I mention all of this to Dr. Ludwig one day. He’s already asked me if during my stay here I’d like to meet regularly with a therapist. I tell him that I’m strictly here for body and fender work which, of course, goes right past him.

  “What do you think my dreams mean?”

  “Maybe it’s as simple as you wanting her to be strong for you now,” he says. “And, even more, to be present.”

  I rarely wake up sad or anxious after the dreams. Sometimes I realize I’m smiling when I open my eyes, as if my mom were the one sitting next to my bed now.

  I’m out for my afternoon walk on one of the trails that goes up into the hills and eventually winds its way back down, mountains and blue sky everywhere, when maybe fifty yards ahead of me I spot a woman I’ve seen around the clinic.

  I’m walking much faster than she is and cover the ground between us quickly because I do walk fast, turning even my afternoon walk at a cancer clinic into a competition.

  When I’m alongside her I ask, “Would you like some company?”

  She’s wearing a rainbow-colored bandana to cover what can only be a chemo-bald head and protect it from the high afternoon sun.

  She smiles as if her day suddenly got a lot better and answers in a British accent. “Well, wouldn’t that be brilliant?”

  Her name is Fiona Mills. She lives in London, informs me that her husband is a news “presenter” for ITV. They have two teenage daughters, around the same age Brigid and I were when Mary Smith was losing her own battle with cancer.

  She asks me about myself. I tell her I’m a lawyer from New York.

  “Married?”

  “Twice. Divorced twice.”

  “Did you love them?”

  I smile back at her. “I thought I did.”

  She laughs. Laughter, like just about everything, sounds better with a British accent.

  “Without prying,” she asks, “is there a man in your life now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “More than my husbands.”

  She laughs again. “Have you opened your heart to him completely?”

  It is a serious question, one that demands a serious answer.

  “Not as much as I should. There’s still a lot he doesn’t know about me.”

  “Don’t wait too long to tell him.”

  We walk and talk. I tell her that I’ve been dreaming about my mother almost every night. All of it. She tells me that when she got sick, she used to have the same kinds of dreams about her father, who died of pancreatic cancer when she was ten.

  “I used to sit with him and hold his hand and not want to let go,” Fiona says.

  “I used to sit with my mom and listen to her talk about her life,” I say. “Her dreams. Until the day when she closed her eyes and never opened them again.”

  Fiona Mills talks about her children then, how the younger daughter is the strong one. I tell her I played the same role in my family. I tell her we can turn around whenever she feels herself start to tire. She says she’s fine, that this is her favorite time of day and she’d rather lengthen it than shorten it.

  I tell her I feel the exact same way.

  “I get up here and pretend that I’ve left cancer down the hill,” she says.

  I tell her I feel the same way about that, too.

  “Maybe,” I tell her, “we should consider making a run for it.”

  “I’m afraid it’s a smidge late for that.”

  Even with her head covered, and as thin as she is, she is quite lovely. Her eyes are this lovely combination of green and hazel, as if they can’t decide.

  “Sadly,” she continues, “this is the end for me here. My last visit to Meier. They’ve done as much as they can do. At this point they can’t make up their minds whether it’s weeks I’ve left, or months. However much time it is, it will bloody well be spent with my family.” She drinks in mountain air. “Life really is so damned precious. I realized that before I got sick, if not as well as I should have.”

  I tell her that my mother used to tell me the same thing, when there wasn’t a place like Meier for her to buy more time.

  Fiona tells me she has ovarian cancer. I tell her that’s what my mother had. She asks about my prognosis. I share the news from Dr. Ludwig and the rest of the boys and girls in the band.

  “So you’ve more time than I.”

  “Just how much more is to be determined.”

  I’ve downshifted to match her pace. Even with that, she is beginning to slow. When I ask her again if she’s ready to turn around, she says, “A bit longer, if it’s just the same with you.”

  I tell her I’ve got no place to be except back down the hill, where the cancer is waiting for both of us.

  When we do finally begin to make our way down the trail, she asks, “Are you spending your own time wisely, Jane, if that’s not too impertinent or personal of me to ask?”

  “I’m working as hard as I ever have.” No point in wearing her out with the details about the trials and extraordinary tribulations of Rob Jacobson. “When I get back home, I’ll begin prep work for a new murder trial.”

  “When will it begin?”

  “Going off the usual timetable, sometime next year.”

  She stops. So do I. In this light, her eyes seem more hazel now. Almost opaque. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to.

  “I’m going to ask the judge to move it up,” I say. “Usually, lawyers want as much time as possible to prepare. I want less.”

  Fiona nods, as if I’ve answered her unspoken question. “Your work, does it make you happy?”

  “It’s the one thing that makes me feel as if I’m going to live forever.”

  “Even more than the man in your life?”

  “Something else that’s to be determined,” I say, and she smiles again.

  On our way back, the sun finally begins to set, dropping toward the mountains.

  “I read somewhere that if there were only a handful of sunsets in our lives, how valuable would they be?” she says now. “Well, I try to approach every hour of every day like that.” Fiona drinks in more air. “Make me one more promise that you will do the same.”

  “I promise.”

  When we’ve made our way back to the front door of the clinic, she says, “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For making this last hour even more valuable than I’d already planned for it to be.”

  I ask her if I’ll see her again before she leaves.

  “I think not. This shall be our one and only good-bye. I’ve only got so many of those left in me. Good-byes, I mean.” She smiles one last time. “I’m afraid I can only allow one to a customer.”

  Her room is on the fourth floor. I watch Fiona walk down the long hallway leading to the elevator, moving more slowly than ever.

  It’s as if she feels me watching her. She stops and turns and gives me a small wave.

  “Don’t forget your promises.”

  The elevator doors open and close and then she’s gone.

  “Good-bye,” I say.

  EIGHTEEN

  Jimmy

  WHEN HE FINALLY CALLS Jane, Saturday of her first week at Meier, he doesn’t tell her about getting ambushed and jacked up in his own house. He knows how pissed at him she’s going to be when he finally does tell her, noted control freak that she is, somebody who always wants to know everything, and acts insulted when she doesn’t, as if somehow you were cheating on her. Or like she failed some test.

  But what’s he going to do while she’s over there going through what she’s going through? Tell her the last thing his attacker, the guy Jimmy thinks of as Joe Too, said and that she might actually be safer where she is?

  So, he lets her talk, lets her set the scene at Meier, gets him laughing when she describes Dr. Stone Face, tells him about this great English woman she met. That’s before she gets to the good parts, what he’s waited to hear from her today, about how they’re cautiously optimistic about her treatments, at least so far.

  Then she wants to know what’s happening with the case. Jimmy knows he has to give her something; she’ll get suspicious if he gives her nothing. So, he tells her about his meeting with Edmund McKenzie, and what McKenzie said before he left Bemelmans that night.

  “You think McKenzie’s the one who sent the texts?” Jane asks.

  “I’ll ask him next time I see him,” Jimmy says. “Problem is he seems to have disappeared.”

  Then he tells Jane that he hopes he has more intel on McKenzie the next time they talk, and that he loves her, but that he has to go, he’s got another call.

  The call is from Craig Jackson, who proceeds to tell him he can’t locate McKenzie. The gossip police can’t either, tracking his phone doesn’t help, according to Jackson’s reporter friend, because it hasn’t left his apartment on Central Park West. The girl from Bemelmans, Amber, hasn’t heard from him. The doorman on CPW hasn’t seen him. Neither has the caretaker at McKenzie’s house in Southampton. What seems like an army of bartender friends all over Manhattan haven’t seen him in a week, because Jackson has interviewed most of them.

  “Guy’s in the wind,” Craig Jackson says.

  “Tell me something,” Jimmy says. “When did you start talking like a TV detective?”

  McKenzie’s first wife lives in Paris now. She hasn’t spoken with him since one of the alimony checks was late around the first of the year. Jimmy gets the second Mrs. McKenzie on the phone. “I haven’t heard from him,” she says, “but if you do before I do, please give him a message: Die.”

  Jimmy is sitting at his kitchen table after his calls with Jane and Jackson, laptop open in front of him, nothing to do except modern detective work, which means going from search engine to search engine the way he used to go walking up stairs and knocking on doors. Wanting to know as much about McKenzie as possible when they do meet again, and why somebody wanted him to back up, and quickly.

  Jimmy reads the coverage on the rape accusation, what there is of it until his hedge-funder daddy, Thomas McKenzie, clearly had the stories vaporized. The hits just keep on coming after that. There’s the night he crashed daddy’s Jag out in Water Mill. He just left the Jag wrapped around a tree, called a girl to take him home, never got Breathalyzed.

  There are the gory details on Eddie’s two divorces, which read to Jimmy like all the other cringeworthy celebrity divorces he’s ever known or heard about.

  There’s the time the Jets backup quarterback beat him up after finding out McKenzie’s current girl on the side was the quarterback’s wife.

  On and on.

  A timeline of classic, modern, celebrity bullshit.

  One of the stories quotes McKenzie as telling a friend, “Who knew that some of these bitches would be such bad sports?” He later denied saying that.

  The truth is, Jimmy thinks, Edmund McKenzie is the bitch.

  Same as Edmund’s high school buddy Rob.

  A brotherhood of bitches, Jimmy thinks.

  Maybe both of them are crazy.

  NINETEEN

  Ten days later

  I TELL ROB JACOBSON he can announce that I’m defending him again, the night before I leave for Genève Aéroport.

  “I kept our secret until now,” he said.

  “Just like a big boy.”

  I don’t leave the Meier Clinic with a clean bill of health, even if I do leave with my hair. But all of my markers keep improving, if imperceptibly, right up until my last day. Dr. Ludwig has been in constant contact with Sam Wylie and Dr. Mike Gellis, my stateside oncologist, and they’re on the same page with the protocols going forward, including what Dr. Sam calls the kick-ass Meier meds I get sent home with, like they belong in the kind of goody bag you get when you leave a fancy party.

  Dr. Ludwig walks me to the car. Before I shut the door, I ask him what he honestly thinks my prospects are, both short-term and—hopefully—long-term.

  He takes more time to answer than, frankly, I would have preferred.

  “Put it this way,” he says. “They are being better than when you were showing up here.”

  And nods.

  I tell him to stop being so emotional, which gets an honest-to-God smile out of him. “Basically, I am hoping, Ms. Smith, that maybe you are being too stubborn to die.”

  Jacobson waits until I’m in the air and then fires Howie Friedlander. By then Jimmy has posted a picture on our new Instagram account of Jacobson and me standing on the courthouse steps in Riverhead after his acquittal.

  The caption is simple and to the point:

  SHE’S BACK.

  When I get through customs and pull my carry-on into the baggage-claim area, I see a TV reporter and her cameraman standing next to my ride, Dr. Ben Kalinsky.

  “Is it true, Jane?” the reporter asks. “You’re taking the case?”

  I’m just glad she’s not asking why I was in Europe.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to say this,” I tell her. “But see you in court.”

  She must know that means in a couple of hours I’m going straight from JFK to Rob Jacobson’s bail hearing, if the LIE doesn’t screw us between here and Mineola.

  Yeah, I am so back. I hug Ben and kiss him and he pulls my bag toward where he’s managed to park his car right out front.

  When we’re inside his new Range Rover, I look over at the huge sign for Terminal 7.

  Suddenly fixed on the word, not the number.

  Terminal.

  “What are you staring at?” Ben asks.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  TWENTY

  DR. BEN, EXHIBITING FORMULA 1 skills I didn’t know he possessed, gets me to Mineola with time to spare.

  Rob Jacobson is already inside the courthouse waiting for me, as is Jimmy Cunniff. So is the esteemed Judge Alicia Kane, whose reputation for being an all-time, all-world hard-ass is well documented in my world.

  Any photographers walking through the parking lot after we pulled in might have gotten a good shot of the attorney for the defendant changing into court clothes in the back seat of Ben’s Range Rover as he pulls up to the curb.

  I lean forward and kiss Ben with enough force and feeling that when I finally pull back it’s clear I’ll have to redo my lipstick.

  As I smooth my skirt and blouse and reach for my makeup bag, Ben informs me that he plans to stick around, that he’s ready to finally see me in action. I call Jimmy and tell him to save a seat for Ben.

  “Good luck,” he says.

  “Feel like I’m owed at least a little.”

  “The papers have been saying there’s no way he’s getting out on bail.”

  “They were only still saying that when he was represented by someone other than your sweetie.”

  The proceedings about to begin have drawn a big crowd, even bigger than when Jacobson turned himself in. It’s not just him they’re packing the steps to see, all the way down to the sidewalk and nearly into the street. Today I’m as much the story as he is. Maybe more.

  Ben waves as I get out of the car and dash up the courthouse steps, rocking the ridiculously expensive short leather jacket I bought yesterday in Geneva.

  Definitely more media today, but who’s keeping score?

  Well, I am, actually.

  Mommy’s home.

  Katie Phang, a legal analyst from NBC, calls out to me. “As I recall, Jane, the last time you were here you said you didn’t miss this.”

  “Hold on,” I say. “Doesn’t a girl reserve the right to change her mind?”

  “So you’re here because you did miss the action?”

  “I’m here because my client is innocent and shouldn’t spend another night in jail, and I’ll prove that for a second time.”

  Running on pure adrenaline at this point, I clear security, then make a quick stop in the ladies’ room for a hair-and-makeup check. I drink some water out of the bottle in my bag, pat my cheeks, say what I always say before I walk into court:

  “Showtime!”

  Only this time, out of nowhere, I suddenly feel myself start to cry. I put my hands on the sink and try to deep-breathe the tears away.

  A woman comes in and sees me standing there with red eyes.

  “Are you all right?” she asks.

  For some reason, I think of Fiona Mills, hear her voice inside my head.

  “Brilliant,” I say.

  TWENTY-ONE

  JUDGE KANE’S COURTROOM IS already packed when I step inside. As the door closes behind me, I look around, nod, and breathe deep. I’ve spent the last two weeks and change filling my lungs with the cleanest air on the planet.

  Just not this air.

  I shake hands with Kevin Ahearn, who is already seated at his table, before shaking hands with his second chair, a red-haired woman he introduces as Maggie Florescu. There’s no second chair for me. I’m still doing a single.

  I see Jimmy and Ben right behind our table as I take my seat next to Rob Jacobson.

  “You look good, Janie,” Jacobson says.

  “Try not to sound so surprised.”

  “I mean, because of where you just came from.”

  Only he can wipe the smile off my face.

  “You know what we’re not going to talk about, Rob,” I say, keeping my voice low as I lean closer to him, “today or ever? Where I just came from. Or why I was there.”

  Before he can even attempt to get a last word in, we’re all rising because Judge Kane has entered the courtroom and is about to take her seat behind the bench. She is small, blond, pretty, full of commanding attitude, projecting without saying a word that she’s not going to take any shit.

  The only empty seats I see are in the jury box. But we’re a long way from filling those. I’m a long way from having to explain away questionable evidence with an even more questionable timeline. Rob Jacobson’s fingerprints on a murder weapon the cops found months after the fact. DNA matches on both Lily Carson and her daughter, made only after Jacobson became a suspect. And the magical appearance of a time-stamped photograph of Rob Jacobson outside the Carson house the night before the whole family got gunned down.