He could tell stories that he thought would keep anyone, even the most hopeless, foolish, absolutely blind romantics and optimists, from ever getting married. In fact, he thought if he could videotape some divorce and custody proceedings in his courtroom, he could splice real-life scenes together into a documentary that had the power to end marriage, once and for all, in America, possibly even globally.
“I want to fix that,” Lilah said, as she eased back in her seat to make room for the plates of food their waitress was placing in front of them. “Divorced people who can’t let go and move on.”
“That’s all?” He dug into his lunch, deciding she was either supremely confident or hopelessly naive. He thought about telling her his idea for simply ending marriage altogether, which would end the need for helping anyone get over divorce, emotionally or otherwise.
“It’s important work,” she insisted.
“Yes, it is. I’m just not sure if it’s at all possible.”
“Well, I intend to try.”
She was naive, Ashe feared, perhaps idealistic and completely unrealistic. He felt sorry for her and experienced some small need to try to save her from herself.
“I don’t think that’s a job for one person, all by herself.”
“Then help me.”
“I don’t think it’s a job for two people, either. Way too big for that.”
She sighed, sounding disappointed. “Gandhi said, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world.’”
Ashe blinked at her. She’d quoted Gandhi to him? “I wonder if he was ever married.”
“He was. To the same woman for sixty years,” she claimed.
“Sixty years? Truly?”
“He was young when they married,” Lilah said.
“Must have been.”
“Okay, he was like … thirteen, and she was, too, or maybe a year older. It was an arranged marriage—”
Ashe laughed out loud, truly enjoying that little fact.
“Which has nothing to do with anything—”
“You’re the one who brought Gandhi into this,” he reminded her.
“Because I admire the sentiment. Imagine what a better world this would be if we all found a problem, a cause we felt passionate about, and went to work fixing it?”
Good grief.
Had Ashe ever been this naive? He didn’t think so.
Lilah sighed, clearly disappointed with him. “Please, just think about helping me. I promise I won’t tease you anymore about naked women.”
Which should have been a plus, he supposed.
“I don’t think it’s ever a bad thing to try to help people who truly need it,” she pleaded. “Watch those people coming through your courtroom and think about whether you believe they need some help letting go, moving on. That’s all I’m asking.”
He frowned. “You’ll be holding these … classes at the Barrington estate?”
Lilah nodded. “It’s perfect.”
“I thought she’d turned it into a wedding venue?”
“That’s what makes it perfect,” Lilah claimed. “All that excitement, the anticipation, the happiness. It’s like it’s in the air there, plus all the physical preparations to turn it into someone’s fantasy of the perfect wedding. We get caught up in the fantasy, the dream, and then reality sets in, and … Well, you know all this. You must see it every day. The fantasy doesn’t last.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“I want to use all that energy, all those feelings, the memories. Too often, we try to run away from those feelings or to bury them so deeply we never feel them, and that doesn’t work, either. The women coming to my classes won’t be able to. Wedding preparations or the dismantling of the wedding fantasies will be all around them there.”
“You want to deliberately stir them up?” He saw it now.
Lilah nodded. “Not to be unkind. Just to make it impossible to hide from those emotions. We have to deal with our feelings before we can move on from them.”
“So, that’s why you’re at Eleanor’s?” He couldn’t argue the sense in that.
“It seemed perfect, once I thought about it. And she’s been so kind. She’s a good friend of my mother’s and a distant cousin of some sort.”
“And you’re living there?”
“For now. I didn’t intend to, but I don’t know much about the town or where I’d really like to live. She offered, and there’s so much room there. I’m not a freeloader, if that’s what you’re thinking—”
“I didn’t say anything like that,” he protested.
“But you were thinking it. I’m going to see how things go for me here. If I like it and decide to stay, I’ll find my own place. For now, I’m staying in a little room off the kitchen, the maid’s room. It’s quiet and out of the way and all I really need.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be insulting.”
“She’s lonely, I think, even with her friends and the weddings. Apparently her godson and his wife and son were living in the guesthouse for a while, but they bought a house and just finished the renovations on it and moved. So now it’s just Eleanor.”
“Well, I’m sure she’s happy not to be alone all the time,” Ashe conceded, then looked down at his watch. He had motions to read before court resumed. “So, that’s all you need from me? To perform some sort of divorce ceremony?”
“Well, if it’s not too much trouble, there are often people in the group who have questions about the divorce process. They aren’t looking for legal advice, but an explanation of how the process works.”
“Okay. I could do that,” he agreed.
“And—last thing, I promise—inevitably, I’ll run into a few women whose husbands or ex-husbands are abusive—”
“Yeah, you don’t want any part of a situation like that.”
“Well, no one does, but it happens, and some of these women will come to me for help.”
“Lilah, I see this all the time, and the thing is, a very few of these situations will end very badly, and even I can’t predict which ones will. But when it happens, it’s really bad, really dangerous.”
“I know. I’ve worked with battered women before. And I know, some cops are better at handling these kinds of situations than others. Some take them much more seriously. I just want a name, that’s all. One cop who’ll take the situation seriously, and as a judge, I bet you know who the good ones are.”
“Yes, I do.”
“But you don’t want to tell me who they are?”
“No, I think you need a keeper. I don’t want to do anything to help you put yourself in the middle of domestic violence situations.”
“A keeper? Really?” She looked both amused and mad. “A big, strong man who knows so much better than I do? One I should let make decisions for me?”
“That’s not what I said,” he told her, although … yeah, he thought it was probably true.
Not because she was a woman, but because she seemed to think she was invincible, ready to charge into even dangerous situations and fix them. Someone should be telling her not to do that, that she was bound to be hurt eventually.