Chapter 5 Everything She Carries

The news alert was already open on her screen when Raymond walked in without knocking. She didn't have time to close it.

He saw it. She saw him see it.

For a moment, neither of them spoke, and the silence in her office had the particular quality of two professionals both pretending they weren't both thinking the same thing about the same man.

"Hale Scandal: Leaked Messages Suggest Evidence Was Altered. Source Close to Rhodes Legal Team Speaks Out."

Raymond closed the door behind him and sat down across from her desk without being invited. That alone told her how serious this was.

Raymond Ellis was sixty-one, silver haired, and had spent four decades constructing the kind of professional composure that didn't sit down uninvited. When he broke his own habits, it meant something.

"You've seen it," he said.

"Thirty seconds ago," she said.

He nodded slowly. "The league office called this morning. Before this dropped."

He picked up the pen from her desk and turned it between his fingers in a way that made her want to reach across and take it back.

"They're concerned about the timeline. His clearance is tied to game eligibility and the season opener is six weeks out."

Simone kept her face exactly where she'd placed it. "I had my first session with him yesterday."

"I know."

"One session, Raymond."

"I know that too." He set the pen down. "They want twice weekly sessions. Preliminary report in three weeks instead of six."

She looked at him steadily. "A preliminary report in three weeks on a client with this level of psychological complexity would be incomplete at best and irresponsible at worst."

"I told them that."

"And?"

"And they reminded me that this program exists because they fund it." He said it plainly, without apology, which she almost respected. "I'm not asking you to compromise your assessment. I'm telling you the pressure exists, and you needed to know about it immediately —" He gestured at her screen. "This."

She understood what he wasn't saying. If the leaked messages were real — if the evidence had genuinely been altered — then Marcus Hale's case was no longer just a high profile rehabilitation assignment. It was a legal minefield. And her professional assessment would sit at the center of it.

"If my evaluation takes the full six weeks because that's what it requires," she said, "then it takes six weeks."

"Agreed." He stood. "But Simone." He paused at the door. "Be very careful with this one. The visibility cuts both ways." He left.

She sat very still for a moment. Then she picked up her pen and pulled her legal pad closer, writing before her thoughts could outrun her hand.

Everything from yesterday's session that she hadn't fully processed yet. The way he'd deflected, then postured, then gone quiet at exactly the right moments.

The ‘some of it’ that came out before he could construct it. The jaw shift when she mentioned consequences. The way he'd said ‘that's a longer conversation’ like a door he was choosing not to open rather than one he didn't have a key for.

She wrote for twenty minutes without stopping. Her phone buzzed. She ignored it. It buzzed again. She picked it up expecting the league office, Hawks management or anyone else with an agenda about her client's timeline.

It was Jenny.

"You ate today right? Don't say yes if you haven't."

Simone looked at the cold cup of tea on the corner of her desk. Untouched since seven AM. She looked at the clock. Eleven forty-nine.

She typed back. "Yes."

Three dots immediately. Then… "Liar. I'm bringing food at lunch. Don't argue."

She set the phone down and felt something loosen slightly in her chest. Her sister was twenty-five, loud in ways Simone had never learned to be, and treated her self-neglect like a personal mission.

After their mother died, Jenny had redirected every bit of care their mother used to distribute between them — entirely onto Simone.

It was suffocating sometimes. It was what kept her standing on the other days.

Jenny arrived at twelve-thirty with Mac and cheese in a container that smelled exactly like their mother's kitchen. Simone sat across from her on the small office couch and ate too fast.

She said nothing about Raymond, the league timeline, the altered evidence or the way her first session with Marcus Hale had ended with something in her chest she still hadn't named. She said nothing about any of it. She never did.

"You look tired," Jenny said, studying her with their mother's eyes.

"I'm fine."

"You always say that."

"Because I'm always fine."

Jenny gave her a long look that said several things without saying any of them. Then she pointed at the container. "Finish it."

Simone finished it.

After Jenny left, she sat in the quiet with the empty container beside her. The room smelled like home in a way that made the backs of her eyes ache.

She didn't let it go further than that. She threw the container away, washed her hands, and sat back down.

Her two afternoon sessions passed. By four-fifteen her notes were written, her desk was back in its exact arrangement, and the Hartford day was winding down outside her window in its usual unremarkable way.

She let herself think about him then. Not unprofessionally, but analytically. The way she worked through all her complex cases after hours, turning them over, looking for angles she might have missed.

‘Some of it. I deserved some of it’. Out before he could construct it. Before he could decide what to give her. That was the real man — somewhere behind the posture, the smile and the performance.

Someone who knew he'd done something wrong without believing he'd done everything they said. There was a difference. A significant one.

And if the leaked messages were real, that difference was about to matter in ways neither of them was ready for. She picked up her pen and wrote one line at the bottom of her notes.

He's protecting something. Find out what.

Her office phone rang. She picked it up.

"Dr. Carter." It was the Hawks' head of legal. His voice had the particular flatness of someone delivering news they'd rather not deliver.

"We need you in a meeting first thing tomorrow morning. League office, team management, and their attorneys." A pause. "It's about your client."

Simone's hand tightened on the phone.

"What time?" she said.

"Seven AM." Another pause. "And Dr. Carter — don't discuss anything about your sessions with Hale with anyone before then. Not even colleagues."

The line went dead.

She sat with the phone in her hand as the quiet of the office pressed in around her, thinking about a man who said ‘some of it’ like he was protecting something larger than himself.

She had a feeling she was about to find out exactly what that something was.

And that it was going to change everything.