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

there, I slid in the car fast, my thighs slick on the seat. I slammed the door and locked it. I was not entirely sure that Luther wouldn’t come ask her for a ride himself.

“So how was it?” she asked, cheerful. “Are you exhausted? Were there other kids there? Did you plant flowers?”

Yes, I said, to all of it. I wanted to keep her smiling. I always wanted to keep her smiling.

“You want to stop by Kmart on the way home?” she asked. “They’ve got blue raspberry Icees today.”

No, thank you, I said.

While Mom was taking her shower that night, I called Lucia. She didn’t like to talk on the phone, so I tried to be brief.

“I have something to ask you,” I said.

I could hear music in the background. Evan said something, but I couldn’t make out the words.

“You still there?” she said to me.

She was always so efficient.

“I got a speeding ticket,” I said, “and so instead of paying a fine, I got community service at Oak Park. There’s a guy there with me—he cleans the men’s bathrooms and I clean the women’s—but he’s there for raping his sixteen-year-old niece, and I wondered if you could come to the park next Saturday?”

I heard a small sound, like she set something down. A glass? A book?

“Raping his sixteen-year-old niece?” she said slowly.

I was calming a little. Her voice—her voice alone—made everything seem fixable. It had the opposite effect of my mother’s voice. Mom could ask a question and my shoulders would hunch, but with Lucia, a question would let me breathe out all the things I wanted to get rid of.

“He hasn’t done anything to me,” I clarified. “He asked me to go camping, and he’s been shot and stabbed and run over, but he hasn’t been, like, inappropriate.”

She was quiet.

“Let’s back up,” she said. “When did your community service start?”

She did not seem concerned about efficiency. I talked a long time. When I hung up, I did it slowly, because the phone line was another way of pressing my face to her window, and when the receiver settled into the cradle, I was jerked away from her puffy sofa and the lamp with dangly crystals. I was back inside my house and nowhere else. I wondered if I had been silly to call her and I wondered if really I only wanted to see if she was mine enough to sacrifice a Saturday and I wondered if she would bring bread so we could feed the ducks.

II.

It was nearly ninety degrees the next Saturday, an unusually hot and humid October day. Even the birds were lethargic. As Lucia and Evan circled around the pond toward me, two ducks tipped upside down, heads disappearing into the algae. They didn’t seem to have the energy to right themselves.

Lucia and Evan both gave me a hug as they said their hellos, our damp arms brushing. Evan was in shorts, which I’d never seen him wear.

“I need to get back to the bathrooms,” I said. “I was hoping you could head in the same direction, and, you know, just be around and—”

“Which way?” asked Lucia.

“Popcorn?” asked Evan.

“Yes,” said Lucia. I loved that about her. How she liked food. How she ate it, unafraid. She looked from Evan to me. “But let’s wait. Will he be there at the bathrooms, Rachel?”

“Luther?” I asked.

“The security guard,” she said.

“Wait,” I said. “What?”

“Will the guard be at the bathrooms watching you? Or do I need to go to his office?” she said.

“I don’t know if he’s in his office,” I said, which was true. “I haven’t seen him yet this morning. But you don’t need to say anything.”

She turned away, not answering.

I should have expected it, of course. Had I really thought she would be content to meander through the flowers? Had I secretly hoped she would do this—storm through the park, Jedi-mind-tricking anyone in her way?

I did not feel like I had hoped for it.

“Seriously, Lucia—” I started.

She was scanning the gray gravel path behind us, where an older couple had started tossing handfuls of Corn Flakes into the water. “Excuse me,” Lucia said, talking over me. “Do you happen to know where the guard shack is?”

The old couple didn’t happen to know. But the two girls on the other side of the water pointed us in the right direction after Lucia called to them loudly enough that a duck scuttled across the pond.

She did things like that. She asked strangers questions. They gave her answers. I had once walked around the Galleria in Birmingham with my mother for almost an hour looking for the Things Remembered monogramming store, and she refused to ask a single person for help. If I wanted to get my hair done for prom, she’d pace around the house, practicing the phone call for days. I want to make an appointment with Mildred, she’d whisper, circling the kitchen. Clickety-clack of heels. It’s for my daughter. No. Hello, I’d like to make an appointment for my daughter with Mildred. Hello, this is Margaret Morris, and I’m calling about an appointment for—Hello? May I ask who this is? I’m Margaret Morris calling about an appointment for my sixteen-year-old.

Circling circling. Clickety-clack.

Lucia’s sandals crunched on the gravel. She wore sandals when she wasn’t at work, even in the winter, and her toenails were perfect and red. Evan held her hand, and I walked slightly behind.

“What are you going to say?” I asked.

She paused, dropping Evan’s hand. “I won’t embarrass you.”

“I’m not worried about that.”

She set a pace faster than I could think. I could not form the right words, not even in my head, and I had no choice but to follow along, duckling-ish. I had just spotted the guard shack in its open clearing when I heard footsteps coming fast enough that it made me spin around.

“Hey,” Luther said, stopping a couple of feet away. “I was looking for you.”

His white T-shirt was wet at the armpits. He