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

cheese and crackers might make an acceptable dinner. She turned as Evan stepped into the kitchen, his Nikon camera in his hands. He loved that camera. He held it like a newborn, two handed and well supported.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He hip-checked her gently, taking her place in front of the stove. He twisted the lens of the camera, barely glancing at her.

“I wanted a picture of this,” he said.

He leaned closer to the ruined panel, and she’d always been confused about why you needed to be physically closer to a thing when you had a zoom lens. She watched him twist and sidestep, and she wondered if he was trying to document her descent into madness.

“Why do you want a picture?” she asked.

“Because it sums up what I love about you.”

She absorbed that for a moment.

“That I’m crazy?” she said.

“That you don’t just sit there,” he said, and she was surprised to see that he was smiling at her. “This thing starts buzzing, and it won’t stop, and you don’t think, oh, well, I’ll just live with it. You don’t call someone and wait for them to come and fix it. You’re the Little Red Hen. I mean, I would have eventually called someone, but—let’s face it—it would have been next week. You went looking for a hammer.”

He started to laugh and kept going until he had to brace himself against the edge of the stove. He slanted his face toward her, and it had been a long time since she had seen his face light up when he looked at her.

“It was stupid,” she said.

He poked at the exposed wires of the stove with one finger. “It wasn’t only stupid.”

“You like that I’m the Little Red Hen?” she said. “Because it sometimes feels like—”

“It feels like what?”

“You don’t like how I do it myself.”

He faced her, the whole mess of the stove behind him. Her wrist was feeling the weight of the iron skillet, and she eased it onto the counter.

“Lucia,” her husband said, his face still alight. “It drives me crazy how you do it yourself. And I love how you do it yourself. It’s not an exact science.”

He picked up the hammer, tossing it and catching it. She thought of him reaching onto a top shelf, handing down a bowl into her grandmother’s butter-slick hands. He had known almost everyone she had ever loved.

“It feels satisfying, doesn’t it?” she said, as he flipped the hammer once more.

“It does.”

“I don’t want to leave this house.”

“I know,” he said. “I don’t really want to move, either, but I think we should. We haven’t even had a solid offer for it yet, so who knows? But I imagine we’ll get an offer eventually and we’ll go back and forth a few hundred times and eventually we’ll figure it out.”

He stepped behind her, and she assumed he was headed for the tool drawer until she saw his tie flick through the air. His arms came around her, and he looped the tie around her hips, pulling her against him, chest to thighs. She felt his stubble against her cheek, and she leaned against him as he held her there, lassoed.

Rachel

I.

The mailman came by a little after 4:00 p.m., just like he always did. I walked barefoot down the driveway not long after that, just like I always did. I pulled a handful of mail out of the mailbox. The first two pieces were letters for Mom—bills, probably—but the third was a small box wrapped in brown paper with my name written on it.

I had thoughts of Stefanie Powers until I recognized Lucia’s writing.

I stood in the shade of Mr. Cleary’s pecan tree and I spun the box in my hands. The brown paper was folded, perfectly symmetrical, and the ends were slick with tape. I ripped open the wrapping, letting the paper fall to the concrete. The spider lilies lining the driveway tickled my legs.

I was holding a white box—a jewelry box—and when I lifted the lid I saw a square note on a kind of stationery I’d never seen. It had a swirling texture, like fingerprints, and it was the almost the color of my skin. Lucia had written in a purple pen: I was thinking of you on St. Patrick’s Day, it read. I missed that window, but I’m early with these. I know how much you like holidays. I hope they don’t weigh down your ears.

When I lifted the note, I found a pair of earrings, egg shaped. Almost actual egg sized. They were tacky and glitter covered, and I loved them, but I went back to the note and I soaked up Lucia’s writing.

The last time I cried in public was at Charlotte’s Web when I was seven, but I started weeping over earrings, not able to do more than turn my face away from the road. I had almost forgotten what it felt like to have Lucia choose me. I had chosen her first, of course, but every time she poured me a ginger ale, she chose me back. When she took me to the Crab Shack for my birthday and snuck over ahead of time to arrange for cupcakes—she chose me. When she maneuvered this box exactly in the middle of the wrapping paper, making sure the tape was evenly spaced—she chose me. It was my name she had spelled out letter by letter. My mother didn’t get to pick me, but Lucia did, and that meant I was someone other than the girl who lived in this house.

I was still standing next to the spider lilies when Mr. Cleary called my name. When I turned, I saw him standing on his front porch, his hands full of wires and cords. I pretended to cough, an excuse to swipe at my eyes.

“I had an idea,” he said to me.

He clearly hadn’t noticed the crying.

“What is it?” I said, and my voice sounded