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

van was unlit, but all the aluminum reflected the streetlights, and I could see my face looking back at me in one of the lids. The boxes mostly held wine, dozens of bottles, only their necks sticking out. I could hear the water in the fountain splashing, and, from inside the McNally House, I could hear voices that I imagined belonged to whoever owned all the stuff in the van.

I stepped behind one of the open doors, thinking it would make me less obvious. I didn’t want to interrupt Lucia, but I also didn’t want her driving off without seeing me. I’d need a ride home, wouldn’t I?

I glanced into the street again. No sign of Mr. Cleary. I glanced down at my skinned knee, and the blood had started to gel.

Lucia was wearing a gown that caught the headlights, and her hair was piled up in the way I loved. She was fidgeting, lifting one foot and then the other as she leaned into the passenger side of a red sports car. I heard footsteps behind me, and when I turned, I saw a man in a dark suit stepping off the curb, head swiveling. Left, right, left, right, he looked, all the way across the pavement.

I didn’t recognize him until I saw the dogs smack against the car window. The Moxie kidnapper had come to the banquet? I looked back at Lucia, who was pushing away from the car, seeing him, too. She called his name, and he opened his car door. The dogs slipped out and ran.

No one has any reason to be out after 9:00 p.m., I thought of Mom saying. Nothing good happens.

The headlights were too bright, and I had to put a hand over my eyes. Someone screamed—maybe Lucia. The sports car jerked, cutting sharply into the street, and the dog just kept coming, and then it lay there in the road. I looked around the parking lot. The door to the house was still open, and the white light came through it, comforting and safe, and I willed someone to step into the doorway. Someone would come.

Only they didn’t.

Lucia leaned over the dog, and so did the man—Marlon—and he looped an arm around his other dog, pulling him close. Then Lucia and Marlon were standing, and Lucia held a hand out, like Diana Ross.

The car, I realized. The car was still running. I saw it jolt forward as Lucia and Marlon backed away, too slowly. I couldn’t see anything of the driver—there was only a dark rectangle of windshield—but I could tell the driver was aiming for them. I felt the anger wash over me, and it simplified everything. My hands were empty, but I was capable of slaying all sorts of creatures.

Watch this.

Maybe terrible things happen. Maybe riptides and car wrecks and divorce and gunshots fall out of the sky, and maybe you are powerless against it. But maybe not.

I reached into the dark cave of the van and grabbed two bottles of wine, heavy and solid, and they fit perfectly in my hands. The car jerked toward Lucia, and as it did, I swung the bottles and let them go. One crashed against the road but another sailed over Lucia’s head and smashed against the hood of the car, and it was as if I had some hidden talent for freezing time. The car screeched and stopped. For a moment, so did Lucia and Marlon and even the beagle in his arms. The bottle wasn’t a bottle anymore—the glass had turned into confetti. Wine ran down the fenders and bumper, pooling on the asphalt, and any fear or anger inside me all at once tilted toward something like joy.

A woman inside the car shrieked, high pitched and helpless. Marlon leaped back, his hands wet and shining, barely keeping hold of his dog. Lucia turned, too, stepping to the curb and dragging him with her. Wine spilled everywhere.

I picked up another bottle, swinging it, and I was denser and lighter and more. I had no idea there would be such bliss in breaking things. A woman leaned out of the driver’s window and then pulled her head back into the car like a scared turtle, and I wanted her scared.

I could see when Lucia spotted me. Her hand stretched toward me, nails shining, so familiar that they were almost my own hands.

“Rachel,” she called, and I had missed hearing her say my name.

Lucia

I.

There was red wine everywhere. It looked as if the car had slaughtered her and Marlon then rewound back to where it started.

Donna was still screaming. The woman could do nothing but scream.

“What the hell?” said Marlon.

Lucia didn’t bother answering. Her skirt was soaked. Marlon, on one knee next to her, had wine running down his beard and his arms. He looked almost biblical. A shard of bottle had jammed under a windshield wiper, so when Donna turned them on, only one blade cut a swathe through the red. The other jerked and jolted, paralyzed.

The neck of the bottle was on the hood of the car, still corked.

Lucia looked at Rachel, who looked unhinged but ecstatic, smiling, another wine bottle in her hand. Claws scrabbled against asphalt: a few feet away, the injured dog was easing to its feet. Marlon still held the other beagle in his arms, its tongue curling at the air.

Lucia sank to the curb, something shellacked and leggy moving against her fingers. The glow of the streetlamp circled her, and she welcomed the light, even though the last few minutes had proven that it offered no protection at all.

Donna, head down in her burgundy-spattered car. Evan running down the sidewalk, his jacket flapping open like a cape.

Dark shapes fluttering around the streetlamp.

The moon, pearled and pointed.

All a jumble, spilling around her, and Lucia tried to follow each curl of sound and movement. The bright light seemed to be, in fact, the opposite of a barrier—it