“I hope so,” Nina said. “But have you considered the possibility that he won’t come back? That it’s over between you?”

“I’m considering that now.”

“How much do you reckon your companies are worth, Lindy? Do you have any idea?”

“Depends on who you ask. At our last audit, not quite two hundred fifty million dollars for everything, lock, stock, and barrel,” Lindy said. “Mike would say more like one hundred with equipment wear and tear, depreciation, all that jazz figured in.” Coming from her mouth, the amount sounded as prosaic as pudding.

Nina sat back in her chair. “That’s… a lot of money.”

“It’s not like there are piles of it lying around. Mike calls it the lifeblood of our business. We don’t personally get to spend it. Well, not usually. So tell me. What do you think? Will you be my lawyer?”

“Let’s get to that in a minute. There’s something I should tell you first. Mr. Riesner, your husband’s attorney, normally is a litigator-his business is to try cases. If your husband has retained him, I think we have to consider the possibility that you and Mike might not reconcile-that this might be the opening salvo of a divorce case. At least I can tell you that we will handle whatever comes. California’s law is very clear-all property obtained in the manner you’ve described, during your marriage is as much yours as his, even if he’s splashed his name all over everything.”

“No!” Lindy said. “This can’t happen. No litigation. I just need to see him…”

“Well, let’s take it step by step. You want to talk to Mike. I’ll call Mr. Riesner and try to set up a meeting. There’s a hearing on this eviction notice set for November first, about two weeks from now. No reason Mike should live there instead of you, is there? It’s half yours, no matter what the deed says. It’s community property. As far as the termination and your removal from the board, I think it’s probably illegal, since you’re actually a half owner in the company. I can’t understand why you let him do that, put everything in his name.”

“He just… he was so touchy about it. We’re a unit, Nina. You see? What difference did it make?”

“Not much. Since you were married and the law protects you.”

Lindy leaned over the desk and stared at Nina with red-streaked eyes.

Nina thought, she has to understand somewhere behind those weary eyes that he is never coming back. But there are things I can do to help her get through all this. I can handle her legal problems. It’s a major divorce, and they’ll put up a fight, but when it is over, she’ll be a very wealthy woman worth millions of dollars. A mountain of millions.

For once, a big, easy case, Riesner notwithstanding. Some good hard work, some hand-holding, a great big fee. An enormous fee, a lawyer’s coin in the fountain. Nina observed in herself a feeling she did not welcome, the first faint stirrings of greed.

While she berated herself silently, Lindy spoke.

“Sorry, what did you say?” Nina asked.

“I’m telling you that Mike’s a good man. A decent man. He promised me we’d always share everything. He just never wanted to-I never could get him to-”

Riding high on her excitement, Nina felt ready to handle anything. “To what?”

“What I’m trying to tell you is…” She paused, her mouth open. She closed it, swallowed and tried again. “Mike and I never got married.”

You could have heard a pin drop. Or a telephone receiver, when Sandy, eavesdropping in the outer office, dropped hers. Or a big, easy case dropping right off the winnable spectrum.

“EXCUSE ME FOR JUST A MOMENT,” NINA SAID TO Lindy. She slipped her shoes on under the desk, pushed her chair back, and walked out the door, past Sandy, who was watching her quizzically, and down the hall to the women’s rest room.

“Why, oh, why?” she asked the rest room mirror, which maintained a prudent silence.

Nina threw cold water on her face and dried off with a paper towel. While running the rough paper over her cheeks, she started laughing. For just a nanosecond there in the office, before Lindy had spoken those crushing last words, Nina had thought she was going to have her first deep-pocket client, the kind that can actually afford experts and exhibits, investigators and appeals. And attorney fees. She had been mentally rubbing her hands together thinking of the fees like a greedy old Scrooge.

Instead of deep pockets, she now appeared to be talking to a black-hole client, a cast-off girlfriend who had squandered her rights years before.

“Palimony,” she told her reflection. Her reflection grimaced. Her cheeks were burning, and her long, fluffy brown hair had expanded and now threatened to take over the room. She wet her hands and tried to smooth it down.

As usual, the man had been careful and the woman had been in love. Lindy wasn’t going to have any proof of an agreement to share everything, just a lot of memories of sweet pillow talk over the years. Palimony cases were poison and every family lawyer knew it. She had handled a palimony appeal herself while still doing appellate work in San Francisco three years before, and she had lost.

The more she thought about it, standing there at the sink trying to squeeze her hair down, the madder she felt. Lindy didn’t yet understand that she had been given a swift kick in the pants and a bounce out the door. She was still talking about how she loved the guy! But how could she possibly understand what was coming?

Mike Markov and Jeff Riesner would crush her, then condescend to a paltry agreement to pension her off if she promised to be a good girl and shut up. If she was lucky, she would end up with enough money to join those other middle-aged women who filled the casinos and tennis clubs, unable to find fruitful employment, shell-shocked survivors who had lost twenty years of work experience as well as the relationship.

She was angry at Lindy for being such an idiot, and at herself for not asking right away about the date of marriage.

The worst thing about the whole situation was Riesner. She couldn’t take the case now, even with all the other problems, because she couldn’t take on Riesner and the team he would assemble without at least a fifty-fifty chance. He was too smart and too pit-bull ferocious. She wouldn’t have the resources or the law on her side. She would lose. She would be humiliated. This would be his chance to drive her law practice right into the ground.

Admit it, Nina, she told herself, you’re afraid of him and you don’t want to go up against him unless you’re pretty sure you can beat him. He’s too mean.

The other lawyers in town feared him, too. Lindy wouldn’t find a champion at Tahoe; no one would want to take on Riesner. The only lawyer he never fazed was Collier Hallowell, a deputy DA in town, who had referred to Riesner as their “resident dickhead,” she remembered. And even if Collier had not taken a leave of absence, as a prosecutor he would be useless to Lindy in this case.

Giving up on the unruly brown mop that blew in all directions around her head, Nina washed her hands, then pumped lotion from a dispenser and rubbed it in. It was so damn discouraging to see another good woman go down, though. Damn discouraging.

She went back down the hall trying to harden her heart. Lindy, sitting where she had left her, looked a little better. What had Nina been saying before she left? Oh, yes. Something along the lines of, you’re well protected, no problemo. Nina fell back into her chair. “Why didn’t you get married?” she asked.

“He had one nasty divorce already. That made him reluctant. He said we were married in every way that counts.”

“And you?”

“I wanted to marry him, and we did go through a ceremony in a church at the beginning, just privately, without any papers or anything…” Her eyes teared up. “But remember, Mike and I met in the seventies. Plenty of girls my age were not getting married. And my own divorce had been painful. At one point years ago, we came very close to getting married. Mike seemed ready. Then he was called out of town for two weeks. When he came back, he started making excuses.