This Was Meant To Be

But strangely, she felt like she was at peace. For once, her career didn’t feel like it was all she had. It was important, of course it was. But she wouldn’t fall apart without it. She wouldn’t be nothing without it.

She would still have Harrison, and she was beginning to feel like she might even be happy, at the end of the day.

Maybe she really had changed.

Her phone rang. She smiled, despite the bad day, when she saw that it was Harrison.

“It’s done.”

She was a bit nonplussed.

“What is?”

“I’ve found out what happened, applied judicious pressure and made sure that everything’s taken care of. You should get called in and get an official apology soon. What you do after that is up to you.”

Leigh gripped the edge of the table as if it were her lifeline. Was this really happening?

“What did you do? What’s going on?”

He hadn’t told her much. He’d just told her that he would take care of it while she got on with work, because she had more than enough to worry about already. She didn’t need more stressful things to worry about.

It had grated, letting go of the wheel like that, but she’d recognized that he was right. Trusting him made it a lot easier than she thought it would be, too.

So she had let him handle the matter of finding out the truth. But she hadn’t thought he would decide what to do after that without asking her.

“I found out the truth and got my lawyers to get in touch with your boss, with proof, letting him know that you would be well entitled to pursue legal action against them for undue harassment. What you do is up to you.”

“Harrison, I haven’t a clue what’s going on!”

“Didn’t you check your email? You were so tired last night that I let you sleep as late as I could. There was no time after that to talk about it.”

That took the wind out of her sails a bit. So he hadn’t just gone over her head without keeping her in the loop.

And she hadn’t checked her personal email.

“Give me the gist,” she demanded.

“It was Slimy Willie, as you call him. He took the report with him, compromised it, and couldn’t get it back in time to keep it from being discovered. He then altered internal reports and logs to make you look responsible.”

So it had been that simple, had it? And her bosses had believed that she could be so irresponsible, despite her excellent track record.

For a wild moment, Leigh just wanted to chuck everything to the wind and give up.

She stifled that impulse.

“My lawyers are on a conference call with your name partners right now. You should be called in soon, and they should crawl pretty abjectly. You have the upper hand, Leigh. You can do whatever you like.”

As soon as she put the phone down, she was called in, right on cue.

Leigh walked into the conference room used only for the most important of clients.

“Ms. Wells, it has been brought to our attention that…”

“You screwed up and decided to screw me over. Now you want to cover that up with polite, formal speeches,” interrupted Leigh, angrily.

Coleman had the grace to blush.

“Ms. Wells, we owe you an apology. We’re quite aware that you were not treated fairly. Now that all the information has come to light, we see that we were mistaken.”

Trask looked ashen, as if somebody had punched him.

She supposed she could understand that.

“What would you gentlemen like me to do about this now?”

They were taken aback. They hadn’t expected her to ask that.

“Your decisions will be yours, Ms. Wells. If you would like to resign, we’ll make sure that the severance package is more than adequate.”

Trask sounded stiff.

“Your plan is to ask me to resign, bribe me to be quiet, and keep William on with the company?”

“William Trask has been fired,” said Coleman, shortly.

Leigh considered the men in front of her, the men she’d thought held her future in their hands. But now, she realized, they were afraid of her and what she might do.

What would she do?

She would do what she’d set out to do, she realized, and she would be the one to figure out the solution to the problem of the report. She would turn this into her victory.

“The report – I have a way to make it admissible.”

She was prepared. She gave them their solution, and she made it clear that it was her own. She saw the relief, and felt the power in it.

“After this case, gentlemen, I shall be resigning. I’ll take my LSAT, and I will go to law school.”

Nobody looked particularly shocked. She wasn’t shocked, either, when Coleman called her to his office later.

“Ms. Wells, I owe you an apology. Personally.”

She nodded.

She agreed that he definitely did owe her an apology.

“If you need help with your college applications, I’d be happy to help. If you choose to come back to us after you graduate, there will be a spot here for you. I’m well aware that you might choose not to, but you should know that you will have the option. You have an exceptional mind and great tenacity, Ms. Wells. I’ll be sorry to lose you.”

She nodded, hesitated before plowing ahead.

“Thank you, Mr. Coleman. I appreciate that. I’m not going to plan so far ahead at the moment, but it’s good to know.”

She left, feeling lighter than she had in a long time. She appreciated how Harrison had handled it, too. It would’ve been easy enough to make it seem like he had become her savior, but it looked like he had played it all very carefully. Nobody had mentioned him at all.

She didn’t know how he had found out, but she was so grateful that he had.

She had a lot to be grateful for, she realized.

Now, it was time to set one more thing right.

It was time to stop lying, even by omission, to her parents.