“Cool.” Though Sky didn’t sound very interested.
But maybe he had a stomachache or something. He looked sort of funny and distracted, the way her dad had the time he’d eaten the bad taco. Her stomach rumbled at the thought of food. Or maybe Sky was just hungry.
The next time Kat stopped, she opened her mouth to ask if he’d like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but he spoke first. “You know how to weld?”
“Uh-huh. Um, well, sort of. I’m teaching myself.” She’d learned the most important lesson last night. You should never leave your torch on, then set it near a can of kerosene while you crouched down for the piece of steel you’d dropped.
“Cool. What are you going to weld?”
“I’m making—I was trying to make—a brand. But the metal wouldn’t bend. Guess I didn’t get it hot enough.”
“Guess not.” Sky nodded judiciously. “Why do you want a brand?”
She gave him a mysterious smile. “I’ve got something needs branding.”
“SO IT’S…going to need a little work,” Abby finished her carefully edited tale, trying for a note of brisk optimism. She never should have called her mother, but she’d promised to stay in touch. Phoning her friend Lark in Sedona to report their delay had given her the momentum, but it was now fading under her mother’s grilling. Seated in the swing, she held the cell phone to her ear and glanced overhead. Forty feet up, looking like a snowy, feather-fluffed owl perched in the crook of a branch, poor DC returned her rueful gaze. His rounded eyes were black pools of dismay. He could no sooner climb down this tree than he could fly.
“How much is ‘a little work’?” her mother demanded, as usual going straight to the bottom line. “And how much will this cost?”
“Oh, possibly a week’s worth.” Or more, if Whitey could only work weekends. And how long would it take him to scrounge the parts? “I’ve found—my neighbor found—an excellent mechanic, whose prices are very reasonable.” She hoped and prayed. Though Whitey moved about as swiftly as his Pekinese. If he cost half as much as a garage mechanic, but took three times as long to…
No. Surely Jack wouldn’t have recommended him if he couldn’t—
“What’s he do?”
“The mechanic? He’s a cowhand, I believe, at a ranch north of—”
“Your neighbor. The nice man who drove you into town. What does he do for a living? And please don’t tell me he’s a cowboy, because if he is, I understand that cowboys never settle down.”
“He’s a lawyer, Mom, not that it matters in the least.”
“O-oh… Lawyers are very good. They always make a living. The worse times get, the better they seem to do.”
Abby sighed softly. Her late father had been a portrait painter, a really wonderful artist, whose hobby was painting houses, as he’d always put it with a wink and a grin. They’d had enough money, but not a penny more, while he was able to work.
After he’d fallen three stories off a ladder and was no longer able to pursue his “hobby,” times had gotten much harder. But he’d stayed happy to the end, painting his portraits of their friends and neighbors and even getting the odd paying commission. He’d have been so proud to know that, seventeen years later, his work was starting to receive critical acclaim.
To Abby’s mother, who’d sold all but one of his portraits years ago, this was the final drop of frustration in a bitter cup.
“Is he a trial lawyer? Or perhaps corporate. They do extremely well.”
“He’s in family law, Mom. Small-town stuff, I imagine, but—listen to me—it doesn’t matter. I’m not shopping for a lawyer, a tailor or an Indian chief. Really, I’m not. I’ve only been divorced since March.”
“It’s never too early to plan.”
Abby bet she could hit the bus’s side mirror from here, if she threw the phone. She took a deep breath instead. “Mom, please try to understand. I’m not in the market for a man.
“And if I was, the last man on earth I’d choose—the very last—would be a lawyer. I’ve had it up to here with lawyers.”
She was only beginning to realize what a poor choice she’d made in a divorce lawyer. When she’d first hired him, Mr. Bizzle had seemed kindly and wise and avuncular. He’d agreed with her completely that two people who’d once loved each other shouldn’t try to snatch and maim when they parted. That the high road was always the best road.
Meanwhile, Steve had found a lawyer who was considered to be the best divorce specialist in northern New Jersey—a smiling, hard-eyed man who could smell a wounded wallet a mile away. Who thought the high road was for losers and fools. Who knew how to turn caring into weakness, selfishness to strength.
Under his cynical tutelage, the Lake family assets had melted away like dirty snow in springtime.
Abby had protested that only months before they’d seemed to be doing quite well, that between Steve’s income and her teaching salary, they’d amassed a reasonable cushion of stocks and savings. Where had that all gone? she’d wondered. Mr. Bizzle had patted her hand and sworn he’d get to the bottom of the mystery—well, he’d hire a couple of two-hundred-dollar-per-hour accountants to get to the bottom of the mystery—and then he’d squeezed her shoulders, walking her out of his office, and asked her for a date!
By the time the whole miserable process was finished, Steve’s lawyer had done magnificently for himself. And quite handsomely for Steve and his new family. Mr. Bizzle’s fee had taken a hefty slice of what remained, which seemed to console him for Abby’s inexplicable coolness to his advances.
So Abby had walked away from twelve years of marriage with twenty-thousand dollars that must be carefully hoarded for the coming year.
And a lifetime loathing of lawyers.
“You feel that way now, dear, but later on I’m sure you’ll—”
“Not now.” Abby shook her head emphatically. “And not later. I’ve learned my lesson.” About lawyers. About men in general. “You build your entire world around a man…” The way you did yourself, Mom, and look what it got you.
“You make him the almighty center of your world, and then one day he up and goes? Then you have nothing left.” Nothing, nothing. She was hollowed out—an empty echo where her heart used to be.
And when she gathered the strength to fill that hollow again, it would be with something other than the love of a man. Something more trustworthy and enduring. Something she could always count on—herself, happily and capably living a life she’d shaped to her own design. Meanwhile… Abby swallowed and found that the ragged lump she’d carried in her throat all this past winter had returned. Dadblast it, Mom! as Whitey would have put it.
“You have Skyler,” her mother pointed out.
Who blames me for leaving his dad! Abby’s eyes blurred; she tipped her head back and focused desperately on the blue patches beyond the leafy green. “Yes, Mom, I have Sky. And come to think of it, he must be starving by now. Why don’t I call you back in a day or two?”
JACK WAS SHARING a late in-house lunch with his friend Alec Fielding, a defense attorney who rented an office suite down the hall, in a three-story building in Durango. They ate together once a week or so, when whoever had lost their latest bet paid up with Reuben sandwiches and barbecue potato chips from the deli down the street.
This week Jack in his wisdom had bet that Lena Koo, the assistant district attorney, would not press criminal charges against Councilman Ferulli’s son, an impetuous