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

He rubbed his hands along the couch cushions, back and forth.

“Sorry,” he said.

“It’s okay. I’ll find out more. I’m just now absorbing it all.”

“He’s in jail, I take it?”

“He is,” Lucia said, and it was the truth. The specifics of bond seemed like a complication not worth explaining. She stepped back to the oven, pushing at the timer with her palm, pressing the stem of the clock. She took away her hand. The buzzing was undiminished.

“You should tell Rachel,” Evan said.

“What?” she said.

“She’ll be thrilled that she can come back over.”

“I’m not sure she should.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure her mother would let her. And I’m not sure she’d want to come. Don’t you think she might still be shaken up?”

“Did she say that?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know. I haven’t talked to her.”

She turned back to the oven. She was stammering like a teenager, stumbling over her words. She slammed the heel of her palm against the squawking timer, hard enough that her hand absorbed the round imprint of the clock stem. It stung, and she flexed her fist.

“You haven’t talked to her since when?” said Evan.

“December.”

He pushed off the couch, and then he was right next to her, too close. The smell of Juicy Fruit.

“You knew that,” she said. “I told you that I’d promised her mother I would keep my distance.”

The fact that he apparently did not know it left her feeling adrift. It was the sort of question that showed he’d been living a life completely separate from hers.

“Yeah,” he said. “You said her mother didn’t want her over here. I get her mother being nervous. But you cut off all contact with Rachel? You haven’t even called her? Bullets fly at her, and then you abandon her?”

“I haven’t abandoned her,” she said.

She turned so she didn’t have to breathe his gum breath. She did not think she could explain it to him, and she was not sure she should have to. Surely it didn’t matter, ultimately, if Rachel sat on this particular couch or watched this particular dog gnaw her hind leg. Yes, Lucia missed her. Yes, she’d felt kinship and affection and she’d felt needed in some blurred way, as if she might be the answer to a question Rachel hadn’t quite asked. This tipped uncomfortably into the nursery-rhyme rhythm of make a difference and have an impact and reach out and touch someone—and so what if she had felt it? She had also believed that the two of them were safe sitting in her sunroom chatting about the ABC prime-time lineup and true love. She’d believed that if she agreed to sell this house, the tension between her and Evan would ease. She’d believed that if she ever got the name of who had fired that gun, she would understand what had happened. But none of it had lined up as neatly as she’d imagined.

“Margaret is her mother,” she said.

“Technically, yes,” Evan said. “All right, that was nasty. Yes, she’s Rachel’s mother. But what are you? You’re something.”

She shook her head.

“I got some good news,” she said.

He stepped back, nearly tripping over Moxie, who had materialized on the kitchen floor. “Other than the man who tried to kill you being caught?”

Lucia absorbed that. They spoke to each other with such sawed-off words. She had thought this was a bad couple of days and then a bad couple of weeks, but increasingly she was afraid that it was a downward slide into the kind of marriage she swore she would never have.

No, she never swore it. She never even considered it a possibility. She never thought she and Evan could be anything other than happy. She thought—secretly, unspoken—that the biggest determinant of a good marriage was choosing well in the first place. She had done that. And although she knew it was possible that they could work through this, she also knew that if you lost some fundamental joy in each other, it was gone. No amount of counseling or good intentions could bring it back.

Sometimes, late at night, she was sure that they had lost it.

“Yes,” she said to him. “Other than that. I got a call today that the Montgomery County Women’s Alliance has selected me as the Woman of the Year. They said they want to recognize me for, oh, ‘advancing the rights of women.’”

Evan nodded. He jerked his head slightly, possibly trying to shake off—literally—his irritation over Rachel. Over all manner of things. She watched him. She expected him to tell her once again that when she did these sorts of events, it only announced her location to the crazies.

“That’s wonderful,” he said instead. “Congratulations.”

“The ceremony is in a couple of weeks,” she said. “April second. There’s a fancy dinner at the McNally House, and then I give a speech. There might even be a trophy.”

“I’ll go with you.”

She could tell he expected her to object, and she didn’t know why. “Great. I was assuming you’d be my date. I thought I’d invite Mom and Dad, too.”

“They’d have to drive at night,” Evan said. “He’ll tell you to bring the gun.”

“And she’ll tell me to wear a girdle.”

“Do you own a girdle?”

“I do not,” she said.

“Don’t wear a girdle. Or a bra.”

She smiled. The joy was not gone between them, not yet. It just faded in and out, the reception spotty.

II.

Katherine Jemison walked through Lucia’s doorway, unsmiling, which was surprising. Men, under duress, were comfortable with a nod. Women, though—even if they thought they were going to lose their husband or their house or their children—they smiled. They asked Lucia how she was doing and they told her they liked the shade of red on her walls or the hardwood floors. If they were going to rage or weep, they only did it after they smiled.

“I can’t thank you enough for this,” Katherine said, offering a press-and-release hug, brisk.

As she stepped back, her chin brushed Lucia’s forehead. Her