The only good Lawyer

handle that, I even respected you more for it. And then last month, when you helped me through the cancer scare, I felt so close to you I almost couldn’t stand it.”
    I wasn’t following her. “Stand what, the feeling?”
    “Yes, but more the worry. I’d always been so independent, but the cancer scare made me realize how much I needed people, how much I needed you, above all. And what I couldn’t stand was the thought of losing you.”
    “ Nancy , you’re not losing me.”
    She closed her eyes again. “When I just told you I slept with Woodrow Gant, your expression told me I might.”
    “Nance...” I tried to measure out the words. “I don’t know how to describe what was on my face, because I can’t see it the way you do, even if I were staring into a mirror. But I know what’s in my heart, and what you did or didn’t do before we met is your past, not our present.”
    Her eyes opened, welling with tears. “That’s what I wanted to heat John.”
    I reached across the table for her hand. “Great.” Nancy let me take the hand, but when I squeezed, she didn’t squeeze back. “Only we still have a problem.”
    “Now what?” I said. “Until the Gant case is resolved, we can’t see each other.”
    I felt the blood rising again. “Nance, that’s—”
    She wriggled her hand free. “Please, John, let me finish?”
    I withdrew my hand, too. In the low voice, I said, “All right.”
    “I’m not working the Gant case as a prosecutor. As soon as it came in, I told my boss I couldn’t. So there’s no technical conflict of interest in your helping the defendant. But I didn’t give my boss the whole story.”
    “I can understand that.”
    “Then I hope you can understand what I’m about to say, too. It would tear me up to be seeing you, eating across from you, especially... making love with you while I knew you were still working the case. I couldn’t be myself, and it would be miserable for you as well.”
    “Why, Nance? Because you once had an affair with the man?”
    “It was just that one weekend, but if you need a label, call it loyalty to an ex-lover.”
    “Loyalty misplaced.”
    “John, a minute ago, you told me what was in your heart. Trust me now on what’s in mine. It may not be rational, or even wise, but my heart tells me I can’t be with you until the Gant case is resolved.”
    “ Nancy ...” I cleared my throat. “Nance, I trust you. That’s not the problem.”
    “Then what is?”
    “The case. It could drag on for months.”
    Her tone changed. “Does it have to drag on with you still in it?”
    That stopped me. “You mean, quit the case?”
    “Can you?”
    I wanted to. Nancy ’s feelings, Spaeth’s attitudes and actions, the evidence already piled up on the prosecution’s side of the scales. Against all that, there was just one—
    “John?”
    “No,” I said. “I can’t. The guy’s an asshole, but I still think he’s innocent. And I have loyalties as well, to my profession, to Rothenberg....”
    I stopped again as Nancy swiped at a tear with an index finger, then reached her other hand across the table to close on mine.
    She said, “You know, almost all of me wanted to hear a different answer. But I think—for our future— that’s the best answer you could give.”
    “Our future, not our present.”
    Letting go of my hand, Nancy stood up. “Goodbye, John. Call me when... whenever.”
    I watched her walk away, taking what appetite I might have had with her. Our waiter caught my eye, and I made a tab-signing gesture to him. When I turned back for some iced tea to deal with the taste in my mouth, I saw the touristy couple walking hand-in-hand, the camera swinging at his side, her going up on tiptoes to peck him on the cheek.
    I looked down into the glass. My job for Rothenberg was to find enough reasonable doubt to get Spaeth off come trial, months away. If I couldn’t quit the Gant case, maybe I could accelerate things by going a step further and finding out who really killed him.
    As the check arrived, though, Alan Spaeth’s voice kept going around inside my head. The conversation with him at the jail less than an hour before.
    Specifically, the part about what I’d do if I found someone else had been sleeping with the woman I loved.

Chapter 12

    I walked back up State Street to Tremont. Inside the entrance of my office building, I chose the stairs instead of the elevator to help clear my head. Coming down the second-floor hall, though, I