A House Divided Read online

  “Until the state meet,” Roxy replied. “Then I barely broke the top thirty. The legal market in Atlanta is like the state meet.”

  “There’s always a place for you here with Dad.”

  “That’s not funny either,” Roxy said flatly.

  “No,” Ray admitted. “It’s not.”

  Corbin drove four blocks to the center of town. Downtown Alto clustered around the courthouse square. In front of the courthouse a stone monolith erected by the state historical commission in the early 1900s memorialized the county’s Confederate war veterans. On the other side of the courthouse was a large brass plaque identifying the town as the birthplace of a man who became lieutenant governor of Georgia during the unbroken era of Democrat-dominated politics from 1870 to 1970.

  Corbin stopped at the intersection next to his office. The single-story gray stone building became a law office when Jesse Parker, Esq., bought it and began practicing law in Alto during the Great Depression. Known in his later years as Colonel Parker, the crusty lawyer brought Corbin into his practice and taught him the tangible and intangible essentials of being a small-town attorney. The pithy sayings that forced their way past Colonel Parker’s tightly clenched teeth remained the guideposts of Corbin’s life.

  When Colonel Parker died, Corbin bought the building but out of respect didn’t move into the senior partner’s office for six months. Somehow it didn’t seem right to immediately displace the man whose presence had so totally dominated the wood-paneled walls for decades. When he finally did move into the office, Corbin displayed on the credenza a black-and-white photo taken the day Colonel Parker presented him to the court at his swearing-in ceremony. The photo still looked over Corbin’s shoulder.

  Leaving the center of town, Corbin entered a less prosperous area. Most of the textile mills that once thrived in the area had been located on the south and east sides of town, and the houses near them were simple, wood-framed structures with tiny rooms. Next Corbin passed the chicken processing plant. A single confused chicken had managed to escape and was walking across the asphalt parking lot. Corbin knew its reprieve was temporary.

  The sprawling facility that housed the Colfax Fertilizer Company wasn’t visible from the road, but a large, colorful billboard featuring pictures of a vibrant green, healthy soybean plant and an enormous ear of yellow corn announced where to turn. It was time for the day shift workers to leave, and a line of cars was backed up waiting to turn onto the roadway.

  Across from the Colfax sign was a billboard that trumpeted the merits of the Fishburn Law Center in Gainesville. For twenty years Stan Fishburn’s bald head and smiling face had awkwardly graced the advertising landscape as he trolled for legal business. And Fishburn didn’t limit his marketing efforts to billboards. Everyone in Rusk County who received a speeding ticket or was involved in a car wreck received a thick packet of information in the mail that included a colorful brochure and testimonials from satisfied clients. Fishburn maintained an office in Alto staffed by a slick-talking male paralegal who wore expensive suits and never told prospective clients he wasn’t a lawyer. The Fishburn firm siphoned off many potential clients who would have otherwise hired Corbin, whose practice depended on representing people injured due to the negligence of others. The net effect was like a six-inch hole in the bottom of a barrel. Water drained out faster than it could be poured in.

  A half mile down the road, the houses were more spaced out. Corbin slowed and turned onto Cascade Drive, a road that meandered up a low hill past a few modest houses, then ran along the crest of the ridge. When life had held more promise for the future, Corbin bought two acres on top of the ridge, where he built a redbrick duplex to lease out as a rental property. His accountant at the time told him it wasn’t a good business decision, but Corbin liked the view. It served an unforeseen purpose when Corbin left Kitty and needed a place to live.

  He pulled his truck into the carport on the right-hand side of the building. There was an identical carport on the opposite side. The other unit had been vacant for over a year, and Corbin wasn’t seeking a tenant. In the distance to the west he could see the glint of the late afternoon sun on Braswell’s Pond. He turned and looked in the direction of Willow Oak Lane. It was about three miles to Kitty’s house as the crow flies.

  He got out and ran his hand along the back gate of his truck. Even though he’d been living by himself for ten years, the duplex seemed lonelier today, and he didn’t want to face the silent house.

  Kitty’s passing seemed to lie like a somber blanket across the whole county.

  FOUR

  Corbin walked into the office promptly at nine o’clock the following Monday morning. Janelle Griffin, his longtime secretary, glanced up in surprise and quickly hung up the phone.

  “I didn’t expect to see you,” she said, adjusting the half-frame glasses that rested on the end of her nose. “I thought you’d—”

  “No, I didn’t spend all weekend drowning my sorrows,” Corbin interrupted, answering the question he knew she was thinking but was afraid to ask.

  “It was a beautiful service,” Janelle sniffed. “I thought Reverend Adams did a fine job, and the flowers on the casket were gorgeous. Roxy looked nice, more like her mama every time I see her. And afterwards, everyone was saying how much Kitty—”

  “Stop!” Corbin held up his hand. “I can’t talk about it this morning.”

  Janelle’s tongue was a runaway train, and this morning Corbin halted it in its tracks. She gave him a wounded look.

  “I know how you feel without your saying anything,” Corbin said. “And I appreciate it. What’s on my calendar?”

  “Nothing.” Janelle plucked a tissue from a box on the corner of her desk. “As I said, I didn’t think you’d be here. It was hard enough for me to get out of bed and drag myself down here.”

  Even on a good day Corbin could only take Janelle in small doses. And this wasn’t a good day. He moved past the secretary’s desk and toward the privacy of his office, then turned around when the beep for the front door sounded. A young woman in her twenties with short dark hair and wearing faded blue jeans came into the reception area.

  “Yes?” Janelle asked.

  “Is this Mr. Fishburn’s office?”

  “No. That’s on the other side of the square next to Langford’s Florist.”

  “May I help you?” Corbin asked, taking a step toward her.

  “Are you a lawyer?” the young woman replied.

  “Yes, I’m Corbin Gage.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Corbin could see Janelle frown. The young woman hesitated.

  “Uh, will it cost me anything to talk to you? The letter I got from Mr. Fishburn said I could meet with a lawyer for free.”

  “That’s the way I do it too,” Corbin replied smoothly. “Only I’m actually here. Mr. Fishburn spends his time in Gainesville, and if you go to his office here in Alto you’ll meet with a paralegal, not an attorney.”

  The young woman’s eyes widened. “Oh, I didn’t know that.”

  Corbin stepped to the side and motioned with his hand toward his office. “Come in and have a seat.” With a glance at Janelle, who still had a disapproving look on her face, Corbin ushered the young woman into his office.

  “Would you like some water or coffee?” he asked.

  “Coffee would be nice,” she replied. “With cream if you have it.”

  “Sit in either of the chairs in front of my desk,” Corbin said, then stuck his head back out the door. “Janelle, would you fix a cup of coffee with cream?”

  “You shouldn’t steal a client like that,” his secretary responded in a stage whisper.

  Corbin stepped over to her desk. “She’s not his client and we both know the type of representation she’d get from Fishburn’s outfit. I’m doing her a favor.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Corbin’s eyes narrowed. “Just get the coffee. Bring me a cup too. Black, of course.”

  Corbin’s office wa
s a spacious room with walnut bookcases lining two walls and in the middle a large wooden desk with an inlaid leather top. The bookcases were reminiscent of the days before computer research, when lawyers used the printed word and relied on their own legal reasoning more than software-assisted analysis. Corbin’s six-year-old computer rested on the credenza behind his chair. A full-length leather sofa rested against one wall. The combination of wood and leather gave the room a comfortable, relaxing feel and smell.

  “What’s your name?” he asked as he made his way around the desk to a high-back burgundy chair.

  “Millie Watson.”

  Corbin reached for a blank yellow legal pad. “And your address.”

  “It’s 4428 Harris Street.”

  Corbin jotted down the information. “Near the fertilizer plant?” he asked. “Do you know Branson Kilpatrick, or maybe his son, Tommy? They live in that area.”

  “They live one street over. I know Larissa better than I do Tommy.”

  “Larissa is his wife, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Janelle came into the office and handed Millie her coffee. She set Corbin’s cup on the edge of his desk, slightly out of reach.

  “Thanks, Janelle,” Corbin said. “Please hold my calls while I talk to Ms. Watson.”

  Janelle rolled her eyes and left the room. Corbin waited until the door closed behind her.

  “What did you want to talk to a lawyer about today, Ms. Watson?”

  “Bankruptcy,” Millie replied. “Only I don’t know if I should do it now or wait until later.”

  Corbin exhaled and kept the disappointment from his expression. Bankruptcy cases were filed in federal court in Gainesville. He had never been interested in developing a consumer debtor practice, and it was way too late in his career to begin. He cleared his throat.

  “I didn’t know the Fishburn law firm was handling bankruptcies,” he said.

  “Yes. I’m not sure how they found out I was behind on my medical bills, but I got a letter telling me they could help me wipe them out or set up a plan to pay what I can.”

  “That’s either a Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 proceeding,” Corbin said, then stopped. He had nothing to offer Millie, but it didn’t seem right to escort the young woman out of his office before she’d had a chance to take a few sips of coffee. “What got you into financial trouble?”

  “Mostly medical bills for my son. He’s just started treatment and will need a bunch more before he’s finished. Then my husband got nine months in jail on his second DUI charge and lost his job at Colfax, and I haven’t been able to get on Medicaid for me and the kids.”

  “Are you working?”

  “No. One of my daughters is in kindergarten; the other is two. My son was in second grade before he got sick. He just turned seven. He has the same kind of cancer as Larissa’s little boy.”

  Corbin sat up straighter in his chair. “Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma?”

  “Yes. Mitchell was diagnosed before Josh. Larissa’s been telling me how expensive the treatment is going to be.” Millie’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. “But I have to do what I can, don’t I? He’s in the hospital right now, and the doctors are treating him, but I’m wondering if there’s more that could be done if he wasn’t a charity case. On top of everything else, I’m getting calls every day from all the places where he’s had X-rays, scans, and tests. It’s way more than I can handle.”

  The young woman covered her face with her hands. Corbin opened a drawer of his desk and retrieved a partially collapsed box of tissues. He put the box on the front edge of his desk, where it tilted oddly to the right. Millie grabbed two tissues and wiped her eyes.

  “If I file bankruptcy, will the doctors hear about it and put it in Josh’s chart?” she asked.

  “No, they’ll do what they think best for your son.” Corbin used his most soothing tone of voice. “The ones I know focus on the patient, not the payment.”

  “But the hospital will find out. The woman who’s been calling me has been so hateful.”

  An image of Billy hooked up to machines pumping chemotherapy into his body shot through Corbin’s mind.

  “I’m very sorry about what’s going on in your family,” he said, “but I’m not a bankruptcy lawyer. For that type of problem, I’d recommend Barry Morgan. He practices here in Alto, and I know he’ll give you good advice and charge a fair fee.”

  Millie wiped her eyes.

  “Let me call Mr. Morgan for you,” Corbin offered.

  He picked up the phone. To his relief, Barry said he’d be able to see Millie immediately, and Corbin delivered the news to her with a smile.

  “Mr. Morgan’s assistant will talk to you first and take down your information, which will help the lawyer give you the best advice. Do you have a list of your creditors and how much you owe each one?”

  “Yes, I filled out the forms that Mr. Fishburn’s office sent me the best I could.”

  Corbin stood and they returned to the reception area, where Janelle eyed the young woman closely.

  “Thanks for talking to me,” Millie said.

  “You’re welcome. I see Branson Kilpatrick from time to time, and I’ll ask him how Josh is doing.”

  Janelle spoke as soon as the front door closed behind the young woman. “What did she want? She didn’t look like she’d been hurt.”

  “She’s been hurt all right,” Corbin replied. “But nothing I could help her with.”

  Some women love chocolate. Roxanne Gage had a long-standing love affair with caramel. She took a sip of caramel-flavored coffee as she merged her car onto the interstate and quickly reached cruising speed. Roxy justified her addiction by pretending it was a form of superfuel that gave her an added burst of energy, and she always kept a few cellophane-wrapped squares of the brown candy in her purse.

  Her cell phone buzzed and her boyfriend’s face popped into view. Peter was an IT engineer with a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins. He had a lanky frame and closely cut brown hair and had completed three triathlons in the past year. They’d met on a popular running trail near Piedmont Park in Atlanta. Beginning a conversation while trying to catch their breath had been a unique way to start a relationship.

  “Where are you?” Peter asked.

  “On my way back to Atlanta. I’m going straight to the office.”

  “I’ve been thinking about you a lot. I wish you’d let me be there with you for the funeral. How was it?”

  Roxy hesitated. Where to begin?

  Perhaps sensing her predicament, Peter asked another question. “Maybe I should have limited that to ‘How was your father?’ ”

  “The good news is that except for one evening, he was sober for four days and nights. And when he drank, he crawled into the cave of a duplex where he lives. I went over there to drop off some shirts he’d left at Mom’s house. The next day I’m not sure he even remembered that I’d been there.”

  “That’s rough.”

  “It’s nothing new. My brother is worried he may do something stupid and lose his license to practice. The elephant in the room is what we’re going to do when he becomes completely incompetent. As much as I want to get away from Alto, I won’t be able to run away from that.”

  “I’m sorry,” Peter replied. “What’s happening for you at work today?”

  “I’m not exactly sure. Mr. Caldweller has blown up my phone with texts and e-mails over the past twenty-four hours. He sent me three messages while I was at the funeral.”

  “Didn’t he know where you were?”

  “He has a short-term memory problem for anything except what he wants his staff to do for him.”

  Roxy shifted lanes to pass a slow-moving truck hauling a load of chickens in crates. Peter filled her in on his work world and then said, “Hey, I’ve got to run. Have a meeting in a couple of minutes.”

  “Thanks for calling. I really needed to talk to a normal person. My family is so dysfunctional I’m surprised you want to stay with me.”

&nb
sp; “I’m only sticking around until I can beat you in a 5K.”

  “That’s not happening.” Roxy laughed. “Just don’t throw me in the lake for a long swim or prop me up on a bike and ask me to ride for an hour and a half. I’m a one-trick pony.”

  “And a beautiful one.”

  Roxy suddenly wondered if she should have let Peter come to Alto. With him at her side, maybe she could cope better with her broken family.

  “How about dinner tonight?” Peter said.

  “I’d love it unless I have to work late at the office.”

  “Sneak away.”

  Roxy felt the familiar tug-of-war between her heart and her head. “I’ll let you know,” she said.

  FIVE

  Corbin propped his feet up on his desk and opened the latest issue of the Georgia Bar Journal. As usual he turned first to the list of lawyers who’d recently died. Almost every month the magazine recorded the passing of an attorney Corbin knew personally or against whom he’d had a case at some point in his career.

  Once he’d been having lunch with Colonel Parker when the subject of mortality came up.

  “Do you know the two questions a lawyer asks when one of his comrades at the bar dies?” his mentor asked.

  Corbin knew the colonel was using him as the straight man. “No, what?”

  “What did he die from?” Colonel Parker said, rubbing the side of his nose. “And who got his cases and clients?”

  When Colonel Parker died from a massive stroke, it was Corbin who took over his cases and clients. Unfortunately the older man’s practice had been withering for several years, and most of the remaining apples on the tree were the size of persimmons.

  The old-fashioned phone on Corbin’s desk buzzed, and he picked up the receiver. “Who is it?” he asked.

  “Lori at Judge Ellington’s office,” Janelle replied. “The judge wants you to come right over to the courthouse and meet with someone.”