Family Law, Gin Phillips [top novels of all time .txt] 📗

counseling. Sometimes a woman must recognize that she needs to end a relationship.’”

She folded the paper, dropping it onto the coffee table. I didn’t look at it.

Mom wasn’t impressed by Lucia, not since that first meeting, or, more likely, she was too impressed. It added up to the same thing.

I made things worse, of course.

“That’s interesting,” I said, not sounding interested. “Can I get some tacos?”

Mom couldn’t see me anymore once I stepped into the kitchen. The shells were lined up on a baking sheet, so she had remembered to toast them this time, and that was nice. The meat was still simmering, orangish, in the skillet. I turned off the burner and scooped filling into a couple of shells; I decided I didn’t feel like shredding cheese. I just squeezed taco sauce out of the packet.

By the time I’d fixed my plate, Mom had disappeared. She’d gone to stare at the nonleaking ceiling, most likely. I ate a few bites, standing by the kitchen table and staring at the lemon wallpaper until I made the pattern of lemons and leaves blur into fat honeybees with green wings. When the hallway to the back of the house stayed empty and silent, I hurried back into the den and grabbed the newspaper. I spread it across the kitchen table and read the article for myself. It was only a couple of short columns. Mom had covered most of the part about Lucia, but not the ending.

The pretty little blonde has a history of firsts, it said. Before moving into private practice, she was the first woman to be appointed a deputy district attorney in the state of Alabama.

First woman to substitute on the bench of the Montgomery County Criminal Court, it said.

One of only two women in her class at Cumberland Law School, it said.

I studied the black-and-white photo. Lucia was talking into a phone, her hair hanging across her face. When I saw her in the afternoons, her makeup had usually worn off, her freckles showing, but in the photo she was a Hollywood version of herself.

“She’s not that little,” said Mom from behind me, and when I turned she was in a towel, showered and barefoot. One downside of all the carpets: you could never hear her coming.

I bit into my taco. Mom pinched a bite of meat from the skillet, flinching at the heat of it. She’d likely snitch another bite and consider it supper.

The phone on the wall rang, making the receiver jump. Almost surely Will Pearson. He always called between 8:00 and 8:30, which meant that on Tuesdays he interrupted Hart to Hart. Honestly, it would have been hard enough to make conversation if he called once a week—why would a boy call if he was just going to sit there and breathe?—but he called every night, which Mom said was a sign of a good boyfriend, but he wasn’t my boyfriend, so he wasn’t being good at anything except breathing. I’d pace between the kitchen table and the stove, and a silence would seep through the twisted-up phone cord, and eventually I would fill it. I’d talk and talk and he’d laugh at my jokes, and I couldn’t stand it, but on a Tuesday? Even worse.

The phone kept ringing.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Mom said. Her face was slicked with Pond’s, which she always said would soak in, but it never did.

“The show’s about to start,” I said.

Fourth ring. He’d hang up after the sixth.

“It’s rude not to answer, Rachel. If a boy cares enough to call, you can care enough to answer.”

A piece of shell caught my gums like a shard of glass. I thought about reminding her of John Martin, that nice turtle of a man, no neck but so kind, and Mom made me answer the phone four nights in a row and tell him she was in the shower, until he said, She takes a lot of showers, doesn’t she?, and finally he stopped calling.

There came a time with every man where she enjoyed ignoring the phone more than she’d ever enjoyed it ringing.

“I don’t want him to call, Mom,” I said.

“It could be your father,” she said.

She knew I would pick up the phone if I thought it was Dad, but if I admitted it, her face would shut down and in whatever invisible point system we had, she would score. Once upon a time Dad used to call most nights, but that had stopped because who could come up with that much conversation? (I’m talking to you, Will Pearson.) Then for a while he called every Thursday, but after he got the job as regional sales director last fall, he started traveling so much that we stopped our regular weekends. That meant we didn’t need to go over so many details. I’d talked to him last week, and he never called two weeks in a row.

The phone finally hushed. I carried my plate to the sofa, just as the television screen went white with bright sky and the plane took off the runway. The theme song had started: This is my boss, Jonathan Hart, a self-made millionaire. He’s quite a guy.

“You need to be nicer,” Mom said.

“I am nice,” I said, but mostly I soaked in the credits and Stefanie Powers’s magical hair. This is Mrs. H. She’s gorgeous. She’s one lady who knows how to take care of herself.

“Are you?” Mom sat next to me, sofa cushions tipping enough that my taco slid across the plate.

“You hear me talking to him most nights, Mom.”

“Maybe he’ll grow on you.”

I wanted to watch my show. I wanted her to shut up about this boy she’d never even met, who possibly smoked pot and plus he was Catholic, so why was she his biggest fan?

“Why should I hope he grows on me?” I said. “Like, what, fungus? Is that a good theory of dating?”

Her lips clamped together, making wrinkles where there weren’t usually any. Her eyes turned wet. She could