A Legal Affair Read Online Free PDF Page A

holding the fate of those kids’ futures in your hand.”
    “And where would you be without the law professors who shared their ‘knowledge and wisdom’ with you?”
    “Touché,” the old man murmured in a voice tinged with admiration for the adept comeback. He turned his head and studied Caleb’s face in the lengthening shadows of twilight. “You need a shave.”
    Absently Caleb stroked a hand down his stubbled chin. “I’ll get around to it. Eventually.” A lifetime ago, when he’d worked at his father’s law firm, he’d prided himself on his impeccable appearance. That Caleb, with the knife-blade creases in his trousers and professionally pressed shirts, would never have gone a full day without shaving, because his father had always drilled into him the importance of setting a tone from the moment he stepped foot in the courtroom.
    “You only get one shot at making a good first impression,” Crandall Thorne had lectured on numerous occasions. “You’d be surprised how much damage an untucked shirt or a cheap pair of shoes can do. Don’t do your clients a disservice by showing up to court looking any ol’ kind of way. Dress for success, and others will sit up and take notice and know that you mean business.”
    Caleb’s walk-in closet at home was filled with three-piece Armani suits he hadn’t worn in years. Five years, to be exact, when he’d walked away from the firm, a lucrative career and the only way of life he’d ever known.
    “I never thought I’d live to see the day when I would be reduced to running the firm from afar. Not now, not at the age of sixty-two.” Crandall’s voice was laced with the bitterness that had plagued him since being diagnosed with acute renal failure three months ago. The severity of his condition had necessitated a complete lifestyle change—the first “casualty” had been his workaholic schedule. In virulent denial, he’d sought second, third and fourth opinions, consulting the best physicians money could buy in the vain hope of receiving a different verdict. But each time he was given the same prognosis: either scale back on the workload or face the very real possibility of developing end-stage renal disease, which, in most cases, led to death.
    Crandall had grudgingly submitted to his doctor’s decree, as well as the prescribed dialysis treatments, but not a day passed that he didn’t bemoan the cruel blow fate had dealt him.
    “My father worked until he was eighty-five,” Crandall sullenly continued. “Never missed a day of work in his life. What would he say if he could see me now, reduced to running board meetings through a video monitor and conducting business from the confines of my own home?”
    “Where I come from,” Caleb drawled sardonically, “what you’ve just described is called videoconferencing and telecommuting. Some people actually appreciate the modern conveniences made possible by living in the twenty-first century.”
    “Well, I ain’t one of ’em.” A large fist clenched on the arm of the cypress chair as Crandall’s familiar anger and frustration thrummed in the air around him.
    Caleb said nothing, knowing better than to offer any words of solace that would only make his father feel coddled or patronized—two things Crandall Thorne would never tolerate.
    Silence lingered between father and son as daylight eased into night. From a treetop somewhere above, an eagle took flight, its piercing cry cutting across the fabric of the evening like a razor. From somewhere else, another bird of prey responded.
    At length, Crandall spoke again. “I don’t have to tell you how much it would mean to me if you considered returning to the firm,” he said quietly. “Your mother would want the same thing, too.”
    A muscle tightened in Caleb’s jaw. “Don’t go there, Dad,” he warned in a low voice. “You and I both know that was the last thing she would have wanted.”
    Crandall turned his profile to Caleb once again and stared off