A Dangerous Affair (Lesbian Story)

Things

Elizabeth
9 September 2016

It's been a little over a week since I spoke to Kalinda. I haven't heard anything else, so I assume everything is still fine.

The office is busy with the infamous money launderer, Gary Parkins' arrest.

Plus the spate of recent terror attacks has increased state prosecutions and arrests on people accused.

These have fortunately or unfortunately been at the front of my mind, instead of my father.

However, I'm well aware that proprietary dictates that a week is too long to not speak to your dying father.

So here I am in my office taking in deep breaths for the call I am about to endure.

"Kalinda." I say after she picks up on the third ring.

"Liz." The honeyed accent comes coldly over the phone.

"How is he?"

"They're keeping him under palliative care. We just brought him in yesterday."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

I can hear her eye roll and scoff as if she were right in front of me when she answers: "Honestly Liz."

For some reason her response angers me. I know I am at fault but she doesn't need to throw it in my face.

"Don't honestly me. No matter what you think of my father and I's relationship, I am still his daughter. I deserve to be informed."

"Oh spare me Liz." The annoyed tone in Kalinda's voice is evident as she begins to dress me down in that rational voice I sometimes use to convince other lawyers that they'd never win against me.

"You. Were. Informed. I told you to come see him. So issuing directives and a false sense of care doesn't work eight days later. If you wanna play the informed daughter then bloody well be here Liz!"

I'd never had someone raise their voice at me. The scary thing about Kalinda was that she hadn't even raised her voice.

Her annoyance is evidence in he thickness of her accent and lowered voice.

I'd just been scolded. And rightfully so. My silence had stretched too long.

I want to apologise. "Kalinda..."

"He's fine Liz...for now. He's getting the best care. But Liz..." She trails off the end of her sentence with a sigh. She doesn't have to finish her thought.

"The Parkins case has me tied up. I'll be there in a week." I still want to apologise. I don't know how though. "Uhmm...Kalinda...I..."

"I'm scared too Liz." She says.
"Goodbye Liz."

She closes the phone abruptly as if she'd admitted something that she shouldn't have. Or something she hadn't admitted to herself.

Kalinda was a strong, impenetrable woman.

She was scared.

"Ey boss," Tony's voice pops through the receiver: "Parkins case, we just lost juror number three to a gunshot."

Sometimes the week from hell just comes in and swoops you clean off your feet.

Tension gathers on my shoulders and my back feels like a taut bow as I put the phone back on its handset.

I can feel my irritability rise and my head threatens to explode as it beats like a heart with the constant throb at my temples.

My eyes are tight and feel like pin pricks are stuck in my eyeballs.

And I'm sure my jaw clenching has taken at least a few millimetres off of my teeth.

It just hasn't been a good week. And I wouldn't want to tempt the universe with asking if it can't get any worse because apparently it just did.

We've been chasing Gary Parkins for years now. If jurors started going missing, so would witnesses, and then dockets and then pretty soon we won't even have a case against him.

Then the mayor would have my ass for losing him his biggest high profile case.

Sometimes God just doesn't know when to give you a break. It's like everything is purposely stacked against me.

I need a day off.

I need to relax.

I need Abby.