CHAPTER 2
Reagan
Ireclined in the leather high back office chair and tapped my pen against the file sitting on the table. It was the one sign of impatience I allowed myself. Being a lawyer, I often found myself in situations where I had to control my emotions in the face of conduct I found distasteful.
In most cases, it wasn’t from corporate raiders or criminals, but rather was fellow attorneys displaying deplorable behavior. As progressive as I’d like to think this field, or any field for that matter, was—I found that, for better or worse, it was a boys’ club. So I had a lot of practice not allowing repugnant attitudes and comments to affect me.
But the one thing I absolutely couldn’t stand was disrespect of people’s time. It was my Achilles’ heel. I didn’t need to have a PhD in psychology to figure out where my aversion came from.
Growing up, my mother had never been on time for anything. In first grade, I’d started waking her up to take me to school, and I still ended up rushing in after the bell rang half the time.
She was so late to my high school graduation that she missed my walk across the stage. And considering my last name is York, she’d had more than enough time to get there.
So, for that specific pet peeve, I allowed myself a small pen tap.
Right now I was employing the pen tap of judgment on William Comfort, AKA the missing offspring. He was keeping his entire family waiting while he did—God only knew what. When Daisy, the temporary receptionist, informed me that the entire Comfort family had arrived, I’d asked her to show them to the conference room and swiftly finished up the call I’d been on.
I’d expected to have this meeting concluded by now. Instead, we hadn’t even begun, since William had disappeared in the time it had taken me to wrap up with a potential client and walk down the hall from my office to the conference room.
He’d been gone so long, in fact, that his older brother had headed off to hunt for him.
After buzzing the reception area and not getting an answer, I’d suggested that perhaps William had become ill, but Henry, the eldest Comfort brother, mumbled something under his breath that sounded a lot like, “if you count being a jackass an illness,” before standing and walking out of the room.
The look on his face when he’d left said that this wasn’t the first time his little brother had pulled a stunt like this.
The remaining siblings and I sat in a loud silence, the only sound coming from the rhythmic beat of my passive-aggressive pen taps.
No one else appeared to be bothered by the delay.
I’d relocated to Firefly Island two days ago and was still getting used to the slow-as-molasses pace. Technically, I’d lived on an island before moving here, but comparing Firefly to Manhattan was like comparing a house cat to a mountain lion. Sure, they were the same species, but one was dangerous and wild, something you’d encounter on an adventure. The other was docile and tame, something you’d curl up in bed with.
This was my first official day and case as an attorney at Abernathy & Associates and I was doing my level best to keep my cool. It wasn’t easy considering the delay was only partially to blame for my current headspace. My life had just imploded and I was having a difficult time processing it.
A vibration cut through the deafening silence and I realized that it was the alarm on my phone. I looked down and immediately cleared the notification informing me I was due to meet my wedding planner at The Plaza, where I’d been scheduled to walk down the aisle in just two weeks’ time. I’d already canceled that meeting. And my wedding, for that matter.
Last Monday at this time, I’d had the next sixty years of my life plotted out. I was going to marry Blaine Lincoln Whitford, IV. Become a partner at Whitford, Thomas, Mane and Associates, where I’d worked for the past five years. Have two children. Live in a brownstone on the Upper West Side complete with a golden retriever named Buddy. The blueprint of my happily ever after was drawn up and signed off on.
But one ill-fated—or perfectly-fated, depending on how I looked at it—unannounced visit to my fiancé Blaine’s office when he thought I was in court, and I found myself single, unemployed, and homeless.
After making the X-rated discovery, I’d gone back to the penthouse overlooking Central Park we shared, packed up my things, and left. I’d had no idea where I was going, just that I couldn’t stay there.
Ultimately, I’d ended up checking myself into a hotel and scrolling through social media, as one does. That’s when I saw that my college roommate, Nadia, had commented on a job posting for a law firm in her hometown, seeking an attorney with estate and family law experience.
I hadn’t spoken to Nadia in years, but without thinking about it, I sent her a message. Within seventy-two hours, after two phone calls and one Skype interview, I was on a plane heading to my new life in Firefly and position as a junior partner at Abernathy & Associates.
Taking a deep breath, I did my best to embrace my fresh start. I looked out the large picture window in the conference room. The spring scene was bright and crisp. The leaves on the trees were rustling as the wind danced through them. A bluebird landed on a wisteria tree branch next to a squirrel who was chomping on a walnut.
Since relocating to the small Georgia coastal community, I felt like Amy Adams’ character in Enchanted, but instead of falling into a well and landing in the big bad city, I’d fallen in a well and landed in a live-action version of a Disney movie.
Firefly Island was an idyllic small southern town complete with a breathtaking coastline and a charming trolley system that served as island transportation, along with a web of picturesque canals and bike paths.
In theory, it sounded perfect. In reality, it was unnerving. Besides my Achilles’ heel of detesting tardiness, my childhood had left me carrying around a suitcase filled with trust issues and aversions to small towns.
It was just one case in the full set of baggage I’d yet to unpack in my twenties. But after my most recent life-altering event I was beginning to think that I might need to start unloading.
A noise interrupted the silent reflection I was floating in.
I turned and saw the eldest Comfort brother return to the room, and he wasn’t alone. I took note of the atmospheric shift as the two men entered. The eldest brother, Henry, looked stoic and unreadable, but the middle and previously missing-in-action brother, William, wore a half-smile on his face that read as self-satisfied.