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“I don’t think much of it,” he said. “I do what comes to me. In this case I saw a kid that reminded me of myself. Maybe I found it refreshing. We are often too serious as adults.”
“Sometimes we have no other choice but to be that way,” she said. She shook her head as if she hadn’t meant to say that. “I just wanted to thank you and say not to worry. I could tell by the look you gave me that you worried I might read you the riot act. I’m not that harsh.”
“I don’t think you’re harsh at all. I think it’s more you’re private and we all need to be at times in our life.”
“Exactly,” she said. “I’ll let you get back to work now.”
She left and as much as he wanted to stop her, he wouldn’t. He had no reason to.
Janine showed up a minute later in his doorway. “What was that about?”
He wouldn’t lie. “Her six-year-old son ran into me in the hallway,” he said. Then he told her the rest of what happened.
Janine started to laugh. “I wish I could have seen your “oh, shit” face too when Eli took off. I had no idea she was a single mother, did you?”
“Nope,” he said. “No clue.”
Not that it changed a thing in his mind. If anything he might have been even more drawn to her by the grace with which she’d handled that situation.
12
Called The Shots
“Hi, Janine. Trent. How is my boy today?”
“Fine,” Trent said to his mother two weeks later. “What are you doing here? Do you have the day off?”
“I do,” his mother said. “I’ve got errands to run and figured I’d get a start on my weekend. I had hoped you’d both be here but worse case I can talk to Janine about billing questions.”
“I’ve got time before I need to be in court and then have meetings this afternoon. Come into my office.”
He had a shit ton going on, but he’d always make time for his mother. More so since she was helping out doing his books.
With any luck he wouldn’t need to worry much longer and could hire someone.
“First,” his mother asked, “do you plan on getting any kind of accounting software?”
He sighed. “Yes. I was holding off to see how busy I was and when I could hire someone to take over. I figured they could set it up, but then I got thinking I’ll probably be hiring just a general accountant or someone to pay bills and take care of deposits. I can’t believe how busy I’ve been for almost three months. And if things go the way I hope with a case, I’ll be hiring sooner rather than later.”
“I’m so proud of you,” his mother said. “I know how hard this was for you. The move to go on your own.”
He snorted. “I don’t know I ever thought I’d do it.”
His mother turned her head to look at him. “Why?”
“I didn’t think I wanted to be a boss. I was content taking my paycheck and getting my bonuses on cases. No worries about running an office or paying those bills. Worrying about my staff or if I needed accounting software.”
His mother laughed. “There is a positive to working for someone else.”
“But the negatives in my case outweighed it. I could have gone to another firm. You know I considered it.”
“Why didn’t you?” his mother asked. “Enlighten me. You’re the talker of your siblings, but this one thing you haven’t said much about. Nothing more than we all knew you weren’t happy where you were.”
“I had some feelers out going to another firm. Nothing concrete. But the more I talked to other people, the more I realized there were the same issues everywhere, although not to the extent of what I was dealing with.”
He hadn’t heard anyone else complaining about the treatment of the employees where they worked in terms of being degraded, yelled at, talked down to and then terminated if they couldn’t put in sixty hours minimum.
A bunch of lawyers knew the lines they could walk without getting into trouble. He hated that he ended up working at a place like that.
