Family Law by Gin Phillips (phonics reading books .txt) 📕

ways. “You mean do we call each other something adorable like Pinkie and Pinky? Like Hepburn and Tracy in the movie?”

The girl nodded. Lucia cast back her thoughts, letting them arc, ribbonlike, and she was peeking through a doorway in her childhood home, staring at the glossy dining-room table. Her mother and father sat at opposite ends, and two couples from church flanked them, and Lucia was supposed to be in the basement, but she’d tiptoed upstairs under the guise of being thirsty. The grown-ups were using the fancy green glasses, and one of the men—he looked like Abraham Lincoln—was saying, “So what was I wearing when he knocked on the door, Mary? What I always wear when I sleep. Not a darn thing.” It was a revelation to Lucia. Men slept naked. Married people slept naked. Married people talked about being naked. Over dinner. She’d clutched her plastic cup and realized there might be patterns other than the ones inside her own house. The possibilities had unspooled.

“We don’t have pet names,” she told the girl. “Although my husband’s friends from college call him Bard. He wrote poetry once upon a time. And his middle name is Bartholomew. So—”

“Bard-olomew?” Rachel sounded out.

“I think it sounds better if you’ve been drinking heavily,” Lucia said, then realized it was probably not an appropriate comment.

“What’s his first name?” Rachel asked.

“Evan.”

“Is he a lawyer?”

“Nope.”

Rachel shifted in the chair again, scanning the lobby. There wasn’t much to see, and her eyes fell on the paintings again. “Tallulah Bankhead,” she said, nodding at Lifeboat. “She’s from Alabama, right? My aunt lives on Bankhead.”

“Your aunt must live pretty close to me. The street’s named for Tallulah’s family.”

Rachel kept her eyes on the painting. “Are you going to be Mom’s lawyer?”

“Your mother may not even need a lawyer.”

“If she does, will it be you?”

“She and I would have to have another conversation.”

“If you had to guess,” the girl prodded, undeterred, “do you think you’ll be her lawyer?”

Lucia lifted a hair from the edge of her skirt, watching it drift to the carpet. She suspected the girl’s mother would never get around to deciding whether she wanted a divorce.

“Probably not,” she said.

“Good.”

Rachel gave a small smile, eyes veering toward Lucia but missing slightly, settling on the porcelain lamp with its pattern of twining flowers. Her hands flapped once, twice, in her lap before her fingers found one another, interlocking. It was the first trace of uncertainty she’d shown.

A horn honked outside. Lucia suddenly noticed the patter of rain.

“That’s Mom,” Rachel said. “Thanks for letting me stay.”

She was through the front door before Lucia had even finished waving. As the door eased shut, Lucia could see her leaping down the wet stairs two at a time.

She sat in the stillness, listening to the rain. She missed the sound of the girl talking. After a while she pushed herself to her feet, and she made herself loosen her grip on her briefcase. Whoever had vandalized her car—it had to be a man, surely, because what woman would urinate on a tire?—had wanted to scare her. If she dreaded walking out the door—if she panted and worried and flinched—then he had won.

She was not panting.

She was not worried.

She turned off the lamps. She glanced through the window and watched the steady line of traffic, and then she was opening the door and locking it behind her.

The rain picked up, typing a fast rhythm against the leaves. She crossed the Spanish tiles, a remnant of her building’s former life as a home for some long-dead lesser Gatsby type. She angled around the side of the building, where the ivy grew thick and the two big oaks turned every hour into twilight. She could not feel a single drop of rain. The air smelled of green and dirt, and here she did grant herself a pause: she had a clear view of the parking lot from this angle. If anyone was waiting, she would see them before they saw her.

The lot was empty. Only her car and the pit-marked asphalt.

Still, she waited. She leaned against the still-dry concrete blocks of the building wall, a sign that Gatsby’s vision might have been bigger than his bank account. She ran her hand along one block: the slight curve of it had the same feel as Evan’s shinbone under her fingers. Across the parking lot, the rain ran down her car, streaming over the fender. Puddles underneath.

She could still smell the urine.

Cracks spreading across the glass. A rock? A gloved fist? It would take real force to break a windshield so thoroughly.

The sky had still been tinged pink that night, beautiful. Before she’d gone inside to call the police, she’d backed up against her battered car and threaded her keys between her knuckles like her father had taught her.

Are there any other girls? he’d asked her when she came home after her first month of law school.

There’s two of us, she’d said.

But don’t they think—he’d started, and she’d wanted to ask who “they” were and what they might think, but she hadn’t. Instead of finishing his sentence he’d asked for her keys and showed her how to use them as claws.

III.

Rain poured over the eaves of the carport. Lucia turned the key in the kitchen door, and before she’d opened it an inch, it slammed shut.

Every single day.

She peered through the window, meeting Moxie’s delighted gaze. The Airedale had her massive paws propped against the glass, all fifty-plus pounds of her straining in welcome.

“We’ve been through this,” Lucia said to the dog through the glass. “You have to get off the door before I can come in. Get down. Get down, Moxie. Moxie. Off.”

The dog bobbed and panted. She gave a long lick to one of the panes, her tongue sluglike.

“Honestly, you know how this works,” Lucia said. “Get off the door. Off.”

The dog tossed her head and lashed her tongue through the air and then, more likely from a loss of