Page 164 of Over Her Dead Body

Partner.

For years, I have wanted to see those two things together.

I have wanted this job since before I was particularly good at it.

I wanted it when I was answering phones and learning which clients expected their calls returned before lunch. I wanted it when Celeste first let me sit in on an appraisal and I spent the entire meeting afraid someone would ask a question I could not answer. I wanted it when Reid and I were saving money for a table and I was explaining employee policies to him in bed because I genuinely believed knowing them mattered.

Then Reid died, and I kept coming to work.

I got better.

I learned how to tell people things they did not want to hear. I learned which collectors needed flattery and which considered flattery an insult. I learned when to trust my eye and when to wait until I could prove what it saw.

I built a career while believing the rest of my life had burned beside a road.

Partnership was never supposed to make that worth it.

I wanted it anyway.

Apparently, the final requirement was surviving Portugal.

No one mentioned that in the employee handbook.

I turn the page.

The terms are good.

Better than good.

My clients return to me. The house covers counsel for anything connected to Lisbon or Lake Austin. My termination disappears from the personnel record with impressive speed.

Institutions are remarkably efficient once they decide they made the mistake.

“When does this take effect?”

“When you sign.”

I pick up the pen.

The bandages make my grip awkward, so the signature is not one of my better ones.

It counts anyway.

The partner takes the pages back and signs beneath me.

“Congratulations.”

I thought this moment would feel different.

Bigger, maybe.

Instead, it feels right.

After the week I have had, I will take right.

“Thank you.”

He gathers the signed pages into a neat stack.