Fall From Grace by Beth Orsoff

Author:Beth Orsoff [Orsoff, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Killer Beach Reads
Published: 2023-07-10T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

The next morning Aunt Maddy again offered to watch Sofia, who was now fever free. I couldn’t help but wonder what my mother would think if she saw them together. For all her warnings that I was in over my head, Aunt Maddy was the one who was getting attached, at least to Sofia. It was Aunt Maddy who spent the whole day playing with her yesterday, fed her dinner, gave her a bath, and tucked her into bed. Sofia rarely spoke, but when she did it was either to MJ or Aunt Maddy, never to me.

I dropped off MJ at school and drove to my office where I spent the morning calling family law attorneys. I started with my former classmate, the divorce lawyer. As I’d predicted, she knew nothing about foster care and terminating parental rights, but she transferred me to her colleague who’d handled an adoption for one of the firm’s celebrity clients. That woman referred me to an attorney she knew in the San Fernando Valley who used to work for the county, and on and on it continued until three days later I was standing in the Santa Veneta offices of Janelle Maxwell, Esq.

Calling it offices was being generous. It looked more like a storage unit. The banker boxes were stacked five and six high and there was barely enough open floor space for Janelle, who admittedly was not a small woman, to squeeze through to her desk. I had to move a stack of file folders onto the floor so I’d have a place to sit.

“Sorry about the mess,” Janelle said. She smiled showing off a mouthful of straight teeth but for the gap between the front top two. “I’m moving offices this weekend.”

“Where to?” I asked.

“Not sure yet.”

“You’re moving in three days and you don’t know where you’re going?”

She shook her head, but her long braids, intricately coiled into a crown on top of her head, didn’t move. “I know. It’s ridiculous. I rented a storage unit for the files, hence all the boxes. I have an appointment to look at another office share this afternoon. I’ve been looking for months, ever since I got the notice they’re tearing this place down to build condos. But the rents have skyrocketed. If I paid what these people are asking, I wouldn’t have anything left to live on.”

“Do you need to stay in this neighborhood? Because I have an office downtown that’s pretty reasonable.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Really? All the spaces I looked at downtown were even more expensive than around here.”

I smiled. “You must’ve been looking by the marina. I’m on Rose, south of Pacific.”

“I didn’t know they had office buildings down there.”

“They don’t. I’m in a strip mall.”

“Oh,” she said, and I could see her mentally adjusting all her assumptions about me.

I’d changed out of my yoga pants for this meeting. I was wearing a navy pinstriped pantsuit that I’d purchased a few months before my wedding when I was at my thinnest, until now.

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