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40

“Let’s go over the plan one more time.”

Sarah smiled at me. It was a bright day. We walked through the park, hand in hand. It was cold out, but the sky was blue and the sun reflected off the snow. Couples and families were strolling around us.

I tried to brush a piece of hair from her face, but my hand was shaking. I was still trying to recover from the shock of it all, even though now, two weeks later, it felt about as real as someone else’s dream. Somehow the final surprise had been the worst of all: when we got home from that underground cathedral, Miles was gone. Vanished. No note. No clues. We didn’t know if he’d run away in shame or if they’d taken him.

He was my oldest friend, and I had no idea if he was alive or dead.

Sarah took my hand and kissed it.

“The plan,” she said again.

I nodded, steeling myself.

For me, the plan was to finish law school. I would take the Incompletes on my transcript, if the school would let me, and start over in the fall. It was something I could never recover from, not totally. There would be no law firm job. No big salary. No guarantees. For Sarah, the plan was to search for a program that would take her based on her real transcript, F’s and all. She wanted to try family medicine. Something about learning to care for people from the day they were born until the day they died called to her now. I guess it was the circle and the line, just like Isabella said. We were searching for balance. When our training was done, Sarah and I would go back to Lamar, together. I’d open a small practice, just like my grandfather had done sixty years ago.

It was a good plan, but it was filled with question marks. Our résumés weren’t what they used to be. We weren’t what we used to be. For the first time in our lives, nothing was sure anymore. I felt terrified.

I also felt happy.

“I got you something,” Sarah said.

She handed me the package she’d been carrying. It was wide and flat, cloaked in a black velvet wrapping. I set it down on a ledge and tried to untie the strings, but my hands were still too shaky. Sarah leaned in and used her surgeon’s fingers. She undid the knot and folded the velvet flaps open, revealing a flat, polished piece of wood, with ornate engraving.

It was an old-fashioned shingle that read:

JEREMY DAVIS, ATTORNEY AT LAW

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Jodi Reamer and Emily Bestler for their unparalleled wisdom, insight, guidance, belief, and kindness. I couldn’t have dreamed up a better agent or editor. And thanks to Amanda Burnham for gracing the book with her amazing illustrations. For research on certain topics, I turned to Milo Rigaud’s 1969 work, which I won’t name here to preserve the surprises in this book. Professor Bernini’s mine car hypothetical is based on the famous trolley dilemma, which, according to the Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy, was conjured up by Philippa Foot and developed by Judith Jarvis Thomson. The library hypothetical was a favorite practice case of the Harvard Speech and Parliamentary Debate Society. Bernini’s course is an homage to two wonderful classes named Justice, Professor Michael Sandel’s at Harvard and Professor Bruce Ackerman’s at Yale Law (though any errors are my own). Thanks to Noam Weinstein, Anne Dodge, and Nicholas Stoller for reading the book and providing excellent comments. Laura Stern, Alec Shane, and many others contributed invaluably to the production of this book. Most of all, I would like to thank my parents, sister, and Jude, for everything.

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