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

interrupt, Lucia, but I was going to head out,” Marissa said, gold beads falling over the dents at her clavicles. “Unless—did you want—?”

“Go ahead,” Lucia said. “I’ll be fine.”

“But if—”

Marissa glanced at the potential client, and Lucia did a quick count in her head. Four days. Four days since she had last walked to her car alone. Facing the familiar Chinese-red walls of her office, it felt ridiculous to want a chaperone to walk to her own car. It was no more than fifty yards. She was not a child.

“You go on,” she told Marissa.

Lucia ended the meeting politely. She suggested that the next step was for Margaret to decide whether she really wanted to end her marriage. Every marriage has its ebbs and flows, she said. I appreciate you coming in.

Then Margaret was gone, and Lucia circled back behind her desk. She straightened the bow on her blouse. She signed the last stack of letters Marissa had typed up. She considered the windowsill, where the Flaming Katy was blooming effusively, the petals nearly matching the walls. Her aloe and jade plants were green and healthy, and for succulents, the whole arrangement looked lush.

Urine running through the treads of the tire.

Bits of broken glass glittering on the driver’s seat.

She forced herself to stop staring at her plants. She sorted through the green file folders on her desk: Campbell, Peterson, Cox. Grounds, elements, facts, financials. She slid the Lawrence deposition and the tax returns for the Shum case into her briefcase, snapping the brass latches. She made herself turn off the lights and shut the door. She pulled her key chain from her purse, and the dangling canister of mace tangled with her keys.

She was halfway down the hall before she saw the girl in the lobby.

It was a small room, so she’d mirrored one wall of it, and that meant she could see two girls, real shoulder against reflected shoulder. Both versions were sitting sideways, gazing at the arrangement of watercolor paintings behind the reception desk. Lucia was proud of those paintings. The men who had rented the offices before her had filled the space with hunting portraits—it had been barely a year ago that she’d stared at that wall full of hounds and setters. The men had asked her if she’d like to keep them.

Hunting dogs. Dead birds in their mouths.

You needed to comfort people in the waiting room. You needed to help them feel like they’d stepped into a friend’s home. Nothing too feminine: even a female client did not trust a lawyer prone to doilies. She’d invested in ocher armchairs and porcelain jar lamps, and she’d found a set of watercolors at an Oak Park art festival, impressionistic takes on movie posters, bright and interesting. Gable. Bogart. Katharine Hepburn. Cary Grant.

The girl turned her pale face. She had deep auburn hair nearly to her elbows. Lavender shirt and stonewashed jeans. Nothing shy about her look. Twelve or thirteen years old—an age Lucia felt unsure about.

“I like your paintings,” said the girl.

Her legs were folded under her, and she had a book in her lap. The cover showed a long-haired man running through the jungle.

“Thank you,” said Lucia. “Did you come with Margaret?”

The girl nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re her daughter?”

The girl nodded again. “She parked a few blocks away because she wasn’t sure she’d find any closer spots. She said I could stay here while she got the car. Is that okay?”

Lucia didn’t bother answering that. “What’s your name?”

“Rachel.” Her eyes fell on Lucia’s key chain, with its pink plastic flamingo nudging against the mace. “You’re going home, aren’t you? I can wait outside on the porch.”

“Don’t be silly,” Lucia said. “You’re not waiting outside.”

She stood there, considering. Children rarely came to her office. Occasionally a client didn’t have a babysitter, but the children would linger in the lobby doing dot-to-dots or something, and Marissa would keep an eye on them. Lucia never had conversations with them.

It was absurd that the woman had left her daughter here without even asking permission.

“You don’t have any posters of John Wayne,” the girl said. “Have you ever seen Angel and the Badman?”

Did most twelve-year-old girls discuss Westerns? Lucia considered whether to address the sociopolitical aspects of the Duke and why she did not hang him on her wall.

“Westerns aren’t my favorite,” she said.

“I love Westerns,” Rachel said. “And John Wayne. On Sundays they always show old movies on TBS, you know? If you think he’s not a good actor, have you seen him in True Grit? Or Rooster Cogburn with Katharine Hepburn?”

Lucia smiled. The girl was not like her mother. A negative reaction had not changed her course in the slightest.

“You’re right,” said Lucia. “He was good in those. Age added some depth.”

Rachel looked back at the paintings, and Lucia studied them, too. At some stage she had stopped seeing them as she came in and out of the office.

“Adam’s Rib,” Rachel said, nodding at the sepia-toned versions of Hepburn and Tracy. “It’s about lawyers, so that makes sense.”

“One of my favorites,” Lucia said.

Rachel faced her, eyes dark and fixed. “Do you think he means to hit her? Do you think it’s really a slap?”

Lucia dropped into one of the empty chairs. How were you supposed to talk to girls this age? How to discuss power dynamics and spousal abuse as it pertained to screwball comedies?

“Yes,” Lucia said. “I do think it’s a slap. I think he meant to slap her, but he can’t admit it to himself, much less to her.”

Rachel unfolded her legs, and her feet hit the floor softly. She reached an arm up, lifted her hair in one twisting motion that reminded Lucia of twirling cotton candy, then dropped the thick mass of it across one shoulder.

“You’re wearing a ring,” she said. “How long have you been married?”

“Two years.”

“Do you have kids?”

“No.”

“Do you and your husband have nicknames for each other?”

Lucia couldn’t remember the last time she’d been the one answering the questions. It was easier, in some