would be using any of them, but even I could appreciate the value of a well-stocked kitchen. It had a small porch that looked out over the bluffs, and as I stood there, freezing my ass off in the January cold, a sort of calm settled over me. I wasn’t in the city anymore. And I wasn’t necessarily mad about that.
“What can I get you? Do you need anything?” Her kindness meant a lot to me. Emily was my first cousin. We were nothing alike. I was quiet and serious, and Emily was zany and adventurous, but somehow our childhood bond developed into a genuine adult friendship.
I briefly saw red. I was still so angry. How could they treat me like this? After everything I had done for the firm? I could feel the lava travel up my esophagus. I had to unpack and find my heartburn medication. “I’m good. I have everything I need to kick back and unwind for a couple of days.”
The cottage belonged to my aunt Connie. She was my father’s younger sister and the only extended family I had any contact with growing up. She was an eccentric sort, an artist who had fled the city for the idyllic small town of Havenport, Massachusetts sometime in the 1970s. Here she had found some success, opening a gallery and marrying her first husband. Emily and her sister, Grace, grew up here, among the bluffs and the dunes and the charming small-town festivals. I associated this place with fun and freedom, which may have been the reason the first call I made after being fired from my law firm was not to my mother, but to my aunt.
As a kid, I would come visit Havenport in the summer, and I loved every second of it. My cousins lived a few minutes from the historic downtown, and after dinner we would walk to get ice cream cones and watch the fishing boats unload their daily catch. It was an idyllic sort of place—safe, clean, and everyone knew everyone. My cousins had lots of friends, participated in fun activities, and had the kind of free-range, charming childhoods I longed for.
My childhood, by contrast, was one of strict discipline and formality. I was raised in a historic mansion in Brookline, Massachusetts by my mother and a series of nannies. My mother, the right honorable Justice Mary Wentworth, was a judge on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. She was consistently ranked by Boston Magazine as one of the most powerful women in Massachusetts.
She had been nominated to the bench when I was in middle school and worked her way up the courts to her current position. She was widely regarded as a legal genius and a fair and tolerant jurist. Her life was a series of high stakes legal decisions and grand parties and networking events. All of which I hated.
She devoted her life and career to public service and the pursuit of justice. That left very little time for being a mother, a role she outsourced as much as she could. When I was a kid, she never came to parent-teacher nights or to school plays or concerts. She did begrudgingly attend my graduations, but only because I was graduating from prestigious institutions.
I attended private school and left home at fourteen to attend Miss Farmer’s Academy in Connecticut, the preeminent prep school for the daughters of Boston and New York elites. After Miss Farmer’s, it was on to Yale and then to Harvard Law School, where, to the embarrassment of my mother, I only finished fourth in my class. Then I spent one year clerking for a federal judge before starting my career at Burns & Glenn, one of the world’s largest law firms. I had spent six years chained to my desk, churning out billable hours and getting yearly pats on the head. I had skipped vacations, friends’ weddings, holidays, and countless meals, workouts, and nights of sleep. I had one goal—partnership. The brass ring. The ultimate validation of all my hard work and sacrifice. Every minute of my life to date had been precisely calculated to help me achieve my goal.
And it was all for naught. One day I was the hardest-working, highest-achieving senior associate at the firm, and the next I was a liability who required an investigation.
Emily interrupted my thoughts as I stared out the window. “Do you want to tell me what happened? I’m happy to listen.”
I took a deep breath, but it did nothing to calm the angry fire inside me. It wasn’t just my stomach. Every cell in my body burned with rage, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I had spent my entire life with a mask of calm on my face. I sat and negotiated with opposing counsel for hours without so much as a yawn or a pee break. I could pull an all-nighter and charm clients at a seven a.m. breakfast meeting the next day. I was a stone-cold badass and yet it wasn’t enough for them.
Nothing I did was enough for them. Because I was a woman and the deck was stacked against me. Everything I’d worked for since middle school had disappeared in the last seventy-two hours and I was too shocked to cry. But the rage. The rage that had simmered on the periphery for years was starting to bubble up inside me. The volcano of anger and disappointment had been dormant too long, and I knew I was going to blow soon.
“It’s complicated, Em. They fired me.”
“What? Fired you? You are the hardest-working associate they’ve ever had, and your mom is a goddamn judge.”
“I know.” I had given them six years of my life. I had never made a mistake, my reviews were excellent, and my client relationships were strong. I had the makings of an exceptional partner and everyone there knew it. I volunteered for client pitches, wrote academic articles in my nonexistent spare time, and represented the firm at professional conferences and law school recruiting fairs.
And yet, in a few short months I had gone from all-star to pariah. “They said I made a mistake. They said I accidentally sent a confidential document to opposing counsel, jeopardizing negotiations in a billion-dollar merger.”
