My husband sat in court beside the “Bu.tcher of Broadway,” mocking me like I’d already lost—after freezing my accounts and cutting me off. The judge was seconds from ruling in his favor… Then the doors burst open. A woman in a white suit walked in—and the moment his lawyer saw her, everything fell apart.

She set the soup down on the desk and looked at the painting for a long time.

“What do you call it?”

“I don’t.”

“Why?”

“Because names make things sound intentional.”

She considered that, then said, “Sometimes intention is only visible afterward.”

I looked at her.

She nodded toward the canvas.

“It’s good,” she said. “Violent. Controlled. You always did have my sense of composition, even if you resented the source.”

I snorted. “That almost sounds like a compliment.”

“It is. Don’t make me repeat it too often.”

That became something of a rhythm between us after.

She would come by with food too expensive for comfort and sit in the studio while I worked. Sometimes she talked about cases. Sometimes about my father. Sometimes about neither. She retired from Bennett, Crown & Sterling at the end of that year and did it the way she seemed to do everything else—decisively, with excellent timing, and leaving behind enough legend to distort the air for the next woman in line.

One evening, while cleaning brushes in the sink, I asked her why she had really retired.