“Either I passed or I failed spectacularly. No in-between.”
“That’s the spirit.” He handed me the coffee. “Tyler’s making dinner. You’re coming.”
“I should probably?—”
“You should probably come to dinner and let people take care of you for one night.” His voice was gentle but firm. “Stop arguing and get in the car.”
I got in the car.
Tyler had made lasagna, and we ate in their apartment surrounded by the chaos of Benson the puppy destroying everything he could reach. It felt normal in a way nothing had felt normal in weeks. Just friends and food and a dog who kept trying to steal garlic bread off my plate.
“He likes you,” Tyler said. “He usually hates everyone.”
“I’m honored.”
Sam watched me across the table with a concern he was trying to hide. I’d gotten good at reading that look over the past six weeks. The one that said he was worried about me but didn’t know what to say.
I didn’t know what to say either, so we just ate lasagna and pretended everything was fine.
The results came back two months later, on a Tuesday morning. I was at work when the email arrived, and I stared at my phone for a full minute before I could make myself open it.
I’d passed.
The words didn’t feel real. I read them three times, then showed my phone to Professor Diane who’d hired me as a legal assistant while I waited for results.
She looked at the screen and smiled. “Congratulations, counselor.”
Counselor. The word settled strangely in my chest, pride mixed with something that felt like grief because I’d imagined this moment differently. Imagined celebrating with someone who wasn’t here anymore, who’d never be here again.
I shoved the thought away and focused on the pride instead. I’d done it. Despite everything, I’d actually done it.
Sam threw me a party that weekend. Small, just close friends, but Sarah and Hector came with Lily who’d made me a drawing of a woman in a lawyer’s robe with a superhero cape.
“That’s you,” Lily announced proudly. “Because lawyers are superheroes who help people.”
I cried. Right there in Sam’s living room with everyone watching, I cried over a child’s drawing that was somehow the most meaningful gift I’d ever received.
Sarah hugged me while I tried to pull myself together. “Your father would be so proud,” she whispered. “You know that, right?”
I nodded because speaking was impossible. My father should have been here for this. Should have seen me in that robe, should have kept my acceptance letter in his wallet like he had the first time.
But he wasn’t here because Archer had signed the papers that killed him.
The thought appeared automatically, familiar as breathing now. But the sharp edge of rage had dulled over the past few months into something more manageable. Grief maybe, for what I’d lost.
The legal aid clinic hired me full-time two weeks after I passed the bar. The work was brutal—overloaded caseload, impossible hours, clients who’d already been failed by every system designed to protect them. But it was exactly what I needed.
I spent my days fighting displacement cases, helping families navigate the same nightmare mine had faced. Won some, lost more than I wanted to, learned that justice and the law weren’t always the same thing.
But every family I helped stay in their home felt like a small redemption. Like maybe my father’s death hadn’t been completely meaningless if it had pushed me toward this work.
I thought about Archer less. Not never—that would have been impossible—but less. The constant ache in my chest had faded to something I could work around, like learning to function with a broken bone that never quite healed right.
Some nights, I still woke up reaching for him before I remembered. Still caught myself starting to text him when something funny happened. Still heard his voice in my head saying I was beautiful, I was perfect, I was everything he’d ever wanted.
Those nights were the hardest.
My mother asked about him once.
