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

Lucia laughed. “You don’t need to bring me anything. I appreciated the flamingo, too, but you don’t have to get me gifts.”

“It’s just something silly,” Rachel said.

She wasn’t looking at Lucia, though—she was staring over Lucia’s left shoulder, and Lucia didn’t have to look behind her to know why.

“Come in,” she said. “You can meet my husband. Evan, this is Rachel.”

There was a moment when they stood there looking at each other—Evan by the countertop with a pair of scissors in one hand and a package of 9-volt batteries in the other, Rachel in the shadows of the carport. Lucia watched Rachel watching Evan. She assumed her husband would see the girl much as she did—pretty in the way of teenage girls, slightly unwieldy, shorts too short—but she wondered how Rachel saw her husband. How did he rank by thirteen-year-old—by now, probably fourteen-year-old—standards? Was he what the girl had expected? Would the glasses count against him?

“I’ve heard all about you, Rachel,” Evan said.

He set down the scissors and held out a hand. Rachel nearly lunged for it across the doorstep. “I’ve been wanting to meet you,” she said, giving a solid shake. “May I call you Bard?”

He smiled. “You may. Are you coming inside?”

Of course she was. She cheerfully accepted the offer of a ginger ale, and she once again took the circuitous route to the sofa. She stopped at the driftwood, then peered around the edge of the bookshelves.

“It’s a mandolin,” Evan said, nodding at the instrument that hung on the wall. He eased into his armchair, still struggling to open the batteries.

“The guitar?” said Rachel.

“It’s not a guitar,” he said. “It’s a mandolin.”

“I gave it to him for his birthday a few years ago,” said Lucia, handing over a cold can of ginger ale.

Rachel laughed and asked Evan, “Do you play the mandolin?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t.”

“You could,” said Lucia.

“I never gave you any reason to believe that I would like to play the mandolin.”

“I don’t know why you wouldn’t,” she said to him, aware that they were hamming it up a bit. She sat down, her armchair facing Evan’s, the sofa to her right.

“A mandolin,” he said.

“So,” said Rachel, dropping onto the sofa. Her head turned back and forth between them. “Was that the weirdest gift that Lucia ever gave you?”

She was clearly chumming the water.

“She gave me a mushroom garden,” Evan said. “You were supposed to plant them all in a box and harvest them under the moon.”

Rachel laughed again. Or maybe she had never quite stopped laughing. Her fingertips dented the metal of her soda can. An off-key percussion.

“It was whimsical,” said Lucia.

“I don’t care for mushrooms,” said Evan.

“You didn’t have to eat them.”

“I don’t like to envision them.”

“Envision,” echoed Rachel softly. “I got a car hammer last Christmas.”

“Is there such a thing?” Lucia wondered.

Rachel nodded. She glanced at Moxie, who was licking her butt next to Evan’s chair. “Aunt Molly gave one to me and one to my mom. It’s a little hammer that fits in your glove compartment so if your car goes off a bridge, you can break the windows.”

“Why do you need your own hammer?” Evan asked. “You can’t drive.”

“So Mom and me can break the windows at the same time,” Rachel said. “Once you break the glass, the water would flood in right away, so you’d need to get out fast.”

“Jesus,” Evan said.

“She also gave me this necklace that has, like, a vial hanging on it, and she thought I could fill it up with Campho-Phenique in case of an accident. I think she got nervous after I went to the lake with Tina—she’s my best friend—and some guy let me drive his four-wheeler, only I’d never driven one before and I fell off and banged my head and talked crazy for a few hours, and Mom was furious and said if I had permanent damage she would sue that guy.”

Lucia did not want to interrupt by pointing out that a vial full of antiseptic would not help a concussion. Or that unless a child’s father was dead, imprisoned, or shut away in an insane asylum, a mother in Alabama had no legal right to sue over her child’s injuries.

“I could put perfume in the vial, too,” Rachel added. “Aunt Molly said that would be smart since I’m at the age when body odor starts. So that’s good to know.”

Lucia glanced at Evan, who had let his head fall into his hands. His shoulders shook. Outside, the wind chimes played their tune.

When Rachel left, the two of them stood under the carport and watched her cross the street, hopping over the curb with more clearance than necessary.

“I see what you mean,” Evan said.

“I knew you would.”

“Does she make you a little more ready to have kids?” he asked.

Lucia leaned against him, her fingers finding the rough edges of his unbuttoned sleeve. She liked this shirt, with its stripes the color of coffee and toast. She thought of childhood declarations of “best friends.” It was the same thing that drove marriage, she supposed. The beauty of pairs. Of fitting flush together, gapless.

“Maybe,” she said.

VI.

It was still a shock how early night fell in November. Winding through the familiar streets, Lucia passed the elementary school playground, where two boys were scaling the bars of a metal dome. She felt a flash of disapproval that they were wandering around alone after dark, but then she saw a woman—their mother, she assumed—standing by the fence, and she remembered that it was barely after 5:00 p.m.

She glanced back at the boys in the rearview mirror as one of them made it to the top of the dome, lifting his arms like Rocky.

Evan had liked the idea of living so close to a school.

As she turned onto her street, she recognized the light blue Chevy parked by the curb in front of her house. Rachel’s mother had started chauffeuring her daughter once she’d realized she was sneaking over.