I
The sun dips beyond the Midtown cityscape, letting a coolness that hasn't been felt since the beginnings of summer seep through the streets.
Anita Gibbs sits at her desk, going through a box of evidence from the Paulsen case. In the morning she has a meeting with her boss, New York's Attorney General, Evan O'Laughlin, to inspect the evidence before passing it off to the Department of Justice.
Anita initially indicted Donna without much evidence, hoping she'd turn on Martell in exchange for a pardon. Donna hadn't done that, and now federal is taking over, re-indicting her on much more serious charges. Unfortunately for Paulsen, the evidence stacked against her is quite substantial: numerous signed correspondences and meeting minutes – she might as well have stamped her name across Afghan insurgency missiles. As clever as Harvey Specter is, there is a good possibility he's going to lose this one. And that should give Anita a sense of satisfaction – she's been dreaming of knocking Harvey off his pedestal for months – but for some reason she can't seem to shake the persistent nagging feeling in her gut that she's missing something crucial.
Maybe it would be easier to be smug if the circumstances were different. It's hard to see the victory in taking down a woman who committed treason as a means to provide for her daughter, especially when said daughter passed away after all the sacrifices.
Anita peeks over at the portraits of her grandchildren and wonders what she would do in Donna's predicament. The answer comes easy: whatever it takes. The maternal instinct. Perhaps Harvey can argue criminal negligence, that Donna neither foresaw nor desired the outcome of her actions, but it's a stretch and federal would certainly counter with willful blindness — either way, culpability is never a consideration in treason cases.
Anita settles back in her seat with a sigh, feeling tired. She continues to idly sift through her notes that — she fears — the DoJ will find mostly irrelevant. She comes across an email exchange she must have overlooked. It has nothing to do with Donna, but the subject line "criminal background check on new hire" grabs her attention. It's from human resources to Zegareli, containing a forwarded quote from the military trial counsel.
The specification: In that Sergeant Jonathan E. Martell, U.S. Marine, did, at or near Combat Outpost Asadabad, Afghanistan, on or about 1 March 2003, without proper authority, knowingly committed violations of UCMJ, Articles 114 and 118.
Zegareli brushes the information off in her response to HR, reminding the rep that they're not hiring a soldier, they're hiring an actuary and Martell comes highly recommended. The HR rep's reply is short: you might want to look-up Article 118.
Anita has wondered how Jonathan managed to get the actuary job for quite some time. One would think the only financial risks a disgraced marine could statistically analyze are those caused by bullets and bombs. What would a top ranking investment bank see in him? And then to make him chairman, it doesn't make sense. Clearly he had some pull from someone on the inside. But who? Zegareli? And in that case, is she the mastermind behind it all?
Anita really should let it go. The case is out of her jurisdiction, and she was specifically told to leave Jonathan to the AG. But her gut nags and her grandchildren with their health and long, bright futures stare.
She picks up the phone and buzzes her assistant.
"Please tell me you're calling to wish me a wonderful evening," he answers warily.
"I need you to get me Jonathan's education records and anything you can on his court-martial conviction, specifically this violation of military justice code, Article 118."
"I thought the Paulsen case has gone up a level."
"It has, so try to keep it discreet."
"Discreet?"
"Yes, Adam. Discreet. As in don't make a big song and dance out of it."
"And how exactly does one ask for military documents discreetly? I mean, I could break into Fort Hamilton and steal them, I guess, but if I got caught it would be very indiscreet, don't you think?"
"Adam."
"Yes?"
"Just get it done."
"Yes, ma'am."
II
It's 7:53 p.m. and Donna walks from the outer edge of Chelsea through the tree-canopied brownstones of West Village.
It never fails to amaze her how suddenly the city can morph. Very few buildings on this side of town reach over ten stories, giving the illusion she's escaped the big city and entered another place altogether. The night is clear enough that she can almost make out Canis Major in the southern skyline by the distant, small glint of Sirius — brightest of all stars, and yet it can barely outshine the pollution of light cast by Manhattan.
As she walks, Donna tries to bring back the feeling she had hours prior – the surge of hope, the sense that life, after all the grief and loss she'd experienced over the years, was about to start again. But the feeling is lost. The happiness she imagined with Harvey was a delusion. Still, as much as it hurts, she doesn't blame him. She's a product of the things she's done, and he reacted just as she always expected he would. A person can only forgive so much.
On the corner of 7th and Leroy, Donna passes a packed and bustling Irish pub and circles behind it. She stops and knocks at an unmarked door. A young man in a short-sleeved dress shirt and vest greets her. "Your name?" he asks.
"I don't have a reservation," she says. "I'm an old friend of Hisako. Is she here?"
The bouncer gives Donna a skeptical look and then disappears. A few minutes later, a firm-faced Japanese woman materializes in the doorway.
"Donna-san." The old woman's severe expression splits with a grin. "How long it has been!"
Donna bows and returns her smile. "I'm sorry for showing up like this, Hisako. I happened to be in the neighborhood and didn't have a chance to make a reservation. I don't want to be a bother—"
"Don't be ridiculous." She motions Donna inside.
They descend a basement stairwell, emerging into a short candlelit tunnel that opens into the seating area beyond. It's comically dark and cramped, reminiscent of prohibition era speakeasies. The walls and ceilings are black, and aside from the spotlight shining on the small stage at the rear, the bar's only illumination are the numerous candles flickering on the tabletops.
The maître d gestures for Donna to have a seat near the right-hand side of the stage. "I've missed you," she says, joining her. "Tell me, do you still play like an angry Bill Evans?"
Donna laughs. "No, I…" She glances down at her hands, trying to recall a time when they danced across the keys of a piano, and can't — those were someone else's hands. "I don't play anymore."
"A shame," Hisako says. "And a mistake. Like the best of confidants, a piano doesn't run when you bare your soul. You should have learned this from anata no go-shujin." Your husband.
There must be a word for ex-husband in Japanese, but Donna doesn't know it. And even if she did, she's not sure she'd correct her.
"I doubt my soul is something people want to hear," Donna offers bleakly, imagining the sound is like the saddest cadence of a funeral hymn.
"And what if Clara Schumann said the same after Robert passed? Grief is human, Donna-san, and that raw honesty is what we find in the best compositions." Hasiko reaches across the table and pats Donna's hands. "Besides, how else will your soul reach Alice if not through music?"
Donna nods, squeezing the old woman's hand in acknowledgment, but finds herself desperate to change the subject. "Is he on tonight?"
Hasiko smiles softly. "I suspect you wouldn't be here if you didn't already know the answer to that question."
"He's a man of habit, isn't he?"
The old woman winks. "Most fools are."
They keep the talk small and eventually Hasiko excuses herself to take care of what looks like the remnants of an office party. Donna sits back, sipping Chai tea and marveling at how, after all this time, things haven't really changed. It feels surreal, almost like slipping through a gap in time. She stares out at the small stage, the black piano, and becomes flooded by once-pleasant memories that are now tinged with something incomprehensibly painful.
At some point the lights dim and Jonathan walks out. The crowd is full of the sort of aficionados that know better than to clap for his entrance and instead fall into reverent silence. They eagerly lean in as he takes his post behind the piano. His fingers rise over the keyboard and Donna waits with bated breath, her heart racing — how he can still draw such a visceral response out of her, even with all the years and wreckage between them, is a little unsettling. It must be true, then, what they say about first love: the eternal flame. She thinks of Harvey and their carefully cultivated slow burn; how they'd endured over a decade of metamorphosis, only to burst out of the confines of their cocoon — beautiful, fragile, improbable — born to live but a single day.
Jonathan's hand descends and something tolls from deep within the piano. The sound is soft, calming, his fingers languidly float across the keys creating an atmosphere within the dark room that feels almost ethereal. The music sways, a cool summer breeze. It feels to Donna like being fifteen, driving down the Berlin turnpike with the windows down in his lifted Ford truck. He's smoking one of the hand-rolled cigarettes he bought back with him from Bosnia, the smoke as gray as his eyes, and when he turns to her and smiles it is so breathtaking and rare she feels the need to kiss him, inexpertly, but with great force.
His pace quickens, blisteringly fast and precise, the crescendos jolt and crack through the darkness, like a lightning storm corrupting a peaceful blue horizon. It seems he's looking for something, like he lost his tranquil rhythm and he's desperate to find it again. His fingers do a painfully exquisite dance to up-end every key. Searching and searching, and then, it's like he hits this point where he realizes there's no going back, whatever he once had is now gone. His fury loses wind, falls like an exhale into a fine wisp of a melody. It's sad, but it's a beautiful sadness – a wise, accepting sadness that somehow leaves you both yearning and fulfilled.
Jonathan's last note is met with perfect silence, as if the room needs a moment to let his profound composition sink in, before the burst of applause. Some whistle, others shout "Bravo, Maestro!" Jonathan stands and gives a curt, soldier-like bow and exits the stage. But the audience won't stop applauding until he returns with an encore of Thelonious Monk's 'round Midnight.
After the encore, Jonathan makes his way to Donna's table and takes a seat as if it's the most natural thing in the world to be meeting her here. He's wearing a dark suit—new, bespoke—without a tie, the top buttons of his dress shirt undone enough that she can see the beginnings of the tattoo on his left chest. Decorative Arabic, the Pashto saying, "bury me." He got it shortly after becoming sergeant and meant it to mean he'd be the first to die in his squad. Donna hated it, but hated the devastating irony it later represented more. Despite the tattoo, with his perfect posture and serious demeanor, he keeps hold of a subtle and understated elegance. If he's at all surprised to see her, he doesn't show it.
"You hungry?" he asks.
"Yes."
"Me too." He waves down the waiter and they order spring rolls and satay chicken. Jonathan choses a King's County bourbon. Donna sticks with her tea.
"Sort of pushing yourself, aren't you?" he says once the waiter departs. "Showing up here. Seeing me again. It can't be easy."
"There are worse things," Donna admits, thinking about the wounded look on Harvey's face after she told him the truth about Russo. "Did Mel tell you she hired new counsel?"
"Really?" Jonathan feigns nonchalance. Donna sees that he is set to guard the details of his knowledge, to make her pull the facts out of him one by one.
"I want to know why."
Her tone is more forceful than she intended, but Jonathan doesn't seem to notice. He studies her, shrouded in his habitual somber silence. His expression is placid, almost empty. He feels nothing for her. Donna tries to feel nothing too, but even thinking this, she can only picture running into his arms each time he came home from deployment, how he'd squeeze her so tight she swore he was never going to let her go.
She folds. "Johnny, please."
An almost imperceivable softness rises within his cool stare. He sighs. "Our general counsel resigned."
"Why?"
"Officially he cited some bullshit ethical dilemma. Unofficially it appears he was paid-off and acting in bad faith."
"By who?"
He shrugs. "Whichever shareholder is the most red-handed, I'm assuming. It's hard to say. I'm not exactly kept in the loop these days."
The waiter brings Jonathan's bourbon and sets it down before him. He picks up the tumbler and takes a slow sip. "I'm guessing your next question is why Harvey?"
Donna nods. "I wouldn't call Pearson Specter Litt pick of the litter at the moment."
"That's certainly putting it mildly."
Donna tries not to take offense. "I know Mel wants to get under my skin, but hiring a corporate attorney for a criminal case seems reckless."
"Does it? The truth is just another commodity and the corporate attorneys of New York know how to tip the scales of justice better than anyone." He shrugs. "Besides, Harvey has a special interest in this case which would make him difficult to be enticed by monetary gain."
Donna knows by 'special interest' he means her. "You're forgetting I used to be one of you. We kept general counsel to have someone to blame if things went badly. Harvey's just a high paid scapegoat."
"Aren't we all," Jonathan muses.
"I told you I didn't want him involved in this."
"Yeah. I heard you. Thing is, I'm not in the business of babysitting your boyfriend."
"He doesn't realize what he's getting himself into, Jonathan."
"Whose fault is that?" He cocks an eyebrow. "Mine? Because I didn't stop you from running off with the poor dumb fuck?"
Some ancient bitterness erupts inside Donna, the need to protest overpowers her shame. "You keep blaming me for leaving you, but the way I remember it, you pushed me out."
"Did I? How heartless of me. Should've just let you jump."
Donna traces the edge of her teacup with an index finger, her expression carefully blank. She thinks his words should hurt, but in the numb state she's in, nothing can touch her. She feels a sort of hollow choked hilarity at the thought, and with it her need to argue dissipates. "We better be careful, as petty as we're sounding, people might think we actually loved each other."
Jonathan affords her an expression of mild amusement that's not quite a smile. Accepting the truce, he changes subject. "What's with the tea?"
"Changing my ways."
"Right. Still hung over from your super villain debut, I'd wager."
"You know me too well."
"Unfortunately."
Donna smiles. In the end, there's no one who understands you more than the one who has seen you at your worst. The thought moves her to confess, to open up, "I've really hit bottom here. Forty years old and I'm still as lost as the day she died."
Jonathan shakes his head. "You're not lost, Dee. You're right here, buried underneath a know-it-all corporate secretary and self-loathing. You might be a little bent out of shape, but you don't go through what you've gone through without getting a few dents."
Donna stares into her ex-husbands steady gaze, mesmerized by the glow of his silver irises in the flickering candle light. Sitting with him at their corner table she suddenly feels safe and warm, as if having slipped into a secret sanctuary. "I think I'm cracked more than dented," she says. "Like an egg, I can feel it all oozing out of me. Soon I'll be nothing but shell."
"Humpty Dumpty," Jonathan says idly, then tosses his drink back and signals for another. "Hitting bottom can be liberating, if you let it. It means you can't get any lower."
"Yet I keep finding a way. Have you seen our exposé?" Donna pulls a magazine she got from a sidewalk news stand out of her purse and slides it across the table.
"'The evil COO and her hell hound,'" he reads. "Intriguing. They captured your good side, at least. You're tits look great."
"Oh, I know. My one saving grace. Nifty tits."
Jonathan laughs at this, a deep, soft chuckle, genuine in its rarity. Donna bathes in it like a kind of light, laughing too.
A moment later the waiter brings out the appetizers and drinks. They fall quiet for a few minutes, picking at the food while it's still warm. It would seem neither of them had eaten in days with how quickly they inhale what's on their plates.
Eventually Jonathan says, "Tell me something, Donna."
"Yes?"
"What is it you want from me? Bearing in mind I'm under no obligation."
Donna lays her half-eaten spring roll back down on her plate. "As shocking as this might sound, I'm not here because I want something. Mel's pushing to have me testify against you. I thought you'd want to know."
"Nothing an email or a phone call can't convey. Not that I'm not flattered, but…" He trails off, waiting for a reply.
"I had to see you."
"Why did you have to see me?"
Despite her best intentions, Donna can only tell the truth. "I missed you," she whispers.
Jonathan leans back in his chair, his fingers laced behind his head, and stares at her, weighing this information. "Well, the way I see it, we don't owe each other a damn thing, so if you and Harvey want to make me the enemy, then go right ahead."
Donna sniffs anger here, a sudden coldness creeping into the refuge. She has worn her welcome, and decides to bail before another fight erupts.
"There is no me and Harvey," she tells him, standing. "There's only me and the decisions I've made. That's the thing with middle age, I think, you start to realize this life is yours and yours alone. I figure it's time I take some responsibility and stand by the consequences of my mistakes."
Jonathan says nothing, he simply sits there, giving no indication that he's heard her, or even that he's aware she's stood to leave.
Without thinking Donna reaches out and places her hand over his. "It was a gift to watch you perform tonight. I hope one day I can keep hold of the brief peace I felt listening to you play."
Jonathan twists his hand around, allowing the pads of his fingertips to slide along her palm. Her body hums. "There is no peace for us, Donna," he says. "Not after what we've done."
III
There's rain coming, Harvey can taste it in the air.
He kicks a few pebbles on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets as he drifts through the dark streets of New York, not knowing where he's going, not caring.
Since reading Donna's letter his anger has faded, leaving him feeling…guilty, mostly. But it's still difficult for him to make the connection. There are two Donna's in his head, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and he swings between the two like a pendulum, feeling betrayed by one and deeply sad for the other.
He presses his palms to his eye sockets; the exhaustion of the past few weeks seems as if it is seeping into his bones. It's gotten impossible to know whether he's going backward or forward. His life is all in the wrong order. A kaleidoscope of thoughts and feelings and minutes and clumsy missteps – everything is shifting and moving out of his control. Jesus, how can one person derail him like this?
But it's his own fault for relying on her too much. He never thought to stop, he never thought to think. She did all that for him. Bearing her burdens, bearing his. And he loved her like an afterthought, something he'd sort out and explore when it suited him.
Maybe he's the one in the wrong. Good, bad, it's all about perspective, isn't it?
Harvey stops, pausing to take in the feel of the cool evening air, and finds himself near Penn Station. He had unconsciously been moving northwest, as if there is some invisible force ceaselessly pulling him toward her. It makes him wonder if maybe they were inevitable – two lost souls destined to seek each other out. He wonders where he'd be if he hadn't met her – who he'd be – and the version of himself he envisions is a man he's lucky not to know.
Who saved who, really?
In the midst of these tangled thoughts, Harvey glimpses the lofty, slender spires of St. Michael's, brazenly piercing into the night sky. He rounds a corner and there the old church stands, silent and strangely peaceful at the center of the bustling city. Without thinking he crosses the street. It's after hours, so the wrought iron fence is locked, but he simply hops over it and up the stone steps to the graves within.
As he moves through the necropolis the sound of the city grows distant and detached, until eventually he reaches a silence so thick his footfalls seem almost disrespectful. Weaving around plots and markers he gets the sense there is no end. It stretches out before him, a city of its own, filled up with avenues of the dead.
He moves deeper into the gloom, directionless, yet as if silently beckoned he has no difficulty finding what drew him in.
The headstone is young by the standard of those surrounding it, but already it is darkened with pollution. Harvey reaches out and runs his fingers over the raised lettering.
Alice Martell
1999 - 2006
"Hey, Champ," he whispers. "It's been a long time."
IV
It is one of those midsummer days where the simple act of breathing makes you break out in a sweat – the heat is miserable, sweltering. The pedestrian traffic on Baxter and Worth sharply maneuvers around one another, as thick and aggressive as the humidity.
Outside the district court, Harvey catches sight of an officer he's never seen before monitoring the entrance – a hard-faced youth doing his very best to make it look as if he's guarding the Pentagon. Harvey glances down at the child beside him, who is lost in a noble yet futile battle against the heat to devour her vanilla cone.
"Careful," he tells her, "you're going to get your dress dirty."
Alice takes one last slurp and hands the mess off to Harvey. He throws it in the bin beside him. "Alright, punk, listen. Frank isn't on today, so we have to utilize peak stealth. You got me?"
Alice nods, I got you, and pushes her child-sized Ray Bans – an exact match to Harvey's — up the bridge of her nose. "We're sneakin' in?"
"Something like that," Harvey says as he starts up the stone steps. "Just stay behind me and be cool."
They manage to make it up to the glass front doors and half a step over the threshold when a bulky uniformed arm slings out to bump across Harvey's chest.
"Hey, man, hold up." The guard points to a sign near the entrance: Federal Property Rules and Regulations. He taps a sausage sized index finger at the prohibited section. In amongst firearms and explosives, just after soliciting, vending and debt collection, Harvey reads 'children under the age of 12'. "You can't bring your kid in here."
Harvey lifts an eyebrow. "What kid?"
The security guard now shifts the sausage finger to Alice, who turns around, a mastermind, seeking this poor prohibited child elsewhere.
"Wait, are you talking about…" Harvey shields an indiscreet gesture toward the little redhead.
The guard gives a curt nod.
"She's not a kid. She has a rare form of dwarfism and she's very sensitive about it. So if you just let us by, we'll forget you insulted her."
The guard ignores this, and says to Alice, "How old are you, Miss?"
"Thirty-two," she answers. Not a beat missed.
Although twelve would have been the smart answer and still ridiculously improbable, Harvey can't help but feel proud of the kid's confidence.
"Thirty-two," the guard repeats slowly, letting the statement hang as if to give the child room to reconsider.
"Thirty-two," Alice says again, firmer, and now it is her waiting for him to reconsider. Harvey thinks this face-off is pretty bold for a little girl and fights a laugh.
The officer decides to entertain her. "All right. How about you show me some ID?"
Alice pats her exceptionally pocket-less dress, then glances up at Harvey in mock surprise.
"Don't tell me you left it at the bar?"
"Dang it. I must've."
Harvey exhales theatrically and shakes his head, giving the bailiff a companionable look that says 'can you believe this shit?'
The guard folds his arms, unamused. "No ID, no entry."
"Officer, look." Harvey grabs the man by the shoulder and leans in conspiratorially. "I get firearms and explosives, but an innocent child?" As if on cue, Alice removes her sunglasses and gives the man a few bats of her lashes. "What is she going to do? Kill the judge with her cuteness?"
"I don't make the rules, sir."
Harvey mutters a curse and glances down at his watch. In less than thirty minutes he has an appointment with Judge Taylor, a notoriously bad-tempered man, to try to convince him to dismiss evidence in a high profile narcotics case. He can't afford to be late.
Harvey turns and descends the steps, taking them at a near run. Behind him he can hear Alice breathing and feels her struggle to keep up.
"Where are we going?" she pants.
Seeing the crosswalk is red, Harvey slows his pace and lets her catch up. "Back to the DA so Bertha can watch you."
"But I wanna stay with you."
"You should have thought about that before you told the guard you were thirty-two."
"I was going with the age of my soul."
Harvey stops at the intersection and looks down at her shiny copper head. "You have a ketchup stain the size of Jupiter on your dress. Four would have been a stretch."
"It's picante sauce," she says, glaring up at him. "I had to spit it out, it was too spicy. I coulda died."
Harvey shakes his head, jabbing the push-to-walk button while simultaneously watching the second hand tick away on his watch face. Sweat drips down the small of his back, ruining the starch-press of his collared shirt. A bubble of irritation and anxiety erupts inside of him. He begins to see his impending lateness as a smudge on his career, a ball and chain that he'll have to drag his way up Wall Street. Burn a bridge with a judge this early as an attorney and you can forget becoming a litigator. All of his painstaking years spent at Harvard studying IP law, for nothing. He'll be shoe horned into estate planning, or worse, bankruptcy. No one in bankruptcy gets their name on the wall; people in bankruptcy get gray hair at thirty-five and never break a million.
"Let's cross," Harvey says, growing impatient.
"But it's still red."
"Don't argue." He pushes off the curb and onto the white painted tar, causing a bus up the block to hiss with its brakes. At the height of the sound, Harvey feels something— small, warm – grip him.
He looks down and sees that Alice has slipped her hand into his. The contact takes him by surprise. He feels himself almost physically pulled back by the simple unexpectedness of it.
Staring down at that tiny hand, an odd sensation begins to take ahold of Harvey, as if this kid has instead reached out and touched his soul. It's an intense feeling he's never experienced before – a sort of clarity. His lateness suddenly seems a small matter; the heat no longer bugs him. His future, his career, his problems are all irrelevant. The only thing that matters is getting this little girl safely across this busy intersection. The weight he puts on this duty is probably melodramatic, yet it feels wholly insufficient. All at once he understands what it must mean to be a father – to have a purpose higher than the egoic self. And surprisingly he's not afraid or intimidated by this, but strangely liberated.
Alice notices him staring and says, a little defensive, "I can't cross on my own until I'm nine."
"Okay."
A tender blush creeps up her freckled cheeks, deepening the blue of her eyes. "It's for safety."
"Sure." Harvey gives her hand a gentle, reassuring squeeze. "We'll wait for the green light."
Alice nods and looks off, as if bugged by her own childishness. This kid is too big for her own skin, Harvey thinks, knowing the feeling too well himself.
The light changes and they walk, hand-in-hand, back to the DA. The closer they get to the public building, the more Harvey finds himself dragging the kid, who in her earnest self-pity cannot find the energy to lift her feet.
"It's not fair," she pouts. "I wanna meet Judge Taylor too."
"Next time," Harvey promises, coaxing her into his office.
She collapses into his high-backed chair, sending it into a spin. "You'll be back before I go, right? To wish me luck?"
"What do you need luck for?"
Alice juts out a leg to stop her rotation and ends up kicking the file cabinet. A line of constitutional law books fall like dominos, knocking his autographed Todd Hundley baseball to the floor. Harvey swallows a groan. "My championship game is tonight," she tells him, ignoring the mess. "Against those dummies at Lady Pompeii. They got a nine year old on their team – Jacob Cushman Jr. He calls me cyborg because of my port. I hate his guts."
Harvey glances at the clock. "How about I wish you luck now?"
"I don't want to hear it now. I'm too upset."
"Jesus, you're dramatic."
"Am not. You're just a jerk – dumpin' me here with all these bozos. I thought we were pals."
"I tried to take you," he argues pathetically. "You're the one who screwed it up with that age of your soul nonsense."
"It's not nonsense," she says. "I'm very mature for my age."
"You literally had to hold my hand to cross the street."
"For safety," she repeats, growing red again. "The Times says pedestrian traffic deaths are up seven-point-five percent."
"Oh, really? Well, too bad your height isn't up seven-point-five percent."
"Too bad your tie is a knock-off."
Harvey goes cold at this. "What?"
"I wasn't gonna say anything because I know how sensitive you get, but I can totally tell."
He points to his chest. "This tie?"
She nods.
"This is Ferragamo."
"More like Ferra-fako."
"I spent a whole paycheck on this tie."
"Guess you're a sucker."
"You little gremlin." He pulls his knot lose and rips the tie from his collar. Staring down at the tag, which admittedly, looks stitched a little wonky, he sees Ferragamo is spelt with one 'r' instead of two. "Shit, I think you're right."
He tosses the tie into the waste basket and the kid hands him a spare out of his desk.
"Does it match?" He asks, tugging the spare to his neck.
"I wouldn't have picked it if it didn't match," she says firmly.
He shakes his head at her. "Smart-ass."
She takes this as an insult and with a sharp glare swivels around so that he faces nothing but the back of the chair, dismissed from his own office.
Harvey edges toward the door, but in his exit is provoked by insecurity and perhaps a residual need to smooth things over, and asks, "Is it straight at least?"
She swivels back to face him, and with a level gaze, surveys the angle of his tie.
"Come here," she says.
He goes to her, rounding his desk, and she lifts herself to stand at the seat of the chair in order to reach him.
Carefully she stretches up and twists his tie to the middle, her little pink tongue poking out to the side in concentration. Harvey finds himself smiling as he watches her work.
"Forgive me," he says softly.
"Take back those mean things you said."
"How can I?"
"Come to my game tonight."
"Tonight?" Harvey hesitates, trying to think up an excuse that won't make her too sore.
She peaks up at him, her eyes gleaming a big hopeful blue. "Oh please, Harvey?" she begs. "Please?"
"But it's weird, isn't it?"
"What's weird?"
"Me, just showing up."
"But we're best buds."
"What's your mom going to think?"
"That you're dreamy and you make her heart hiccup."
"Jesus." He laughs, scared. "You're still on that kick?"
She stares at him, grinning wide and mischievous, and he feels like she knows things he doesn't – where Atlantis is buried, who killed 2Pac, that his goddamn tie is a knock-off.
He feels himself cave. "Are you gonna crush Junior if I go?"
Her grin grows remarkably wider. She knows she's got him. "I'll knock his teeth out."
"That's a little extreme, but I dig your enthusiasm."
"So you'll go?"
"Yeah," he tells her. "I'll be there."
V
Harvey stands before Alice's grave in silence, feeling like he's reached some sort of end – a conclusion he knew was inevitable but that he refused to fully believe in.
Feeling sick with the weight of what's before him, he sinks to his knees — Russo forgotten, the firm forgotten, Donna forgotten, everything forgotten but the single oppressive fact that a little girl had lost her life and there isn't a damn thing anyone can do to make her story turn out differently.
Nor the stories since, and how many lives would be different if she had just lived.
Memories pour through Harvey in segments, the details flashing through his mind like snapshots.
Her tiny feet swing, brazenly pressing the tips of silver chucks into his untailored slacks. He sees greenness and a sweltering summer sun. There's a perfect pitch thrown underhand by his old man. Alice swings and misses, swings again and the ball soars, and Harvey's heart soars, and she soars into his arms. He sees her eyes, blue as an ocean, when lifted to his, swallow him whole.
Then there is the mechanical push of a respirator, the crowding of IV poles, a hospital bed. His name whispered through cracked lips, pulled past an unknowable pain to form a genuine smile. She cries when she tells him she's dying and he cradles her copper head and fights his own tears. But when she falls asleep, he breaks, palms pressed to his forehead. It's only when he glances up that he realizes she's staring at him.
The mother.
Looking into her eyes, Harvey swears the ground tips and he is falling, truly falling so goddamn quick stopping isn't an option. Loving her isn't an option. It is like those dark eyes are a black hole, stealing every atom of his being.
Then again, months later, he feels that same molecule breaking pull from across the bar, and says, "I'm sorry, do I…?"
And she hesitates, and he hesitates, and some kind of unspoken agreement passes between them.
No. No, definitely not.
The pendulum swinging in his head abruptly freezes and he experiences that same clarity he felt on that busy street corner, as if those tiny fingers have stretch themselves from beyond the grave to once again take hold of his soul. He sees and understands and knows and almost laughs at the obviousness of it all.
Of course Donna is Alice's mother. Of course. He should have known all along, and maybe he did. Maybe he has worn this fear every single moment since the day he met her, but kept the knowledge at a distance, like an unwanted house guest.
A breeze sighs through the cemetery. Harvey presses his palms to his forehead and stares at the ground. "I'm sorry," he says. "God, I'm so, so sorry."
His words fall flat in the silence. He's not even sure who he's apologizing to, he's just sorry about the whole goddamn thing.
He sits there quietly for quite a while, until he finds the courage to pull Donna's letter out and read it over again. He traces his fingers over her words, following the relaxed slant and elegant loops as familiar to him as his own handwriting, if not more.
When the rain starts, he stands. His legs feel stiff from the cool ground and he has to massage the blood back into them.
On his way out, he touches the top of Alice's headstone and stares at it for a long time.
"I couldn't save you," he says, "but I swear I'll do whatever it takes to save your mom."
And as he travels back through the graveyard, he senses his grip on the world restore. He's still entirely out of his depth – a New York corporate attorney taking on the United States in such a high profile case is unheard of – yet there's no doubt in his mind –
He's going to win.
VI
Jonathan watches Donna leave, drinking down the last of his bourbon, her words "It's time I face the consequences of my mistakes," replaying in his head. As cryptic as it all seems, he knows exactly what she's planning.
He sets down his empty glass and grips it tightly. She's not your problem, he tells himself. You don't need to say anything. Just let her go. You'll never see her again.
Except, the truth is he'd always be seeing her. He can't get away from her. She haunts him. Floats through the walls he built over the years as quiet and tangible as a chill.
"Fucking woman," he mutters. Then he throws a couple bills on the table and follows her out.
The smell of wet pavement hits Jonathan as he steps onto the stylish redbrick street. The rain, still in its infancy, is too light to feel, but can be heard pattering against the leafy canopy above. Donna stands at the curve of the street corner, her red hair looking almost rose gold beneath the lamp light; her hand is lifted for a cab.
Jonathan lights a cigarette. The smoke pours through the dark street and pollutes the smell of the summer rain. When he reaches Donna, he clears his throat and says, "I suppose it'd be stupid to stop you, seeing as you turning yourself in would keep me out of prison."
She doesn't look at him, but continues to gaze up the street. Her profile has a sharpness to it – a look of defiance. "I just want this all to be over," she tells him.
"And what about Harvey?"
She regards him then. The indeterminate hazel color of her eyes has settled beneath the strong light of the overhead into a murky green. "I told you, there is no me and Harvey."
"Does he know that?"
She turns her attention back to the street. "He"—she takes in a breath, trying to work past the threat of tears.
Jonathan answers for her. "You told him about Russo and now he's pissed." He takes a drag of his cigarette and shrugs. "He'll get over it, Dee. Once you care, you always care. That's how stupid we are."
She nods and nods, tears spilling over her lids.
He thinks he gets it now. "You're not facing shit, are you? You're running."
"What choice do I have? I can't go back to being a secretary, and even if Harvey does forgive me, I don't deserve him." She runs a hand through her hair, breathy and electric with frustration. Her gaze flicks briefly back to his and seems to look through him, her eyes lifted at such an angle the color is stolen from them. "This is it for me – prison. That's all there is."
Jonathan's face remains impassive as he takes another pull of his cigarette, but behind his unlined brow a vestigial twinge of anger rises up at hearing her resignation. He tilts his head upward, allowing a great cloud of smoke to curl from his mouth like a pale blue pillar. Watching the smoke dissipate, he says, "Giving you up was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do."
Donna blinks as if she hasn't the slightest idea what he means. "What?"
"The divorce," he says. "I didn't want it. I wanted to drop down on my knees and beg you to come home, but the pain of losing you was worth it in my head if it meant you got to have an after. And now you've got the fucking audacity to sabotage your whole life because things are getting too real with Harvey."
Turning full toward him on that redbrick sidewalk, her expression seems to swing from shock to hate. "The pain of losing me," she repeats. "You can't be serious? At the end, I swear, it was like you didn't love me at all."
"Maybe it just never occurred to you," he says mildly. "You've never been good at seeing past your own pain."
Ironically it's like she doesn't hear him, her eyes lost in those dark sockets. In her contemplative silence Jonathan takes one last drag at his cigarette, and then stubs it out against the lamp post.
"You know what's strange?" she finally says, "I can't even pinpoint when it happened. Was it the fight we had before that last hockey game? Before that? Some time after? If I had just listened to you, if I just let her go, would everything have been different with us?"
"The past is the past," Jonathan says. "Having those answers won't change it. We were headed that way no matter what we did."
"I know that's what you'd like to think."
"It's the only way to think."
This sets the tears flowing again. She takes a deep breath to steady herself. "I didn't want to lose you."
"You haven't lost me," he tells her softly. "I'm right where you left me."
"You know what I mean."
"The divorce? That's just paper, Donna. We had a baby together, a friendship, ran a New York bank with no qualifications and broke a sixty-five page indictment worth of laws. Those things don't just get erased. What we have is forever."
Donna swallows and looks away. The rain has picked up, falling into a heavy climax all around them. People start to duck beneath awnings and hide under their coats. A group of young men stumble past; one of them eyes Donna curiously, probably wondering whether the wetness streaming down her cheeks is tears or the rain. Music leaks from the pub across the street – half priced Guinness is advertised in desperate red letters near the entrance and something else, vote for…, but it is raining too hard to read. Donna asks, "Would you do it all again?"
"A thousand times over," he admits.
She nods at his answer. "Me too."
With her still looking off, Jonathan gifts himself a moment to take her in, following the curve of her cheekbone with his eyes, trying to burn all the details into his mind, wanting to have them with him later when she's gone. He thinks of all the things he wishes he could say to her, things he wishes could make a difference, and settles on the only thing that will.
"We didn't have a lot of choices, Dee, and for every choice we didn't have, you have to think of the ones you now do. Prison isn't it for you," he says, and feels his heart break as he sets her free. "Harvey is."
VII
Harvey takes a yellow cab back to the financial district and heads straight for the firm. He plans on getting ahold of Donna's file and submitting any motions he can to keep her case from going federal, but he only gets as far as the glass front doors, when he is stalled by sight of Anita Gibbs arguing with the building's receptionist.
He charges up to her. "What the hell are you doing here?"
The assistant U.S. attorney turns and regards Harvey warily. "I keep asking myself that same question," she says, shoving a manila file at him.
Harvey stares down at the folder, caught off guard. "I thought the case was dismissed," he says lamely.
"It is. But something wasn't sitting right with me, so I kept digging."
Harvey curiously flips open the file and within it finds some kind of military timetable.
"That's Jonathan's deployment record. Most of what he did in the Special Forces is sealed, but I managed to get ahold of these dates."
Harvey lifts an eyebrow, unsure of what she's building to.
"He was meant to be at MIT studying finance, Harvey." She flips passed the timetable and taps on a transcript. "This entire semester, when he was supposedly in Boston, he was actually in Iran."
"Maybe he did an online course?"
"After Mike Ross, I know fraud when I see it."
"So what are you saying?"
She shakes her head. "I don't really know. But I think" – she looks off, trying to grasp the words – "It's too clean. The paper trail, the motive, it's like –"
It dawns on Harvey. "They were tailored to be the fall guys."
"Yes." She nods. "Yes, that's exactly it."
With this new information Harvey feels even more anxious to get upstairs and read through Donna's case. He starts for the elevator, but feels something grip his elbow.
He looks over to see Anita staring at him with pursed lips, as if in preparation for a painful admission.
Harvey's heart skips. "What is it?"
"I've heard rumors they're planning on making an arrest tomorrow," she says quietly. "Bail won't be an option."
Harvey takes a step back, shocked by the information, and once again feels torn between Donna and his obligation as an attorney.
"I'm sorry," Anita says, sounding genuine, and then quickly turns to leave.
When Harvey finally finds his voice it sounds hoarse and flat to his ears. "Anita, wait."
She turns around, lips thin with impatience. Harvey struggles for words.
"Don't," she tells him. "For the love of god, let me leave with some dignity."
Harvey nods, feeling his own dignity spared as he swallows down his gratitude. And as he watches Anita push past the glass doors he realizes he has no idea who his enemies are; all the lines are blurred.