It’s hot.
“Fuck you, you mean cunt!”
“Chelsea!” I yell, totally astounded.
I get to my feet and grab her arm, just as she moves to take a swing at the blonde. She struggles to get out of my grip as I push her behind me.
“I’ll shove those pearls down your throat, you miserable bitch!”
And the miserable bitch isn’t taking it quietly either.
“No, you little whore, fuck
you
! I will end you!” Her husband valiantly tries to hold her back.
Chelsea grabs for her, almost making it past me. “I’ll break your face, you plastic-surgery-addicted freak!”
This may be getting out of control. So I pick Chelsea up and throw her over my shoulder, legs kicking and cursing a blue streak into my back as I hold on to her with one arm.
“We’ll take a one-day suspension,” I tell the principal. “As long as Jeremy gets the same.”
“Done,” Janovich agrees, more eager than anyone to get us the hell out of his office.
I keep Chelsea out of the screeching hag’s reach. “Good luck with that, man,” I tell her husband, and walk out the door.
In two chairs lined up against the hallway wall sit Raymond and—judging by the bloody rag held against his nose—the ginger-haired Jeremy.
“Nice face,” I tell Carrot Top. Then to Raymond, “Let’s go.”
Raymond stares aghast at the still-raving woman hanging down my back. “What’s wrong with Aunt Chelsea?”
“Oh . . . ,” I say, trying to play it off, as we walk down the hall, “she’s just lost her mind a little bit.”
• • •
By the time we make it out to the parking lot, Chelsea is a little quieter—slightly calmer. “Put me down, Jake! Right now—I mean it.”
I set her on her feet.
And she proceeds to walk around me, right back toward the school.
I plant myself in front of her. “A, I’ve already spent countless unbillable hours keeping members of your family out of jail.”
She marches forward, undeterred. I cut her off again. “B, CFSA will not look kindly on you assaulting the mother of your nephew’s classmate at his school.”
That does the trick. Chelsea looks up at me, eyes blazing with fury . . . and pain. “That woman is a heartless bitch!”
I move in closer, my voice dropping. “I couldn’t agree more. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.” I rub her shoulder. “Are you good with that?”
Her breathing starts to level off. And she looks more like the noncrazy version of herself. “Yeah. I’m okay now.”
She turns around and heads toward her car, where Raymond stands. Her finger points at him. “You should’ve told me, Raymond!”
“I didn’t want to make it worse,” he says.
“I love you! It’s my job to protect you and I can’t protect you if you don’t tell me when someone is hurting you!”
“I told Jake,” Raymond yells, gesturing to me. “And he helped me. Everything will be better now.”
Chelsea looks at me sharply. Unhappily. And I get the distinct impression things won’t exactly be better for me.
She takes a deep breath. “Okay. We have to pick up the other kids. Let’s talk about this at home.”
Chelsea is rigid and silent on the drive home. She walks over to the neighbor’s house and thanks them for keeping an eye on the other kids. As they scatter inside the house, she frowns. “I need to talk to you in the kitchen, Jake. Now.”
As soon as we’re through the kitchen door, she turns on me. “How could you not tell me what was happening with Raymond?”
I really don’t understand why this is such a big deal with her.
“He asked me not to.”
Her arms swing out from her sides. “Two days ago, Rosaleen asked me to dye her hair three different colors! We don’t always have to do what they ask us! I thought I could depend on you—we’re supposed to be a team, Jake!”
I don’t know if it’s the fact that she’s yelling at me or the totally unrecognizable state that is now my life—but I start to get pissed.
“What does that mean?”
“What do you mean,
what does that mean
? It’s us against them—I’m already outnumbered; you’re supposed to be on my side.”
Then she looks at my face. And her beautiful eyes cloud over.
With uncertainty. Doubt.
“Aren’t you?”
Feelings of responsibility for all of them sit on my back like a bank vault. Of obligation and baggage—all the things I swore I’d never get mixed up in. And now she’s giving me shit? What the hell more does she want from me? Christ, isn’t it enough that I think about her—them—all the time? That I’m totally distracted? I go into work late and leave early at the drop of a hat, just to see them sooner.
For fuck’s sake it’s . . . it’s . . .
terrifying
.
I point to my chest. My words come out clipped and biting. “The only side I’m on is my own.” I rub my hand over my face. “Don’t get me wrong—you’re a good time and the kids are a trip, but I’m not Mr. fucking Mom here, Chelsea. This is not my life. I have priorities and plans that, believe it or not, have nothing to do with anyone in this house.”
I breathe hard after the words are out.
And Chelsea is . . . silent. Unusually still for several seconds. Then, without looking at me, she all but whispers, “My mistake. Thank you for clarifying that.”
She turns away stiffly and starts to take vegetables out of the refrigerator for dinner. As the quiet stretches, I think about my words and how . . . harsh they sounded.
I step toward her. “Chelsea, look, I—”
“Hey, Jake, you want to play Xbox?” Rory asks, sliding into the room.
Finally, Chelsea looks up and I see her eyes. They swim with hurt, shine with pain. And a terrible pressure squeezes my chest.
“Jake can’t play right now, Rory. He has to go back to his side of the field.”
Rory’s eyebrows draw together. “Am I supposed to know what that means?”
She may have been talking to Rory, but she was speaking to me.
“Rory, go in the other room,” I tell him, my eyes squarely on his aunt.
Miraculously, he does what I ask. And when he’s gone I snap. “Are you seriously gonna pull that shit? Put them in the middle? Holding them over my head?” My finger points hard. “That’s fucked up, Chelsea.”
She comes at me, eyes blazing. “I would
never
put them between us. Besides, there would have to be an ‘us’ in the first place, and according to you, there’s not! And me not wanting you around Rory right now
has nothing to do with this discussion and everything to do with you acting like a dick!”
From the other room, Rosaleen says, “Oooh . . . Aunt Chelsea called Jake the D-word!”
Rory’s voice carries into the kitchen. “Dipshit?”
“No.”
“Dumbass?”
“No.”
“Douchebag?”
“What’s a douchebag?”
“Rory!” Chelsea and I yell at exactly the same time.
Our gazes hold and clash, neither giving an inch.
“Maybe I should just go.”
It’s not a question, but she answers anyway. “I think that would be best.”
I’m the one who brought it up, so there’s no fucking reason her words should leave me feeling cold inside. Hollow. But they do.
Without another word, I turn and walk out the door.
T
hursday starts off shitty and goes straight to hell from there. It’s raining, and my morning run is crap because I had a terrible night’s sleep. No matter how many times I punched the hell out of my pillow, I couldn’t get comfortable. I’m late getting into the office because some moron who didn’t know how to drive in the rain slammed his car into a telephone pole, backing up traffic to East fucking Jabip. Then, an hour after I finally get settled at my desk to start working through a pile of files taller than I am, I end up spilling hot coffee on my favorite shirt.
“Goddamn fucking shit!”
Stanton swivels around in his chair from his desk on the other side of the office we share.
“Problem?”
I rub at the stain on my chest with a napkin, trying to murder it. “I spilled my coffee.”
His eyebrows rise. “Did somebody piss in it first? You’ve been barking all morning. You even snapped at Mrs. Higgens—and she’s as close to a saint as I’ve ever seen.”
I shake my head, not in the mood to share. “Just a bad day.”
He goes back to reading the document in his hands. “And it’s only just begun.”
Fucking tell me about it.
• • •
I don’t hear from Chelsea all morning, not that I expect to. And I don’t think about her. Not the anger frozen on her face or the hurt in her eyes the last time I saw her. Not her plump lips that kiss so softly, smile so easily, and laugh so enchantingly. I don’t think about the kids either—not Riley’s wisely perceptive look or Raymond’s kind questions. I don’t think about Rory’s smartass smirk or Rosaleen’s giggle. Not Regan’s sweet voice or Ronan’s drooling grin.
I refuse to think of any of them—at all.
• • •
After a quiet lunch with Sofia and Stanton—Brent was stuck in court—I sit down at my desk and bury myself in case files for two hours. And then there’s a commotion outside my office. Raised voices and Mrs. Higgens saying I can’t be disturbed without an appointment. For a crazy split second I think maybe it’s Chelsea with a few of the kids.
But it’s not.
“Mrs. Holten.”
She stands in my office doorway, blond hair perfectly coiffed in an elegant knot at the base of her neck. Her blouse is white, just a shade darker than her skin tone. French-manicured nails decorate delicate hands, one of which is still graced with a shiny engagement ring and wedding band. They rest at her sides, against a Democratic-blue skirt.
Mrs. Holten is Senator William Holten’s wife. The one he’s accused of beating to a bloody pulp in the US attorney’s case against him. The case I’m representing him in. And she’s in my office.
“I need to speak with you, Mr. Becker.”
Mrs. Higgens tries to explain, “I told her you can’t see her, Jake. I—”
I hold up my hand. “It’s all right, Mrs. Higgens. I’ll take care of it.” She closes the door as she leaves.
Mrs. Holten lets out a quick relieved breath and steps closer to my desk. “Is it true?”
“Mrs. Holten—”
“I just came from the prosecutor’s office. They said at my husband’s trial, certain . . . indiscretions . . . from my past could be made public. By you. Is that true?”
I stand up. My voice is even but firm. “I can’t speak with you. You are the complaining witness in a felony assault case against my client.”
“I need to know!”
My palm moves to my chest. “I could be accused of tampering with a witness. You can’t be here.”
She grinds her teeth, on the verge of tears, hands shaking—but more than anything she looks utterly terrified. “I married William when I was eighteen years old. I’ve never had a career—my only job was to be his wife, the mother to our children, his prop on the campaign trail.” Her throat contracts as she swallows reflexively. “He’s capable of tying up our divorce for years. He knows all the judges. When this is done, all I will have to rely on is the kindness of affluent friends and the admiration of my children. If you know what I suspect you know, and if that comes out at William’s trial, they will never look at me the same way again. I will have nothing. Please, Mr. Becker, I just need to be prepared for what’s to come.”
I scrape my hand down my face and gesture to the chair in front of my desk. Mrs. Holten sits down but remains stiff as a frightened board. “Would you like a glass of water?”
“Thank you, yes.”
I pour her a glass and set it on my desk within her reach. Then I
sit back down and when I speak, I choose my words so very carefully, doing my damnedest to bend the rules without breaking them, and in the process wrecking my entire fucking career.
“Speaking purely hypothetically and not referring to this particular case at all, it is standard practice for this firm and myself personally to employ private investigators who vet potential witnesses. They look into their backgrounds and recent histories for information which could possibly be used to impeach their credibility.”
“ ‘Impeach their credibility’?” she repeats. “So, once a liar, always a liar—is that right?”
I look into her eyes—they’re gentle brown, like a doe’s. “Depending on the circumstances . . . yes.”
Mrs. Holten sips her water and asks, “So if a potential witness had an affair and lied to her husband, her children, her friends about it? If she developed a reliance on pain medication and had to attend a live-in rehabilitation center? Would you use those facts to impeach a witness’s credibility, Mr. Becker?”
She’s asking because according to the report in my desk drawer, Mrs. Holten has done all those things.
My stomach twists, angry and sick. But I won’t lie to her. “As much as a judge would allow, yes, I would absolutely bring those facts up at trial.”
“That’s blackmail!”
“That’s the law.”
She starts to pant, hand to her throat—almost hyperventilating. Stanton approaches her from across the room. “Is there anything you need, ma’am?”
She closes her eyes and forces her breaths back to even. “No, I’ll be fine. I’m just . . . I was a fool to ever think . . .” She pats her perfect hair and turns back to me. “Tell William I’ll fix this. And I’ll come home. Tell him—”
“I can’t do that. I can’t pass messages. I—”
“It’s important that he knows I’m willing to come home!” she says,
pushing. “And that I will clean up this mess I have made.” She stands abruptly. “I can show myself out, gentlemen. Thank you, Mr. Becker, for your . . . honesty.”
And her eyes go flat. Like a death row inmate, just waiting for someone to come along and flip the switch.
Then she sweeps out of my office, closing the door softly behind her. I stare at the closed door for a few minutes . . . remembering.
Until Stanton calls my name. “You all right, Jake?”
I blink and shake my head clear. Then I move closer to my desk and refocus.
“Yeah, I’m good.” And my voice is as lifeless as Mrs. Holten’s eyes. “Just part of the job.”
• • •
A few hours later, after pitch black fills my office window, another commotion stirs outside the door. It opens and the young prosecutor Tom Caldwell stands there, fuming.