End Flashback

A few days later, they were both sitting in my office.
Obviously, Shane had hired me as her lawyer.
Carmen, on the other hands, had hired one of the greatest and sharkiest lawyers in town.
Mrs. Tina Kennard.
And, of course, she was present, also.
Imagine the scene. You know I like to picture them right in front of your eyes.
Me, sitting behind my desk, hands clasped and that attentive expression that I always keep for my clients.
Shane, in a total black outfit – jacket, pants, tie, shirt – looking dangerously stunning and painfully angry.
Carmen, in a total white suit – I am serious! – looking… well, looking hot.
And extremely determined.
And Mrs. Kennard… well, I could simply describe her as an iron fist in a velvet glove.

Flashback – Carmen

“What does she want?”, Shane asks harshly, glancing at Tina.
She’s obviously been ignoring me since we sit down on our chair.
I take a look at Alice, and she shares an understanding gaze with me.
Tina flips through the pages of her file.
“Not much…”, she declares, cryptically.
Shane chuckles, shaking her head.
“I’ve always taken care of my wife…”.
I wince.
“Which makes it nice for you, doesn’t it?”.
Shane doesn’t reply. It’s like I’m not even in the same room with her.
“What about alimony?”.
Tina sighs.
“Carmen, against my advice, waives alimony”.
I watch Alice.
“I am making money with my business. I get a lot of referrals. I can support myself”.
Shane chuckles again.
“Well, I am a lucky woman, then…”.
“My client is being more than fair, Mrs. McCutcheon…”, Tina chimes in.
“She’s waived alimony and she’s willing to waive her rights against your photography studio in exchange for the house and all of its content, except your job gear and…”.
“Her clothing?”, Alice interrupts her, half-smiling joylessly.
I look at her, seriously.
“Everything I made went into that house. I found that house. Every piece of furniture is where it is because I put it there. It is my house”.
“Mrs. Kennard, if your client has finished yammering, explain to her that she does not automatically get the house”, Shane states, annoyed.
Tina raises her eyebrows.
“I thought you told her that she was entitled to anything and everything”.
Shane narrows her eyes, caught off guard.
“I told her what?”.
“Yes…”, Tina replies, nodding her head.
She flicks through the page of her documents.
“Here it is. I quote: ‘My love, by the time you…”. She frowns, “…Boy, what a handwriting… ‘By the time you receive this, I may be gone. All I am and all I have, I owe to you’. You wrote this, Mrs. McCutcheon?”. Tina half-smiles victoriously, glancing at Shane.
Shane clenches her jaw. Bad sign.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Kennard, you tiny, little, worm-like, infinitesimal prick, could I have a word with my wife, please?”.
Tina doesn’t look bothered at all.
“Certainly”, she replies smiling.
Shane grabs my elbow and drags me in a corner of the room.
“If this is a who-can-sink-lowest-fastest contest, you won!”, she hisses, pointing her finger at me.
“By showing her my letter, you have sunk below the deepest layer of prehistoric frog shit at the bottom of a New Jersey scum swamp”.
I cross my arms over my chest and lift my chin, saying nothing.
“You know, I may have let you have the house, but now…”, Shane smiles sarcastically, shaking her head, “…You’ll never get it. You will never get that house. Do you understand?”.
Her cheekbones are reddened and her eyes are on fire.
“You will never get that house”, she repeats.
I blink, just once.
“We’ll see”.
“Yeah…”, Shane grins, “…We’ll see”.