“Ladies, take a seat,” Nina said. “What’s on your mind this morning?”

They came in and sat down. “It wasn’t my idea,” Brandy said. “And Angel’s husband, Sam, thinks it stinks, too. We want you to know that.”

“No question. It stinks,” Angel agreed.

A knock on the door interrupted them. Nina got up to answer and found Sandy there.

“Nina, Paul’s on the phone. Will you take the call?”

Nina apologized to the two women, closed the door halfway behind her, stepped into the reception area, and picked up the phone.

“I’m sorry to butt in like this. I understand you’re busy.”

“It’s a bad time,” she said. “Something’s up with Angel and Brandy. I’m in the middle of it.”

He hesitated. “I can call back.”

“No. Tell me, what’s going on?” she asked. Sandy licked an envelope slowly. Then her hands took their stations, hovering over the keyboard, unwilling to break into the conversation.

“Listen, Nina, I’ve got several things to tell you but since you’re busy, we’ll discuss those later. But I want to say-things went frosty at that dinner. I shouldn’t have said what I said about you practicing law.”

“It’s okay. I’m taking a poll, actually.”

“The condo in Carmel is always waiting for you.” He paused. “You are so dear to me.”

Nina glanced back through the crack in the door into her office, where the two women were engaged in a frantic, whispered debate. “Paul, I’m sorry. I can’t think about that right now. I can’t even talk anymore.”

“No problem,” he said. “I’ll check in later.”

“Okay.” She put the phone down.

Sandy’s fingers resumed their customary tapping. Nina walked back inside her office.

“We’ve been beating around the bush,” Angel said, taking charge, “but now, here goes.”

Brandy stood up suddenly and went over to the window. She put a hand on the ledge but never once looked outside. She looked at Angel, at the desk, at the file cabinets, at the framed documents on the wall. She looked everywhere except at Nina. “I told Bruce the whole story, beginning to end, about what happened at the campground, about seeing Cody Stinson, about meeting him in the woods and Angel getting knocked over and me getting grabbed-”

“He was upset,” Angel added unnecessarily. “First off, he hated that she was here without him, and second, Cody Stinson went to see him and scared him good.”

“I really don’t want you to get the wrong idea about us,” Brandy said. “We’re not vindictive or vengeful people.”

“Not at all,” Angel said. “None of us are.”

“So when Bruce showed up at Angel’s on Sunday with this letter, we were surprised.”

“Shocked, you mean.”

Nina got the drift, and drifted away. She looked out the window at Mount Tallac, crowned with white. Then she turned her attention to the lake, the ancient, sacred lake. She considered the hill of beans that was her life, insignificant beside those two regal natural features, and felt a stab of sorrow, because petty or not, it was her hill, her life, and she had loved everything about it. Now along came a letter from a lawyer and it would explode and she could do nothing to stop it. Subterranean terror. Fractures in her beautiful geography.

Maybe the women had some inkling of the full effect of their revelation, and maybe not, but at last Brandy managed to say what they had come to say.

“Bruce wrote a complaint to the California State Bar about you. And I signed it,” Brandy said, standing up.

“So did I,” Angel admitted, also rising.

“We thought it would be really low not to bring it to you personally and say that-”

“We’re awfully sorry.”

Nina couldn’t trust herself to speak, so she didn’t speak. She kept her back to them, trying to control a quiver that had started up around her shoulders and threatened to take over her body.

“Sorry,” they said again in unison, and left.

No sooner had the two women wandered out than the phone rang.

“I am in conference,” Nina said to Sandy. Closing the door, she leaned against it, hyperventilating. Only two things in the world could inspire this level of dread. The other was an IRS audit. The audit was definitely a remote second to a complaint to the state bar. Eyes closed, she took the blow. When she started to feel like she couldn’t stand it, she leaned over and let her arms hang and made herself breathe. She had had a panic attack once before and she was afraid it might happen again. Be cool, be cool, she told herself.

Call Jack, call Paul, call-

A knock. “Phone,” Sandy said. “They said it’s important.”

“Not now.”

“Urgent.”

“Who is it?”

“Heritage Life. The adjuster in the Vang case, Marilyn Rose. She says she has to talk to you. Something about the check.”

Like a ninety-year-old in ill health, Nina leaned on the desk as she went around it and sank into her chair. She rubbed her face and somehow put Bruce Ford aside.

“Hi, Marilyn,” she said. “How are you?”

“Hoping you didn’t send that check to the Vangs yet.”

“Why not?”

“Well, did you?”

“Over the weekend.”

“Well, then we’re both in deep shit,” Marilyn said rapidly. “Now I’m definitely going to get canned, and I owe it all to you. I trusted you. I liked you. You’re going to get a letter and by God you’d better have an explanation or my ass will be out on the street, and I’ve got a mortgage and a sick husband and two kids and if that sounds like I’m scared shitless, well, Counselor, I am in fact scared shitless. It hurts me, it does, the way you used me, and it amazes me that I could misjudge another human being the way I misjudged you. My supervisor is sitting in her office right now writing up a report to three vice presidents in our company, and I’ll be spending all evening groveling on their carpets. I’ll be applying for employment opportunities at Hooters with this job market. But by God, Nina, you’re going down with me. You are. I’m not going down alone. I can’t believe a fellow woman would do this to me-”

Nina held the phone away from her ear and rubbed her temples, where the headache drummed. Sandy watched from the door. “Get on the other line,” she mouthed.

She listened again. Marilyn said, “I’m so horribly disappointed,” and burst into tears.

“Marilyn?”

“I just had to call you myself because I thought-I thought we were friends.”

“We are friends. Marilyn, listen to me. No, listen. Please. I have no idea why you are so angry.”

“Don’t play any more games with me or try to finagle your way out of this.”

“Please tell me what you think I have done.”

“You can’t hide the truth anymore. Your file was mailed to us.”

“What file?”

“You know what file. Your file on Kao Vang. The convenience-store arson.”

So astounded was Nina that all she could think was, did they read my confidential file? “You read it?”

“The mail clerk read it. My secretary read it, then my assistant. Then I read it. Now the entire upper echelon of Heritage Insurance Company Incorporated has read the file or knows what it says and we have an office in Irian Jaya, so that is a lot of people. Nobody knew what it was at first. It came in an envelope and it looked like one of ours. So, yeah, it got read, that’s right, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Nina’s thoughts ran in circles. “But what-there’s nothing in that file but my intake notes.” Her mind scurried through what she could remember and could find nothing that would generate such heat from an insurance company.

“How could you?”

“Oh, Marilyn, I’m so sorry I’ve hurt you somehow. But I don’t know how! Marilyn, who mailed you the file?”

“No return address.”

“Damn!”

“A concerned citizen,” Marilyn said, and laughed a hysterical laugh. “I’ll never forget my assistant coming in and handing me that thing. Turning point of my professional life. Done in by a con.”