SARAH

 

When I was only ten, I held my mother’s hand as she died. I thought I was old for my years at that young stage of my life, but I was harshly wrong. And while she lay in that hospital bed, the life drifting out of her, I watched my mother’s beautiful green eyes go dull, their lustrous light fade, her expression soften, and I knew her soul was rushing upward toward heaven.

That experience made me feel every bit the little girl that I was. It was the great catastrophe and subsequent rebirth of my family, and if you were to ask me to place my finger upon the moment I was truly born, it would be then. Everything changed afterward. My mother may have passed but she left a legacy in the hearts of myself, my two younger sisters Kay and Lucy, and in my father, Roy Dillinger. As a matter of fact, it was so strong in him that he turned his back on his whole life and changed it for the better.

My name is Sarah Dillinger, and I am twenty-five years old now. I stand at only five feet and four inches tall, but I can be as fierce as a seven-foot giant when I need to be. I have red hair, which comes from my Irish roots, my mother’s maiden name being Quinn, and green eyes like my mother’s that shine like emeralds. Or so my father tells me. I have an awareness that I’m naturally attractive. However, I prefer not to fall into the traps of vanity. Regarding my employment, I work at my father’s law firm as a lawyer, representing the very poorest in need of help. We deal with everything from families being evicted by treacherous landlords—or even more treacherous banks—to defending employees against illegal employment practices. Basically, we stand up for the little guy.

The day before the crash, I was sitting in my office on the telephone with the single mother of a family of four children who lived in a terribly dilapidated project building in the heart of the city.

“I’m telling you,” the mother, Theresa, was saying down the phone, “Troy’s gettin’ worse all the time. He’s coughing like an old man with tobacco for lungs.”

Troy was her youngest son. He was five years old and suffered from chronic asthma and bronchitis as a result of the terrible conditions the family lived in. The walls of their apartment glistened like the slimy skin of a demon, great shadowy patches of black mold camping in the corners of the rooms, spreading and growing. The damp and the spores were slowly suffocating them, and we were fighting the family’s court case tooth and nail, claw and fang.

“Today he can hardly breathe,” she went on, an air of desperation in her voice.

“What about the walls, Theresa?”

“They’re worse than ever. Every time Mr. Watts upstairs takes a shower, we get a leak come through and it’s like it’s raining inside.”

“Have you recorded it like we said?”

“I was away at work when it happened. It was Lacey, my babysitter, what told me and she never took no video.”

“Okay, that’s understandable. You gotta work, you can’t be there all the time. I tell you what I’ll come round in a half hour with the doctor again to make a report.”

“But the last one never worked,” she said despondently. “They beat it away in court.”

“Because they said it was weak, because it was only a month’s worth of hospital and doctor’s reports and that it didn’t prove a sustained worsening of Troy’s condition while living at the apartment. All we need is more evidence, more reports to show that he’s getting worse as a result of the building.”

“But I ain’t sure he’ll hold on much longer. He’s so bad, Sarah. You gotta come see him, it’s like the place is strangling him or something.”

I felt a heavy pang in my heart at the thought of this poor family.

“Okay, give me half an hour,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

“But what’re you gonna do?”

“I’ll be there, okay. Just wait for me.”

I guess she was reassured by the resolute firmness of my voice, because she calmed down. We said goodbye for the moment and I got up from the desk, leaving my office. Outside, I entered the collection of cubicles that make up the main part of our office space. It’s where the rest of the team work, all eight of them. The only other rooms are the small kitchen at the side, the bathroom next to it, my father’s office and my office, which I often share with other people. The whole place is constantly busy, the phones always ringing, people always dodging around each other, an almost constant stream of people turning up at our doors with their tales of injustice. I have to admit that it’s chaos. But isn’t that the world? Fighting for order within chaos?

I called across to our reception runner:

“Casey, get Doc Taylor and ask him to meet me at the Miller Building.”

Casey nodded in my general direction to tell me that she understood. Then I walked over to Karl Leonard’s desk, where I found him busy on the phone. He flashed me the glimmer of a cordial smile the moment I neared his desk and I flashed one back.

Placing his hand over the receiver of the phone, he said, “I’ll be done in a second or two, Sarah.”

“That’s fine.”

I’ve known Karl for seven years, ever since he first walked through my father’s doors straight out of law school and asked for a job. He was the clever son of a family of poor blue collar workers, who had made it through law school on the back of scholarships, handouts and what little money his poverty-stricken parents could afford to send. When he emerged out the other side, the gifted student was offered the hand of any number of top law practices. But he walked straight past every single one of those hands on his way to my father’s little practice operating out of a converted garage, where only hard work, countless court losses and poor wages awaited. “No glory except that which burns inside,” he said to me once, and I thought that that summed all of us up at Dillinger and Associates.

Karl was handsome—green eyes, chiseled face, tall and broad shouldered, chestnut hair neatly arranged to the side in a swish—I don’t know what else to say really. I guess I’d say he’s attractive. In fact he is, and, if truth be told, there’s history between us. I would go into it here, but I feel it’s perhaps too soon. That’s not to say we were sleeping together. I’m still…Well…I’m still a virgin. Let’s just say it didn’t work out and that for the past six months we’ve been solely professional.

In under half a minute Karl was off the phone and looking up at me. No sooner had our eyes met, however, than he quickly averted them and a new fidgetiness took ahold of his movements, his knee bouncing gently up and down. It was always the same these days when our gazes clashed and I felt within me a pang of guilt at having been the cause of his agitation.

“Okay, what’s happening?” he asked, clearly wanting to ease his tension by getting to the point.

“I need you to come out with me to the Cody place.”

“It’s funny you should say that,” he replied with a knowing look, becoming more confident now that talk had turned to business.

“Why?” I inquired.

“Because I just got off the phone with Paul Holcher of Holcher and Sons and he was offering to join up with us on a class action against the landlord, Langley Holdings. You see, Paul’s got five clients in the building and we’re representing six. If we get at least twenty clients between us, we can file a class action suit and have much more of a chance of winning.”

“That’s good news.”

“Yes, it is,” he agreed, able to look at me when he did. “We’ve just gotta get another nine clients between us and we’re there.”

“Well, talking of clients, we need to get out to the Codys’ straight away. Theresa’s youngest, Troy, is very sick and I wanna get Doc Taylor to have a look at him again, document the latest state of the boy’s health and get a library of evidence. Plus I wanna take some more pictures and video of the place.”

“Good idea, I’ll get my coat and the camera.”

Karl stood up and, while he got ready, I dashed over to Casey’s reception station. She’d only just gotten off the phone. The instant my shadow cast itself over her, she glanced up and, with a tired look, told me that Doc Taylor would meet us at the Miller building in twenty minutes. I thanked her and, when I turned, I found Karl was already behind me, wearing a slightly dark expression that quickly brightened up when our eyes met.

“I got the video camera,” he said.

“Then in that case: let’s go,” I replied. “Taylor will meet us there.”

“After you,” he said, holding the door open for me.

I gently smiled and walked out.