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

she should have done it all differently, because she had not turned into a crusader, at least not the kind who could have helped those children. She did not work for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which was walking distance from her office. If she had aimed for that path, she could have made it happen, surely. But she hadn’t, so what possible use was there in wondering?

She could sleep at night now. Normally. Her clients wished for things that she—and the courts—could possibly grant. When she flipped through her stacks of paper, she found answers in them.

She had no desire to relearn this time of night.

She had a good view of the partial wall between the small foyer and the sunroom. The cream-colored molding that set off the gold walls did not look as pristine from this angle. She stared at the decades of paint. How had she never noticed the pockmarks and bubbles? The molding looked fine from a distance, but up close, it was all flaws. The paint had peeled away completely in some patches, and Lucia could see down to the naked wood, the old iterations of paint exposed, archaeological.

She might as well make a call to a housepainter after she called the window repairmen.

III.

On Saturday, three days after the shooting, Lucia’s father called to ask if she and Evan would be home that afternoon. Her parents had visited once already: her father had run his finger down the splintered post of the carport, and her mother had started many sentences she didn’t finish.

Lucia wasn’t surprised that they needed more shoring up. She was standing in the kitchen when her father opened the door. He was inside so fast that Moxie never made a sound.

“It’s not locked?” he asked, incredulous.

“I saw you pull up,” Lucia said, wrapping her arms around him and kissing his rough cheek. How did he always smell of grass, she wondered, even when he’d just showered?

“You keep it locked, though?” he said.

“I’m not an idiot, Dad,” she said.

“I know that.”

Her mother pushed in, too, and her hug was longer than usual.

“Are you all right?” Caroline asked, breath in Lucia’s ear. “Are you doing all right, really?”

“I’m fine, Mother,” Lucia said. “I promise. It’s all over with, and the police are checking on us, making sure nothing else happens. It was just a fluke.”

“Oliver,” Evan called out, rounding the corner of the hallway. “Come have a seat.”

“No need,” said her father. “This won’t take long. I tell you, though, I still can’t get that game out of my head. I hate to admit it, but he’s the best that’s ever been.”

It took Lucia longer than it should have to realize that he was talking about the Iron Bowl. The Auburn-Alabama football game had been two weeks ago, but both her husband and her father were still talking about Bear Bryant, as if there were anything left to say that had not been printed a thousand times.

For once, she would be thrilled for the conversation to stay on football.

“Y’all want a glass of tea?” Lucia asked.

Her parents both shook their heads. Caroline stepped up to the kitchen counter, straightening the pile of mail. Oliver reached into his back pocket slowly, and Lucia somehow knew by just the motion of his arm that he’d brought a gun. He laid it flat in his palm and held it out to her.

“I want you to take this,” he said.

Evan was already shaking his head, but Oliver kept his eyes on Lucia. His hand was steady, and the gun was dark and polished. Attractive, even, if you thought of it as a sculpture.

“It’s just a little twenty-two pistol,” her dad said. “Good for a woman. Not too heavy. Not much recoil. It only holds six rounds, but it’d still be my choice. You can keep it in your purse. Go on. Just hold it and see how it feels.”

“Is it—”

“You think I’d hand you a loaded gun?” he said. “Didn’t I teach you anything? I’ve got the magazine in my other pocket.”

She took it from his hand. The metal was cool and smooth, light in her palm. Her father had taken her target shooting when she was younger, wooden circles hammered into trees, squirrels jumping through branches. She’d never particularly liked the idea of guns. This one, though, felt comfortable.

“Why do I need a lady gun?” she said.

She was playing her part now, and as she expected, her father snorted slightly. She expected Evan to laugh, but he didn’t.

“I’ve been warning you,” Oliver said, as he double-checked the deadbolt on the door.

Lucia shook her head. “Please don’t—”

“This is what happens when the blacks move in,” he said.

She set the gun on the counter, turning it so that the barrel pointed toward the wall. “Black people are not the issue. The neighborhood is perfectly safe.”

“It’s not their fault—I’m not saying that,” said Oliver. “It’s the way it is. Violence follows them, even the good ones. They bring it with them. You look at Martin Luther King and what happened everywhere he went. You can’t deny that’s the truth.”

Lucia stood at the spot where the kitchen linoleum gave way to den carpet. She kicked at a scrap of gnawed rawhide and, across the room, Moxie lunged to her feet.

“I can deny it,” she said.

“Honey,” said her mother. No more than that. It was not clear who she was chastising, but Lucia’s father pivoted, rubbing his hands together hard enough that it seemed possible he would start a fire.

Lucia watched him pace around her kitchen. She could picture him when he was dark haired and lean, driving her down country highways with cookie crumbs all over the front seat. He’d taken her past old sharecropper shacks, planks of wood barely stuck together. He’d pointed to two black children playing on a splintered porch, and he’d told her, Maybe you’ll pass one of those kids on the street one day, and maybe they won’t talk like you