Chapter 59

The courtroom was full.

Not unusually full. Becky Armstrong had stopped attracting unusual crowds to courtrooms about six months ago — when you appeared in enough of them, with enough of the same result, the novelty wore off and the attendance became simply professional. People came because she was worth watching. That was enough.

Freen was in the front row.

She had arrived twenty minutes early and taken the seat directly in the centre — clear sight line to the bar table, clear sight line to the entrance, clear sight line to the door behind the witness stand. She had done this automatically, the way she still did most things in rooms, and had noted it and said nothing to herself about it because noting it was enough.

Old habits.

She was in a good suit. Not the dark blazer from the firm days — something better, something that fit the occasion. Charlotte had mentioned the occasion required a good suit three times over the past week in ways that were not subtle and Freen had gone and bought one on Thursday.

The courtroom settled.

The judge entered.

Everyone rose.

—

Becky at the bar table was the same as she had always been.

Two years and a trial and an appeal and a caseload that had continued to grow and the particular quality of her in a courtroom had not changed. Still the same economy of movement. Still the same weight behind each word, the architecture of it, the foundation first and then the structure and then the point. Still the same capacity to make a room go very quiet when she wanted it to.

She was being sworn in as senior counsel today.

A formality, in some ways — the work had been there for a long time, the recognition was arriving to meet it. But formalities mattered. Becky had explained this to Freen over breakfast that morning, eating at the kitchen table with her good clothes already on and her coffee in both hands the way she held it when she was thinking.

“It matters because it’s official,” Becky had said. “Things that are official have weight. That’s why we make them official.”

“You’ve been senior counsel in practice for a year,” Freen had said.

“Now it’s official.” Becky had drunk her coffee. “Weight.”

Freen had looked at her.

“I understand weight,” she had said.

Becky had looked at her over the cup. “I know you do.”

—

The ceremony was not long.

The presiding judge spoke. Charlotte spoke — briefly, professionally, in the voice she used for things that mattered and that she was not going to let show how much they mattered. Irin was in the third row and did not cry and was clearly managing this very carefully.

Heng, in the fifth row, did not manage it at all.

Becky spoke.

She thanked the people she needed to thank — the court, Charlotte, the firm, the colleagues who had been there for specific cases and specific moments. She was brief and precise and completely composed.

She did not look at the front row while she was speaking.

She looked at it when she was done.

Freen looked back.

—

Outside afterward the steps were busy.

The afternoon sun. The courthouse doing its end-of-day business around them. Charlotte with Engfa — they had come together, which they did most places now, the three years of professional distance long since resolved into something that looked, from the outside, like two people who had finally stopped wasting time.

Charlotte had her hand through Engfa’s arm.

Engfa was saying something that made Charlotte almost smile — the specific almost-smile that only Engfa got, the one that had a warmth behind it that Charlotte didn’t give to professional occasions or client dinners or anything that required the managing version of herself.

Irin was talking to one of the court clerks she apparently knew. Heng was on his phone — probably Nam, who had sent three voice notes during the ceremony that Freen had felt vibrating in her pocket and had ignored.

Becky came out.

She came through the courthouse doors and stopped at the top of the steps and looked at the afternoon. Not dramatically — just the particular pause of someone putting something down that they had been carrying for a long time.

Freen was at the bottom of the steps.

The same bottom of the same steps where she had waited two years ago in civilian clothes while a verdict was delivered on a Tuesday afternoon. The city the same city. The sun the same angle.

Becky walked down.

She reached the bottom.

They stood a foot apart.

“Senior counsel,” Freen said.

“Official,” Becky said.

“Weight.”

“Weight.” Becky held her gaze. “You’re still watching me.”

“I’m always watching you.”

“From the front row.”

“The sight lines were good from the front row.”

Becky looked at her.

“The sight lines,” she said.

“And other reasons,” Freen said.

Becky almost smiled. Then she did smile — the full one, unguarded, the one that Freen had seen for the first time across an office two years ago and had not been able to stop thinking about and had eventually stopped trying to stop thinking about.

Freen looked at her.

“Congratulations,” she said.

“Thank you,” Becky said.

She stepped forward.

She kissed her — brief, warm, on the courthouse steps in the afternoon sun with the city going past and Charlotte making a sound somewhere above them that she would later describe as relief and that sounded considerably more like joy.

They pulled back.

Still close. The city around them. The steps behind them. Two years of everything in the space between.

“Dinner,” Becky said. “The river place.”

“Charlotte already booked it,” Freen said.

“Of course she did.”

“Thursday. She booked it Thursday.”

Becky looked at her. “You knew.”

“I suspected. I confirmed it with Heng.”

“You confirmed my celebration dinner with my paralegal before I knew there was a celebration dinner.”

“It’s not a mission,” Freen said. “I just like to know things.”

Becky shook her head slowly. She looked at the city. At the courthouse steps. At the afternoon going about its business all around them.

“Let’s go,” she said.

—

Charlotte’s birthday was on a Saturday.

Small dinner — the apartment, the people who mattered, food that Engfa had spent the afternoon cooking with the focused efficiency she brought to most things. Charlotte had come home at six to find the apartment smelling extraordinary and Engfa at the stove with the expression of someone who was not going to be interrupted.

She had sat at the kitchen counter and watched.

“You can help,” Engfa said without turning around.

“You don’t need help.”

“That’s not the point.”

Charlotte got up and stood beside her. “What do I do.”

“The thing on the left.”

She did the thing on the left. She didn’t know what it was called. It didn’t matter.

They worked side by side in the kitchen in the particular easy quiet of two people who had learned each other’s rhythms — who moved around each other without coordinating, who handed things without being asked, who had built a shared life out of the small daily decisions that accumulated into something that held.

At eight the others arrived.

Becky and Freen. Irin. Two friends of Charlotte’s from before the firm days who had known her long enough to find Engfa completely unsurprising. A colleague of Engfa’s who had brought wine and who Freen assessed in approximately four seconds and apparently approved of because she relaxed in the particular way she relaxed when a room had been confirmed safe.

Dinner. The table too small and everyone slightly crowded and nobody moving to the larger table in the other room because the too-small table was better.

Becky made a toast that was professional for one sentence and then became something else and that Charlotte interrupted twice because that was how Becky told you something mattered.

At the end of the evening — the guests gone, the dishes done, the apartment quiet — Charlotte and Engfa sat on the sofa with the last of the wine and the city outside doing its Saturday night.

“You stayed,” Charlotte said.

Not for the first time. She said it occasionally — not as a reminder, just as a thing that was true and that she wanted to say out loud.

“I told you I would,” Engfa said.

“You did.”

“You didn’t believe me.”

“I believed you,” Charlotte said. “I was just—” She stopped. “I was afraid of believing you.”

Engfa held her gaze.

“I know,” she said.

Charlotte looked at her wine glass. “Not anymore.”

“No,” Engfa said. “Not anymore.”

Charlotte leaned against her.

Engfa put her arm around her.

The city outside. The Saturday night. The apartment that had been Charlotte’s and was now something else — shared, specific, belonging to both of them in the way that places belonged to people who had chosen to be in them.

“Happy birthday,” Engfa said.

“You already said that.”

“I’m saying it again.”

Charlotte smiled.

“Thank you,” she said.

—

The wedding was on a Sunday. No.one thought that Nam would settle soon for Heng!!

Small. Chaotic. Completely them.

The venue was a garden restaurant in Thonglor that Heng had chosen because Nam had said she didn’t care where as long as there was good food and he had taken this seriously. The food was excellent. Nam had admitted this three times during the reception which for Nam was essentially a declaration.

Freen was best woman.

She had prepared a speech. She had written four versions of the speech and discarded three of them for being too operational in tone and had arrived at a version that was — Becky’s assessment — almost suspiciously normal.

“Almost,” Freen had said.

“It’s good,” Becky had said. “Don’t change anything.”

She didn’t change anything.

She stood up when the moment came and looked at the room — the garden, the lights strung between the trees, the tables full of people who had come to see Nam and Heng be officially the thing they had been unofficially for two years. She looked at Nam in a dress she had complained about for three weeks and was clearly completely comfortable in. She looked at Heng who had been crying since approximately the moment he saw Nam come around the corner of the garden path.

She gave the speech.

It was not operational in tone.

It was — Irin said afterward, which was the highest available standard — exactly right.

When she sat down Becky leaned over and said nothing. She just took her hand under the table and held it.

Freen held on.

Later — the speeches done, the food eaten, the dancing happening in the way dancing happened at weddings when the music was good and nobody was being professional about it anymore — Nam found Freen at the edge of the garden.

They stood there together.

The lights in the trees. Heng somewhere in the middle of the dancing with the particular joy of someone who had decided tonight he was going to dance and had committed to this fully. The garden going about its wedding evening.

“You cried,” Nam said.

“I didn’t cry.”

“During the vows. Your eyes were—”

“I had something in my eye.”

“Both eyes.”

“Simultaneously,” Freen said. “It happens.”

Nam looked at her.

Freen looked at the garden.

“I’m happy for you,” Freen said. Simply. The way true things were said.

Nam was quiet for a moment.

“I know,” she said.

They stood there.

“She’s watching you,” Nam said.

Freen didn’t look. She didn’t need to. She knew.

“She always is,” Freen said.

“Yes,” Nam said. “She always is.”

Heng appeared from the dancing with two drinks and the expression of someone who had been dancing for forty minutes and was fully committed to forty more.

“Come dance,” he said to Nam.

“I don’t dance,” Nam said.

“You do tonight,” Heng said.

Nam looked at him. At the garden. At Freen.

“Go,” Freen said.

Nam went.

Freen watched them go — Heng pulling her into the dancing, Nam resisting for approximately four seconds before giving up and giving in, the two of them finding the rhythm in the particular way they found everything, which was by arguing about it briefly and then doing it anyway.

She felt Becky appear beside her.

She didn’t look. She didn’t need to.

“She’s dancing,” Becky said.

“She is.”

“I didn’t think she would.”

“Heng asked,” Freen said. “She always does what Heng asks eventually.”

Becky looked at the dancing. “That’s not what she’d say.”

“No,” Freen said. “It isn’t.”

They watched.

Nam was dancing. Actually dancing — not the resistant edge-of-the-floor version but properly, in the middle of it, with Heng who was delighted about this in the very visible way he was delighted about most things.

Becky saved it on her phone.

“She’s going to see that,” Freen said.

“I know,” Becky said. “I’m saving it anyway.”

Freen looked at her.

Becky looked back.

The garden lights. The music. Nam dancing. The Sunday evening of a wedding that had been small and chaotic and completely them.

“Dance with me,” Becky said.

Freen looked at the dancing.

“I don’t—”

“I know,” Becky said. “Dance with me anyway.”

Freen looked at her.

She took her hand.

They went. Freen thought this is what her life is now and she is not willing to change it

—

**The End **