Darren was in the Marion County Hospital parking lot, leaning against his truck. The air was as cool as it had been since he’d arrived in Jefferson, but still strangely damp and humid, an affront to the large bells and red and green ribbon the hospital had affixed to the light fixtures in the parking lot. They were only a few weeks out from Christmas now, a time when he would normally be in Camilla. But nothing about Marion County said home to him. It was zydeco where he wanted blues. It was boudin where he wanted hot links. It was swampy cypress trees where he wanted pines, which always made him think of the holidays at home, even in the dead of summer. He was ready to get out of this county, but something had rooted his boots in place, some bits in this story that didn’t add up, that played like Russian nesting dolls—open one mystery and find another and another and another and another.

He was thinking of the fact that he’d yet to buy Lisa a Christmas present, which allowed his mind to wander back to last night, to feelings he’d easily avoided by calling Randie Winston halfway around the world. What was that between Lisa and Greg? They were his oldest friends; they’d known one another since high school. There was no way he would have missed something going on between the two of them, would he? The evidence was light and circumstantial, but damn if it wasn’t compelling. The look on Greg’s face when he grabbed Lisa’s arm. The want there. Not for sex so much as for forgiveness. Of what, Darren didn’t know.

When she called back, he picked up on the first ring. He fought an urge to demand to know what she and Greg had been talking about when he’d walked out of the steak house last night. Instead, he listened to his wife whispering from where she sat in the Harris County Civil Courthouse, as if even mentioning another firm’s business was breaking some kind of attorney-client privilege. “Chafee, Humboldt, and Greene is, as you said, your standard civil law practice, nearly identical to my firm. Contract law, tort litigation, some IP lawsuits. But Brendan Chafee, before becoming a founding partner, was a DC lobbyist, so I can only imagine that some part of that business spilled over into the current firm’s work, even if it’s not being advertised.”

“Like what?”

“People who need shit from the government probably,” she said, breathing more heavily. He imagined her standing and gathering her things. “Look, Darren, I really, truly have to get into Caselli’s courtroom right now.”

“What about nonprofit work? Trying to get a historical landmark set up?”