Everything is the same. Nothing is the same.
Sasha McCandless-Connelly sits behind a desk and shapes legal arguments, wrangles facts, and discovers loopholes, as she’s done for the past twenty-two years. As it has for the past fourteen years, the desk sits in a pale blue corner office on the main floor of the law firm that bears her name. And at the end of the day, as she’s done for the past twelve years, she’ll turn out the light and walk the short distance from her office to home to have dinner with her husband and their twins. Everything is the same.
She’s spent her entire adult life working in courtrooms and board rooms and conference rooms to bring about good and stop bad. But all the while, the law has been, not just a jealous mistress, but a toxic one. Their relationship, rocky even after so many years together. She loves the law—the ideas, the principles, the arguments and exceptions. She hates the law—the decisions that lead to bad real-world outcomes, the limitations, the inevitable falling short when ideals collide with human nature.
Everything is the same.
Yet, everything is different.
Now, the law is a cover. Window dressing that she uses to do good and stop bad without restriction. She serves a single client, the Lighthouse. The Lighthouse has one very specific mission. And as their lawyer, their mission is also hers. Do good, stop bad. No matter what.
It’s a clarifying, refreshing, simple mandate. There are no business concerns. There are no deals struck out of self-preservation. There are no compromises to satisfy shareholders. There is only the mission.
She swivels her chair to look at the gray sky, promising another cold, wet evening, and the trees with their tight green buds, promising rebirth, renewal, the return to spring. Her new role as legal counsel to the Lighthouse and occasional operative also promises renewal for her personal life.
After more than a decade of client confidentiality on her part and national security secrets on his, she and her husband are finally on the same team. No secrets, no cagey conversations, no white lies. She and Connelly can talk. The tradeoffs are worth it.
There’s a light rap at her door. One of the tradeoffs.
Until now, she’s always left her door ajar so her colleagues know that she’s available to them. But the Lighthouse’s confidentiality needs are far greater than any other client’s. So her door is closed. Her file drawers are locked. Her computer is fingerprint-, retina-, and password-protected.
“Come in.”
She expects to see her partner and best friend, Naya, dressed to impress a board of directors or a CEO. Instead, Eleanor Anderson Prescott hovers uncertainly on the threshold, juggling a package and two mugs of coffee from the shop in the lobby.
“This came for you.” Ellie places the thick envelope on the corner of the desk.
“Thanks. And those?” She eyes the coffees.
“These are a bribe. I need some advice.” The junior associate plops into a chair and hands over both coffees. Smart girl.
Sasha inhales, savoring the rich scent of Jake’s dark roast, before taking her first sip of the first cup. “What’s up?”
“Do you know Judge Cashion?”
“Sure. Charlotte and I went to law school together.”
“We have a client who got on her bad side. He called his soon-to-be ex-wife a stupid bitch in open court.”
“Delightful.”
“I know,” Ellie groans. “They’re embroiled in a bitter fight over the ownership of their company.” Pauses. “Or he is, at least. I think she just wants it to be done.”
“Do they have a pre-nup?”
She nods. “For the marital assets, yes. But the wife gave him the seed money to start the business and supported the family while he was getting it off the ground. Think silent partner.”
“He needs to apologize.”
“To her honor? He did that immediately—once I drove my spiked heel into his calf under the table.”
“That’s good, but I mean to his wife.”
“In front of the judge?”
She shakes her head. “No, that’ll come off as performative. He needs to do it privately. And follow it up with a handwritten note. And he needs to mean it, Ellie.”
“I can make him do it. I can’t make him mean it.”
