She smiled.
“Thirty years on the bench.”
I looked away, blinking hard.
Then she said, “Your grandmother would have been proud.”
I stared at her.
“How do you know about my grandmother?”
Judge Morland lifted her eyebrows.
“You never figured it out?”
My heart quickened.
“Figured what out?”
She looked almost amused.
“Who recommended your Lakewood adviser for that position?”
I stopped breathing.
“My grandmother knew her?”
“Not exactly.”
Judge Morland reached into her handbag and removed an old envelope.
Inside was a photocopied letter.
My grandmother had written it years before her death.
To Judge Morland.
They had volunteered together on a local legal-aid board.
My grandmother wrote about a granddaughter who argued constantly, spotted every contradiction, and whose family kept urging her to choose something “realistic.”
At the bottom, she had written:
If Claire ever finds her way toward law, please make sure somebody takes her seriously before she learns not to take herself seriously.
My hands began trembling.
Judge Morland continued.
“I knew your adviser’s former supervisor. When Lakewood hired her, I mentioned that there was a student coming through who might need someone stubborn enough to recognize her.”
I stared at the letter.
“The adviser knew?”
“Not your whole story.”
Judge Morland smiled.
“She just knew to watch for you.”
My eyes filled.
All those years, I had believed I built everything alone.
I hadn’t.
Not completely.
Someone had been leaving small lights ahead of me before I even knew where the road led.
My grandmother.
My adviser.
Professors.
Mentors.
Judges.
