advertisement for trail mix.
“Well, I am deeply, deeply embarrassed,” I said, chewing my lip.
“So I take it you didn’t put a lot of research into your quest for a divorce attorney?” she asked.
My cheeks flushed hot. “I’m so sorry. All I’ve heard about you is that you got Mimi Reed’s husband’s… well, you know.”
“The junk in the mayonnaise jar story?” she asked, grinning. “Well, that’s been slightly exaggerated in the telling and retelling. And I can’t really comment on it, because I protect my clients’ privacy, as I will, of course, protect yours. Let’s just say that if your wife supports you and cares for you while you recover from testicular implant surgery - and pays for the surgery using a recent inheritance - you shouldn’t leave her for your nurse.”
I gasped. “She really did take them back?”
“I can’t really say,” she said while nodding. “So let’s get down to business.”
She opened my file. “Well, you’re probably one of the more interesting clients to walk through that door, mayonnaise jars aside,” she observed drily. “I think you should know that I’ve received forwarded versions of your e-mail from a dozen or so of my colleagues under the heading of, ‘Well, at least, we’re not representing her’ or similar.”
“So I’ve gone viral?” I asked. “Great.”
“Of course, they didn’t realize that I am representing you. I’m not afraid of the challenge, Lacey. Believe it or not, you’re not my first client to do something rash when faced with the betrayal of a spouse. I have a prepared speech I give to these clients; would you like to hear it?”
“I don’t feel I’m in a position to refuse.”
She cleared her throat and in a professional monotone, she said, “I understand that you are very upset. It’s natural to feel hurt and betrayed when your spouse has left you for someone else. In the heat of the moment we sometimes do and say things that we normally wouldn’t. If you’d shown your e-mail to my mother, she would have told you to put it in a drawer for three days and then decide whether you wanted to send it. Obviously, the genie is out of the bottle now - … okay, I’m sorry. I’m breaking from protocol. I’ve had clients change their outgoing messages to invite callers to press two to leave messages for ‘the cheating bastard.’ I even had one client start a blog called TheMillionWaysKevinlsAnAsshole.com. But I’ve never had someone abuse the internet the way you did. I have to ask, what the hell were you thinking?”
I probably deserved much worse than that, so I took her bemused, exasperated tone with a grain of salt. “I may have gone a little too far, comparing Beebee to an Oompa Loompa,” I conceded. “I can’t say thinking had a lot to do with it. Mostly it was a reaction fueled by rage. Can I claim diminished mental capacity?”
“Well, you certainly deserve it more than most of my clients, but I don’t think that would help. Professionally required scolding aside, I did think it was pretty funny. Just don’t ever, ever do it again. At least, don’t put your name on it, if you do. You’re just inviting threats to your legal/financial/physical health.”
I handed her a file folder containing copies of Mike and Beebee’s e-mails and photos from Mike’s inbox. “It was just a onetime thing, I’m sure. Do you need me to sign something to that effect …?”
Samantha quirked her lips. “I don’t think that will be necessary. Well, the good news is that there is precedence for judges, as in the case of the angry blogging ex-wife, to rule that these types of publications are protected by the First Amendment.”
“That’s good!” I exclaimed, letting out a shaky, relieved breath.
“Of course, in other cases, the courts have stated that these communications are inappropriate and the author should, in one judge’s words, ‘Shut the hell up and show some class.”
“That’s bad.”
She cleared her throat. “Now, on to the questions I ask every client: You need to decide how far you want to go. Do you want to get even? Do you want to recover some dignity? Or do you want to slink away and hope we can depend on the common sense of the court and win the defamation suit?”
“Can I have some of column A and a little of column B? I don’t really want to skin him,” I admitted. “I just want what’s fair. Hell, half the stuff in that house, even the house, I don’t want it. I don’t want the condo. I don’t want the cars or the bass boat. And I could care less if he ends up paying me alimony. In fact, I don’t think I want monthly contact with him, even if it’s just through a check. I just want - I want enough to start over, to get on with my life.”
Samantha smiled. “I take it you just happen to have detailed financial records for the entirety of your marriage?”
“Um, no. I know this is going to sound pretty cliche, but Mike took care of all of our finances. He was an accountant. I trusted him. It just made sense at the time.”
“Let me guess, when it came to loans, bills, and tax returns, you just signed where he told you to?”
I nodded, staring at the twisting hands in my lap.
“Don’t worry about the records, Lacey. The discovery process makes my clerk feel useful. The first thing we’re going to do is make sure that Mike’s house is in order, that there’s nothing illegal or unethical going on. And if he’s up to something illegal or unethical, we’ll do what we can to make sure you aren’t liable for any of it. Then we use it as leverage.”
I chewed my lip as I considered that. “As much as I would relish the idea of Mike showering with his back against a prison wall, I don’t think you’re going to find anything but aboveboard business with Mike. He’s ambitious and materialistic, but also dull as a box of mud and straight as an arrow. Frankly, I didn’t think he had the guile to carry off an affair.”
“You’d be surprised,” Samantha said.
“I’d really rather not be surprised again,” I muttered.
“The fun part is that we can ask for every piece of financial information Mike has handled since your wedding. You have every right to see it and searching for it will be a gigantic pain in the ass for Mike and his lawyer. And if you want to have some real fun, we can demand that every cent Mike spent ‘entertaining’ Beebee be paid back to the marital pot. We might even get the judge to consider her salary part of his maintenance of the affair. We’ll have my associate go over every receipt and credit card charge, pick out all expenditures, like two thousand dollars spent at a jewelry store or three days at a resort. If you don’t remember getting a diamond anklet or a weekend getaway in Hot Springs, then we assume that Mike spent that money on Beebee, and not, say, his mom.”
“Yes, let’s do that, please. But you should know his mom is also a strong possibility.”
“Ew.”
I nodded. “Exactly.”
We talked for another hour or so and I found it oddly therapeutic, even if Samantha mostly kept her head down to take a copious amount of notes. She nodded. She grunted. She occasionally muttered something in Latin.
We finally came to the subject of the newsletter, how I’d found the information, how I’d written it. When I told her I’d forwarded the actual messages to my account, her smile was a mile wide. Samantha assured me that even if Mike had deleted the e-mails from his account, that her forensic computer analyst would be able to prove the messages were sent from Mike’s IP address at work, where I didn’t have access.
Sammy went on to explain that the lawsuit would be handled separately, but she would handle both cases. Apparently, in the course of her divorce court experience, she’d handled quite a few defamation suits - which made me feel a little bit better. She assured me that as long as information in the newsletter was proven to be true, there was nothing the court could do to prevent the publication or punish the author.
“We shouldn’t have a problem then, because it was all true,” I told her. “Everything I wrote was based on finding those e-mails. Wouldn’t the pictures alone be enough to just cancel this whole lawsuit thing?”
“Well, no, you would have to respond to the suit either way, particularly since Mike and Beebee’s complaint states that the e-mails were spam and Mike has no idea who they’re from. They’re claiming that the woman in the photos isn’t Beebee, that this is a horrible case of a nosy wife who found bad information while snooping and wreaked havoc with it. They’re saying you’ve defamed both of their characters, have damaged Mike’s reputation/ earning potential, and harmed Beebee’s standing in the community.”
“Oh, what standing in the community?” I snorted. I opened the file folder with the e-mailed photos. “Besides, you can tell it’s Beebee, just look at this…”
I sifted through the photos, tamping down the flare of rage ignited by seeing them again. But as I thumbed through, I realized that none of the pictures showed Beebee’s face. I gasped. How could I not have realized that I
