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

she’d see me standing there, too, and she would smile. I’d tell her the story of how Grant and I headed off in the middle of the night, and Lucia would laugh up at the ceiling, and I had not seen her do that for so long.

“Come on,” Grant said, coming back to the kitchen, a suit jacket and a tie draped over his arm. He was buttoning up a white shirt, and I didn’t mind the chest hair so much this time.

I couldn’t quite keep up with him as we cut through his front yard. He climbed in the driver’s side of his red VW Bug and stretched across to unlock my side. It was only once I was inside that I felt the discomfort inching back. The car was small, his knee was maybe three inches from mine, and if he took a corner too sharp, my shoulder would bump against his. I could smell chlorine, which was probably some combination of both of us. It made the space feel more claustrophobic, like indoor pools and locker rooms. As Grant backed out of the driveway, I lifted the lock of my door up and down, making sure I could unlock it.

It didn’t take long to reach downtown at that time of night. We were out of our neighborhood in a couple of minutes, and soon we were in Old Cloverdale, which you could recognize by the size of the mansions and the tree branches that stretched over the road and met in the middle, blocking out the sky in places.

“The McNally House,” Grant said. “It’s at the McNally House. I always forget whether that’s on Court or Perry or Hull. Or even on Gilmer? I still confuse them after all these years. They all look the same.”

“My school is on South Court,” I said.

He pulled up to a stop sign. “That doesn’t help me a whole lot. Unless the McNally House happens to be next to your school?”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Let’s try Perry,” he said, making the turn. “We’re looking for a three-story colonial. White with columns. Very Gone with the Wind.”

“All of these look like Gone with the Wind,” I said and kept my face to the window, enjoying, as always, the gas lanterns and the stone fountains, the never-ending porches and the gazebos and the Julietish balconies. The Governor’s Mansion. And then we were deep into the part of downtown that felt like a foreign country, the one-way streets turning into a maze. The mansions had evaporated by the time we crossed under I-85, replaced by apartments and tiny brick churches and stores with bars on the windows. We stopped at a red light, and I watched a black man walk down the street, unsteady. The light changed to green. In another block we passed a couple of skinny white men, baseball caps pulled down, laughing so loud I could hear them as we passed. A hardware store had the glass knocked out of a window.

Next to me, Grant had gone quiet. He was frowning at the road as he slowed at yet another light.

“Is this right?” I asked.

“No,” he said, as the light turned green. “I’ve gone too far. And the one-way streets make this such a pain in the ass. Which way, now, let’s see—Adams won’t go through. Oh, damn it, Adams did go. It’s Washington that’s only headed west. Okay, let’s see. We’ll turn here on Dexter and then we’ll head back up on McDonough—or maybe Hull?”

It seemed like his sense of direction must be even worse than mine—we’d wound up in the worst part of downtown, nowhere near anything that looked like Tara. We passed a building that had clearly burned and never been repaired, a world away from marble columns. Surely Grant had known that he’d made a mistake long before I said anything. He was nervous, I thought.

“Do you mind driving at night?” I asked.

He’d managed the turn onto Hull, so we were at least headed back into the right neighborhood. He aimed a quick look at me.

“No,” he said. “Not at all.”

“Some people have trouble seeing in the dark,” I said. “Because of the reflections and everything. Mom won’t drive at night.”

“I’m not your mother, Rachel.”

He made a right turn and then, a few seconds later, a left turn. I didn’t see a street sign at either turn, and nothing looked familiar. Aunt Molly’s house couldn’t have been too far away—maybe even walkable—although she didn’t live around the mansions. I knew I had to be close to my high school, but I had no idea how I would get there. We hadn’t passed another car in several minutes.

“Do you know where we are?” I asked.

“I have a general idea,” he said. “But I’m still working on how we get to the McNally House from here.”

With a jab of his foot and a swirl of the stick shift, he slowed down and pulled over to the curb on the one-way street. It was even darker here—we were in a gap between streetlights, and the branches overhead blocked the slice of moon. I pressed my face against the window, looking for a street name. My foot kicked an empty Coke bottle on the floorboard.

“What street are we on?” I asked.

“Not sure,” he said. “Just give me a minute. I’m trying to orient myself.”

He leaned to the right, peering up through the windshield, although there was nothing to see. His hand landed on the edge of my seat, and if he stretched his fingers out, he would touch my thigh.

“Maybe I am a little jittery,” he said. “The truth is that I haven’t driven a whole lot around this part of town at night. Let me think—how would I get to Gilmer from here?”

“The McNally House is on Gilmer?” I said.

“Yeah. At about Gilmer and Felder, I think. We just have to figure out where we are now.”

He turned to me, one hand still on my seat and the other hand on the