Page 64 of Escape Girl

A pause. “He’s struggling,” she said finally. “I mean, he’s hanging in there—working a lot, hitting the gym, going out for beers with Jamie. But he’s sad, Emily. He’s just sad.” Her voice got cautious. “A divorce is another kind of death to mourn, you know.”

“Did you say anything to him about me, about my, ah, grief stuff?” I held my breath, not sure how I wanted her to answer.

“Of course not!” she exclaimed. “That’s extremely private and not my story to tell.” She took a deep breath. “But I really think you should tell him. I think it would help him a lot. He would stop blaming himself, for one thing. Jamie and I have tried to tell him, over and over, that it wasn’t his fault, but he doesn’t believe us.”

I nodded hard, even though she couldn’t see me. “I will.”

But would words be enough? They were still so hard to push through my lips, and I’d failed miserably every time he’d asked me what was wrong. I was still so new to being able to speak about the turmoil inside my brain, and Bobby always inspired such a hurricane of emotions. I didn’t trust my voice. I still sat silently through the majority of my therapy sessions and support groups, my words breaking through my barriers in unpredictable torrents. What if I froze in front of him again?

If only I could get beyond words. If only I could show him.

Show him.Wait a minute. Wait just a goddamn minute.

“Jo, can I have Andie’s number? I need her help with something.”

*

Opening myself tothe help and the pain…wow. It was frustrating because I’d feel so good one day and then like I’d been swallowed by a black hole the next. “Grief isn’t linear,” everyone said. It sure fucking wasn’t.

Weird too, I felt myself moving, changing, becoming…who? I could never revert to the Emily I’d been before my mom passed. I sure as hell didn’t want to be the repressed Emily only half living a life that I’d been before I’d met Bobby and after I’d left him. Thank God it turned out that the ill woman I’d been for those months in my marriage wasn’t me either.

I tried to express this to Dr. Rivera: the disorientation, the fear and wonder of knowing I was transitioning to someone new. “But who?”

It was the biggest smile I’d ever seen on her kind face. “Who are you becoming? Isn’t that the beauty of this reclamation of your life, Emily? Whoever you want.”

*

Gathered around atable in a bustling diner, Tess, Max, and Bella looked at me expectantly over their coffee mugs. I swallowed hard and busied my hands by gathering my legal pads and aligning them. “Apologies for the delay, guys. But I’m ready to work now.”

Bella opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, but then she just gave me a weak smile and gazed down into her latte.

“Max, were you able to find anything about Hill’s suspension?” I asked.

“A little.” He adjusted his glasses. “Keeping my research aboveboard made it a little tricky to get juicy details, but by cobbling together various documents and social media posts from other lawyers at Scully Thomas, I would guess that Hill had been involved in financial fraud of some of their clients. Also, you were right. He did not practice intellectual property law at all. His specialty was trusts and estates.”

“Did we ever get a response to our post about cease and desists?”

Max wrinkled his nose. “Nothing useful.”

I drummed my fingers on the table and began to use them to count off points. “OK. Here’s what we know. One, Taggert and Hill are old friends. Two, Hill steals money from his old firm and gets a stain on his résumé that would make him unhireable at most respected firms. Three, Taggert files a copyright months ago for his GuardTower product. Four, Taggert steals Bella’s code.”

I paused for a gulp of coffee. “Now, here’s what we can surmise. Hill was able to get the job at Bird & Dreyer by dangling Taggert in front of them as a potential big-money client. In return, he uses the legitimacy and reputation of the firm to beat down people like Bella who Taggert is stealing intellectual property from.”

“So what do we do?” Tess asked, looking impatient.

“We start a legal battle.” I said. “We argue that the intellectual property is Bella’s. The good news is that we have solid evidence there. At some point, it will be revealed that whatever they filed a copyright on is not her code.”

“At some point,” Bella echoed faintly.

“Yeah.” I sighed. “There’s the rub. Once we start the suit, Taggert will likely switch to an actual IP lawyer. Knowing his personality, he’ll also talk to the press and relate a bunch of salacious details.”

Bella winced.

“There’s more bad news,” Max said, an apology in his tone. “The thing with the copyright has been bugging me. It’s just so ballsy.” I narrowed my eyes at him, and he held up hands. “I did not hack into anything, but I did research all of the guys who graduated from U of I in the same class as Taggert and Hiltan James.” He sighed. “One of them currently works in the IT department of the United States copyright office.”

“What?” Bella exclaimed. “So if they’re all working together, that means that the third douchebag could have exchanged their original copyright application with documentation that reflects my code?”

Max nodded. “It would be super risky though. The security on those databases is no joke. They probably wouldn’t do it until they felt they had to.” He met my eyes. “If they felt threatened.”

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