The heavy glass doors of Sterling & Sterling LLP occupied the entire seventy-fifth floor of a steel monolith on Park Avenue.
Outside, a grey summer rain lashed against the windows, smearing the Manhattan skyline into a blurred watercolor of slate and silver. Inside, the quiet was oppressive—the kind of stillness that costs eight hundred dollars an hour to maintain.
My mother sat beside me on the plush leather sofa, her hands clasped tightly over her vinyl handbag. She had worn her best navy dress, the same one she wore to my Westbridge graduation, but her shoulders were hunched, smaller than they had been three days ago.
"Mara," she whispered, her voice barely carrying over the faint hum of the air conditioning. "If they take away the scholarship money from Westbridge... do we have to p
