When I’d been here ten years ago, I’d taken the Bar Exams, making it easy enough to return, and this time around I’d found the work absorbing. I’d been practicing Elder Law, something that had always interested me but I’d never been able to specialize in. It was quiet work, meetings with clients were rare and regulated – unlike in Glendara where people called into the office “on spec” – and many of the clients had Irish roots, happy to hear an Irish accent to remind them of “home”. Plus, I had three support staff, unlike in Glendara, although Leah had often seemed like three people in one.

I rubbed the window with my sleeve, force of habit from Glendara where the central heating was usually on full blast, cold from outside fogging up the inside. Although we’d had an exceptional summer last year in more ways than one, with a heatwave bringing the highest temperatures for many years, two murders and a wedding. And a proposal.

I forced myself not to think about the last one. I wondered instead what the weather was like at home now, tried to remember how cold it usually was in April. But I dismissed the thought. I’d find out soon enough. I returned to my desk, threw the empty coffee cup in the bin and started to look through some papers. No time for daydreaming, I had work to finish.

I heard a knock and looked up. “Come in.”

A face appeared around the door. “Got a minute?”

I put down the Power of Attorney I’d been reading. “Of course.”

Mitch Stevens, tall, greying and handsome with a tanned face from sailing every weekend, strode into the room with a mock sad expression on his face. “Are you sure you need to go back? Can’t you just advertise your job, so you can stay here with us?”

I laughed. “It’s not a job, Mitch. It’s my practice. I own it and I’m responsible for it. I’m not an employee like I am here.”

He perched on the edge of my desk and crossed his arms. “Don’t you like being an employee?”

I couldn’t deny it had been nice for a while to not have to shoulder all the responsibility as I did in Glendara. The firm here had a mentoring system. You met with your mentor every couple of weeks: Mitch was mine. The same three questions were asked each time, cleverly formulated to weed out worries and ensure that employees weren’t carrying too much stress: Tell me something good, something bad, and something really bad? It had certainly made a nice change to be able to share my work worries, but …

“It’s not me.” I smiled. “I like to control things too much.”