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

of a car as it drove past, and I thought of my mother sleeping on the couch. She might wake up and decide to check on me, and she’d find me sitting here in the dark, dress discarded, with this divorced man who was not so much older than I was, and I thought of the excuses I could make. He got home earlier than expected, I’d say. He was checking to make sure the filters were working, I’d say.

“You know what you said about the Bible?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Since God wrote it,” I said, “doesn’t it all have to be true? He would get it right.”

“Men wrote it.”

“Right. But God told them what to write.”

He kicked back and forth, splashing. “I see. All right, I believe men wrote it, and maybe there was inspiration at work, but they were only men. They did the best they could. The finished product is—messy.”

I let the words eddy, and I watched the blues and blacks of the water.

“You were writing something when I got here,” I said.

“Not really. More like thinking on paper. Just work.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a lawyer, I think.”

“You think?”

“Let’s just say that it’s not all that I hoped it would be.”

“I have friend who’s a lawyer,” I said, because I wanted to say her name. “Lucia Gilbert.”

He leaned forward, and the colored lights freckled his face. “Lucia Gilbert?”

“You know her?”

“Well, yeah,” he said. “In passing. I could be listening to her right now.”

“What?”

“You know that award she was getting tonight?”

“No.”

The breeze blew, barely, but it was enough to make me shiver. The leaves rustled behind me, and I crossed my arms.

“It’s a banquet downtown,” Grant said. “A Woman-of-the-Year thing. My firm bought a table at it, and I thought about going. What time is it now? I bet she’s right in the middle of her thank-you speech. How do you know her?”

I watched a small frog, belly up, float past my feet. It was as small as a toenail.

“My mom talked to her about the divorce,” I said. “Mom didn’t hire her, but I just, sort of, showed up at her house and she let me in.”

“Huh,” he said. “Okay then.”

“I haven’t seen her in a while,” I said. “Mom is not a big fan.”

“No,” he said. “I’d imagine she’s not. Who is your mother a fan of, by the way?”

The current in the pool shifted, and the frog drifted back in my direction.

“Princess Diana?” I said. “Anyway, Mom told me not to go over to Lucia’s house anymore, and she also told Lucia to stay away from me.”

These were not sentences I had said to anyone else.

“Why?” he asked.

“There was a shooting,” I said.

“You were there when it happened?” he said. “At her house?”

“You know about it?”

“Yeah. Everybody knows about it. Somebody shoots up a lawyer’s house and drives away? It’s the sort of thing other lawyers find worth talking about.”

“She sent me some Easter earrings today.”

Grant let his head fall back, and he stared at the sky for long enough that I thought my earrings comment must have been either incredibly boring or somehow offensive. After a few breaths, though, he slapped his hands against the concrete and jumped to his feet, water sloshing over the side of the pool.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“What?”

“Let’s go hear your friend. You get your dress back on, and we’ll drive downtown and check it out. Maybe we can catch the end of it. You can surprise her. Come on. Spur of the moment.”

It took me several long seconds to move. When I did, I only lifted my legs from the water and curled them under me. I looked over at my house again, so close, and Mom had told me countless times that if someone tried to grab you and pull you into a car, fight with everything you had because once you were in the car your chances of surviving dropped by half.

I looked up at him, and the lights were blinking faster against the wall, like maybe there was a short in the strand.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“Completely,” he said. “You’ve got a dress. You’re barely damp. I’ll throw on something decent. Your mom never has to know. Unless, I don’t know—you’d rather go back home and curl up on the couch next to her? Have a little nap and watch some Lawrence Welk?”

I thought of my mother making her way over the cobblestones, opening the gate, and looking across our driveway at the empty pool. She would panic, surely. I felt the pull of her, but I didn’t want to feel it.

I thought of Lucia.

Watch this.

“In your car?” I asked, standing.

“Are you saying you want to drive?” he asked. “Here I was thinking I was being gentlemanly. Come on. You got me thinking with your talk about plane tickets. It’s been ages since I’ve done something fun and stupid and unplanned.”

I picked up my dress and pulled it over my head. I ran my fingers through my hair.

“This sounds fun to you?” I asked. “An awards dinner for someone you hardly know?”

“You’d be surprised at what I think is fun,” he said. “Here’s your shoes.”

I jogged toward him, ignoring the voice in my head telling me not to run at the pool. As I slid on my flip-flops, Grant opened the kitchen door. A moth jounced off the glass and slipped inside.

“So are we doing this?” he asked. “Or are you escaping back to your couch?”

“We’re doing it,” I said.

He took off through his kitchen, not quite running but close to it. I’d caught some of his excitement. I liked this pace. No thinking, only gliding from one step to the next. I locked the door behind me as I stepped into the kitchen, which was still dark, lit only by the lamp next to the sofa.

Lucia, I thought. She would be surprised—pleased?—to have me appear at a lawyerly banquet, out of nowhere, and she’d surely recognize Grant, so maybe she would say hello to him, and then