Ground Rules

In the morning there's a sheet of hotel stationery on the coffee table, squared precisely to the edge.

HOUSE RULES, it says at the top, in Margo's handwriting, which is small and sharp and slants forward like it's in a hurry to win.

You sit up on the sofa. Your neck hurts. The blanket is on the floor. You read.

1. Bathroom: F 6:00–6:30. W 6:30–7:00.

2. No poaching witnesses.

3. No discussing the partnership with the client.

4. The bedroom doors stay closed.

5.

Number five is blank. Beneath it, a pen, laid perpendicular to the page.

You think about last night. The three dots appearing and vanishing. Her texts in the dark, each one shorter and more careful than the last, as if she were building a wall one brick at a time and leaving a gap at the top she hoped you wouldn't notice. Whatever you said back, she read it. Whatever she meant, it's in this list.

You pick up the pen. Under number five you write: Nobody eats the other one's fries.

Then, after a second: 6. Petra Halvard is off limits as a topic until F says otherwise.

The bathroom door opens and steam rolls out. Margo emerges fully dressed, navy suit, chignon flawless, lipstick on. It's 6:29 exactly. She looks at the list in your hand. She reads your additions upside down.

Something passes over her face. Gratitude, maybe, gone in a blink.

"Number five is unenforceable," she says. "Your fries are always closer to me."

"Then move."

"I was here first." She picks up her coffee. "It's 6:30, Wynne. Your bathroom slot started thirty seconds ago."

By nine the sitting room is a war room.

Margo has taken the hotel's framed watercolor of a racehorse off the wall and replaced it with a sheet of butcher paper from God knows where. On it, in black marker, is the entire case: Ironbridge's claims down the left, your defenses down the right, witnesses in a column, a timeline running across the top from 1938 to now. She's color-coded it. She did it before you woke up.

"How long have you been up?"

"Long enough." She caps the marker. "Ironbridge has three legs. The letter. Their founder's diary saying the deal was done. And a former Linwood bookkeeper who'll testify Mae talked about it."

"Their founder is dead."

"Their founder is dead, Mae is dead, and the bookkeeper is ninety-one and lives in Florida." She taps the board. "This is a case about ghosts. Whoever tells the better ghost story wins."

You stand beside her and look. It's good. It's annoyingly, completely good. You can see the shape of the whole fight in it.

"You missed something," you say.

"I did not."

"The rescission." You take the marker out of her hand. Your fingers brush hers. Hers are cold; they always are, you remember suddenly, from a study group a decade ago when she passed you a highlighter. "Kentucky contract law in 1974. If Mae signed this, she could still revoke an option that had no real consideration. One dollar and 'mutual goodwill' isn't consideration, it's a greeting card." You write REVOCATION? on the right side and circle it. "If we can show she took it back, the letter's dead."

Margo looks at the board. Then at you. For a second, she seems to forget to be cold.

"That's not bad," she says.

"Sorry, what?"

"I said it was not bad. I'm not going to say it twice."

"You complimented me."

"I described you accurately. It's different." She takes the marker back. "Fine. You take revocation and the documents. I take their witnesses. We split the motions."

"We alternate the motions."

"We split them. I take odd, you take even."

"Why do you get odd?"

"Because I said it first." She holds out her hand. "Truce, Wynne. For the case. Not for the seat."

You look at her hand. Long fingers, short clean nails, no rings. You shake it. Her grip is cool and firm, and she holds on exactly one second too long, and then lets go as if your hand were hot.

"Not for the seat," you agree.

At 11:40 the motion arrives.

Your phones buzz at the same moment. Margo reads hers standing up. You read yours sitting down. You both look up at the same time.

"He can't," you say.

"He did."

Ironbridge Spirits' Emergency Motion to Advance Trial Date. Thibault argues that the uncertainty over the Mae's Lantern brand is causing Ironbridge "irreparable harm" ahead of a planned public offering, that the facts are "simple and historical," and that trial should begin in three weeks instead of January.

"Three weeks," you say. "We haven't deposed a single witness."

"That's the point." Margo is already pulling on her coat. "They know we're new. They know the client has fired two firms. They want to bury us before we can dig." She checks her watch. "Hearing's at two. Judge Tarrant."

"You know her?"

"I know of her. She hates theatrics, hates delay and hates lawyers who waste her time." Margo picks up her bag. "You'll argue it."

You stare at her. "It's an odd-numbered motion. It's yours."

"It's a revocation-adjacent motion. Discovery prejudice. Documents." She shrugs. "You said it yourself. You're thorough."

"Margo."

She stops at the door. You never call her Margo. She never calls you anything but Wynne. The name sits in the air between you, strange and too warm.

"You're better at this one," she says, without turning around. "Don't make me say that twice either."

The federal courthouse is limestone and air-conditioning cold. Judge Ondine Tarrant is sixty, with steel-gray locs pinned up and reading glasses on a chain, and she looks at Bartek Thibault the way a cat looks at a mouse she hasn't decided whether to eat.

"Appearances," says the courtroom deputy.

"Bartek Thibault for Ironbridge Spirits, Your Honor."

"Ava Wynne and Margo Faraday for Linwood Hollow." You say your name first. Margo doesn't correct you. You file that away to examine later.

Thibault is beautiful at it. Unhurried, folksy, every sentence sounding reasonable. The facts are fifty years old. The witnesses are dead. Nothing more can be discovered. Every day of delay costs his client millions.

You stand. Breathe, Ava. Your heart is pounding, but your voice is steady. You talk about ghosts. You talk about a seventy-four-year-old widow and a fifty-year-old letter nobody alive saw signed. You talk about due process, and how the fact that something is old doesn't make it simple, and how justice in a hurry is just a polite word for an ambush.

From the counsel table you can feel Margo watching you. Not the papers. You.

Judge Tarrant takes off her glasses.

"Ms. Wynne, that was very well argued," she says. "Mr. Thibault, that was very well performed." She puts her glasses back on. "Unfortunately for Ms. Wynne, the public offering is a real harm and the documents are mostly in the record. Motion granted. Trial will begin three weeks from Monday."

The gavel comes down.

Thibault turns and gives you a small, gracious bow. Behind him, in the front row of the gallery, Petra Halvard is smiling. Not at you.

At Margo.