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“How else am I supposed to read it?”

Her father took the bagged note and put it back in the file. “Your mother did everything in her power to shake the beast. She lost. She relapsed, over and over again. This was the story of her life. Continuing on this way would bring nothing but heartache and disappointment to the person she loved most, and who loved her. So she ended it. For you.”

Kate glanced out the window. Everything was still a blur, but her father had given her a moment of clear thinking. Again, her mind conjured up the black-and-whiteLifemagazine photograph from her undergraduate class, the grotesque but captivating image of the young woman who had jumped from the Empire State Building. Kate had felt bad about digging into the life of a victim, but she was so intrigued that she’d gone behind the photograph and researched the young woman. Her mother had run off when she was young, leaving her father to raise nine children. She was twenty-three years old and soon to be married. She’d spent a weekend with her fiancé and seemed happy. And then she rode the elevator to the eighty-sixth floor, placed her neatly folded coat on the observation deck floor, and jumped over the railing. She, too, had left a note. She’d done it for the man who wanted to marry her. She could never be a good wife. “I have too many of my mother’s tendencies,” she’d written.

“Kate, are you okay?”

She glanced back at her father. “I will be, I think.”

“There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.”

Kate wasn’t sure she had the “bandwidth,” as her father liked to say, to talk about one more thing. “Is it important?”

“Yes. You don’t have to answer right this minute. But I would like you to come work at Buck Technologies.”

Kate’s mouth opened, but the words were on a few seconds’ delay. “This is not a good time for me to be considering job offers.”

“You’re graduating in December. What do you have lined up, other than becoming a playwright?”

“American University has the top master’s program in arts management in the country.”

“You’re not thinking of another degree, are you?”

“No. The law school allows us to take three graduate-level classes toward our JD, so I did. I loved it. I probably should have enrolled in that program in the first place, but a law degree could land me the same job. This city is full of art centers, museums, and maybe even a few theaters that would hire me in their development or marketing departments.”

“Actually, a friend of mine is on the board at the Kennedy Center. I could give her a call and—”

“Dad,no.This is why I can’t tell you anything. You take over.”

“Okay, I get it. If that’s your dream, you should pursue it on your own terms. But hear me out. You can always leave the practice of law. It’s almost impossible to pick it up once you take another path.”

He was speaking from experience, a graduate of Stanford Law who’d never practiced.

“I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be a lawyer.”

“Give yourself options. Take an internship in Buck’s legal department for your final semester. See if you like it. Then, maybe in January, you can start at the bottom like everyone else and come onboard as an associate general counsel.”

“Dad, we’ve talked about this before.”

“Not really. I brought it up when you started law school, and you dismissed it.”

“That’s because it was a bad idea.”

“Things have changed.”

“Nepotism is still nepotism. Mom’s death doesn’t change that.”

“You won’t be working for me. You’d work for the general counsel.”

“Who works for you.”

“I’m asking you to think about it. Let’s work at this. Let’s hold together what’s left of this family.”

Under the circumstances, it was hard to give a flat no to a plea for family strength. Kate glanced out the window, then back. “All right,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”

Chapter 6

The phone call Kate had least expected came on her first day back at law school. It was from Irving Bass’s assistant, the young man who had replenished the director’s supply of vodka during Kate’s reading.

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