by Amy Faye
But she can't just keep getting away with it, either.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I have to roll out of bed before I can take the call. Autumn squirms a bit, and for a moment I think she might be waking up. Then she rolls over and pulls the blankets to take the slack back out of them, and empties my side of the bed of the blanket.
I smile. I'm sure that on the other end of the line, Tom is wondering why I'm not answering him. Fuck him. He can wait a second.
She's so beautiful. It almost hurts me to do this to her. To her mother, at least. And then I put the phone to my ear and stepped out through the door and I was back in work mode.
"Hey, sorry. I was just stepping out of a meeting."
"At eleven o'clock? Boy, you defense boys do work late."
"Cost of the job," I answer. I don't know or care if he believes me. It doesn't enter into the equation.
"That's why they pay you the big bucks, I suppose."
"Suppose so. What's up?"
"I looked into that case you've been asking about. I already told you Leah's working on it, right?"
"Sure."
"But since you've been talking it up so much, I just had a look into it. An hour or so, off the clock. You're so weird about it, I mean—I had to see what the fuss was all about."
"Yeah."
I settle into my writing desk. It's an antique. Much like writing, these days. But I like it when it comes to taking notes, trying to put my thoughts down outside my head. There's a stack of blank papers in the drawer and I pull one out and then pull a pen from the holder.
"What's up with you and this woman?"
"Nothing's up. Did you find anything?"
"Look, your business is your business. You don't want to talk about it, then just say so. But don't insult my intelligence."
"I knew her a while back. She was an old girlfriend's mom."
"Ah."
Let him think what he wants to think. That he owes her a favor, or that he wants to flush her down the toilet. Either way, as long as he does as he's told, Tom can think what he wants.
"So anyways. You find anything?"
"What should I have been looking for?"
I'm starting to get sick of Tom playing coy. He's usually straightforward with me, so it feels strange that he's trying to dodge the question.
"I don't know. She's always getting herself into trouble. I can't imagine that you won't find anything if you start digging."
"Well, I couldn't find much."
"Much?"
"There was one thing, but it's little."
"Little?"
"I don't know if it's anything at all, really. But it would take a lot more digging than I'm honestly prepared to do for a petty theft case. Man, you want this to go away, it's so small. I can just drop it. We can plea her out. Wouldn't even be any skin off our backs."
"No, no. Do what you have to do. What have you turned up?"
"She's got a kid. Autumn? Your old girlfriend, you said?"
"Yeah, what about her?"
"She's not the biological daughter."
"What's the problem? That happens all the time."
"The problem is, she's not really adopted either. Just showed up in the records twenty years ago."
I almost write it down, and then I stop myself.
"Huh." I can't think of anything else to add.
That could be a problem.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
"Mom, I need you to calm down."
She's fidgeting. She always does this whenever she gets nervous. She should always be nervous. She's always moving too fast, always making decisions that anyone else would regret.
There are some people like that who can make it work. People who are just freaks of nature, who can do whatever they want with impunity.
Mom isn't like that. She's as human as anyone. She just never regrets anything, either, because the past gets left behind the moment that it's finished. She's less the sort of person who can get away with murder, and more the sort of person who takes off an oven mitt seconds before deciding to grab a hot pan, and then wonders what she did to deserve her hand hurting so bad.
It's never her fault, and it's never avoidable. Regardless, of course, of how avoidable it is, or how much it's certainly her fault.
She hasn't answered me, thirty seconds later.
"Mom, look at me."
She looks at me for an instant, and then she's back to looking out the window.
"Are you waiting for something?"
"I'm waiting for the mailman, Autumn. Now, can you just—"
"I thought we were going to talk about getting you out of this mess."
"You said you'd take care of it," she says. My teeth grind together. I can't honestly believe that I'm doing this on my day off.
"I can't do everything by myself, Mom. I know you want to avoid this, but you really can't avoid it forever."
She looks at me for what feels like the first time in the entire conversation. Really sees me. And she's not in a great mood about it.
"Yeah, I know that, Autumn, but I'm just, I'm waiting for a package, okay? Can you just go do whatever, for a while? Figure it out yourself, okay?"
I take a deep breath. She's not herself. She's never herself. She's just being like this because—
I have to stop. I have to stop thinking about it, I have to stop thinking too hard about it, because I'm getting inside my own head at this point, and there's nothing worse. It's not as if I'm not going to go and do it, and there's no hope of getting her to apologize.
So at this point my choices are, I go on and leave her be and build a defense without her help, or I go on and skip building a defense because I'm pissed off. And as good as it might feel in the moment, it's really not an option.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I set the phone down gently on the desk. It takes some care, because I'm a little more frustrated than I probably should be. Perhaps a lot more frustrated than I probably should be.
They're not going to pursue the case any further unless someone really fucks it up bad. Someone being either Autumn or Deb. And I don't foresee Autumn letting her mother make a worse mess of things than she already has.
So if she can just keep her mouth shut, it's thirty hours of community service. Thirty hours of community service, a little restitution, and a class on why you don't fucking steal things. Well, I guess it could be worse.
At least something will happen to her. I pick up the work phone and cradle it in my ear. Legal business doesn't stop just because I've got other things to worry about.
The phone rings twice before he picks up. "Jim. This a good time?"
The other end of the line is a guy who I can't believe can afford my legal fees. I've met him three times in person. Only those three, but every one of them suggested to me that he seemed no different than any street thug. A con artist at best, an armed robber at worst.
And then you see his offices, and you see his car, and you see all the people who he does business with, and you wonder who the fuck he does business with. Privately, I think he's probably involved in drugs, but as long as the checks keep clearing, whatever he's involved in is none of my business as long as nobody tries to bring charges.
"Yeah, give me a second." I can hear him set the phone down for a moment. He says something that I make the decision not to hear on the other end of the line. Private business is private business, and the less I know, the less I have to deny when the checks finally stop clearing. "Is it that time again, Eric?"
"Is there anything I should be on the lookout for?"
"Yeah, I got some weird letters from some guys over in Europe. I think they're pretty upset about something, but I've got no idea what it could be."
I don't know what sort of crime goes on in Europe. It's not a business I'm in. I don't practice law in Europe. But I know that they don't supply drugs. So if he's stepped on feet, it's either that he screwed over someone else's deals, or it's not drug-related, which
is somehow more worrying.
"You think it'll turn into anything?"
"No, probably not. But if I don't show up one day…"
I let my mind start to drift. A guy like this, you have to keep him on a leash. As long as he's not concerned about you going to the cops, it's not too hard to get him to talk about business, at least in general terms.
But it's important not to let him get too far off-track without knowing where the mess is about to fall on your head. Because it always comes down eventually, and you want to be well out ahead of it when that comes barreling down on you.
Which is exactly what I should have done with Deborah. I guess that all that shit way back was my own fault. Sort of. I should've known better. Should've prepared better. Should've had the knowledge I have now. Always have a backup plan and always have proof.
Things really felt like they started clarifying in college. If I'd known that shit ten years ago, I wouldn't have had the problems I did. But that's just not how it was, and I have to accept that.
Jim fucks me over on some deal, I can't blame anyone but myself. I wanted the money, so I dealt with a guy I knew was scummy as hell. That's exactly what has occurred so far. I know he's trouble, but the money's good so I turn a blind eye.
I'm sure, at some point, he will try to fuck me over. He's a grifter who's just done uniquely well for himself. What else could I possibly expect from a guy like that? Not a whole hell of a lot, let me tell you.
But now I know to prepare for it. And I'm not holding it against him. So why hold any of this shit against Deborah? Because she got through the shell? Because she fucked me over at a time when I didn't know to expect it?
I got the fuck over it. I'm not even sure if I'd be in the position I'm in today if I wasn't so fuckin' pissed about that shit. I know that having to leave my family behind definitely lit a fire under my ass. I worked harder in uni, powered through law school.
Because I had to. Because there wasn't anything else for me. So in a certain sense, the entire thing led to my success, right? That's the way to look at it.
Just forgive her. Let it go. It'll be easier that way, and I'll at least be able to stop lying to Autumn. We'll be able to figure something out, at least. Something's better than nothing.
"Wait a minute, Jim. What's going on with Paco?"
He stops talking abruptly. I'm almost worried I've pissed him off, but the connection legitimately went bad.
"I was saying he and his wife were into some shit. She wants another kid, but he's not too sure about it."
"You know how that's going to go, though."
"Sure, I know how it goes, but now he's being a bitch about it with me."
"And in a year, he'll be telling you all about his little darling and how he couldn't live without her."
"You're telling me."
I close my eyes. I'm at peace with it. Just let it go. Forget it ever happened. Autumn will get the good news tomorrow. For now, I'll just let it go and in the morning I'll be happy for her. Simple as that.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I don't like meetings. It didn't take a terribly long time to learn that they're not great. People don't go to meetings to tell you that there's no surprise coming. They don't hold meetings to say 'everything's going as-expected.'
That's a phone call at best. At absolute best. Most of the time, you're actually worrying about something else. Anything else. There's a thousand possibilities of what could go wrong, and relatively fewer possibilities of what could go right.
If it was a client, then I'd expect something like 'well, maybe you should keep your head up for something that maybe I forgot to mention up until now.' It would be nice if Mom would give me some heads up like that, every now and then, but that would no-doubt ruin the surprise for her, so of course she's not going to do that.
But this is a meeting with the District Attorney. And they've no doubt been digging into Mom's past, and they've no doubt found something, because I don't doubt for an instant that there's something to be found.
I can't exactly not go, though. That's not an option for me, whether I like meetings or not.
Mom's coming behind, sufficiently cowed for now. She's apparently moved on to trying to play the martyr now. I would feel bad if I didn't know that it was all an act. That it was always an act with her. She'd move on from this when she realized it wasn't getting her any more attention than acting normally.
I go through the metal detectors, and then on the other side of the gate they hand me back my keys and my pocket full of change. I slip it back into my jacket pocket. Mom comes through a moment later, and we're in. I've been to the D.A.'s office once or twice; I know the way, but it's not totally familiar to me.
The floors of the courthouse are too nice to be a public building. It should be carpet, I think. Instead, my heels click-click-click as I walk, echoing off the intricate wooden walls and the marble floors. Up a set of stairs and through a heavy oaken door.
I give Mom's name, and they tell me to step right on in. The secretary guides us through the hall a little way and into a conference room. It's marked "Conference room 3," so I give it the benefit of the doubt.
You'd have a poor conference here. It couldn't fit more than ten, and the table is only big enough for six, if they were feeling chummy. I take a seat beside Mom, who isn't looking around to find out whether or not I'm buying her solemn martyrdom act.
Which is probably good for her, because I'm not buying it for an instant, but if she wants to do it, then she should do what she wants to do.
I wait a long time in silence. Maybe five minutes. Sitting in silence makes time move slower than it should, particularly when you have no idea what they're about to come through the door and say to you.
Deep breaths, I tell myself. Deep breath, in. Deep breath out. No problem. We're going to be fine. It's all under control, and there's absolutely nothing to worry about.
After I've utterly failed to get control of myself, a woman comes through the door with a thick packet in a manila envelope.
"Mrs. Logan? And you must be Autumn, I've heard your name once or twice around the office."
I don't know how to feel about it. Mom looks at her expectantly.
"Yes," I finally answer.
"I'm Leah Kent, I'm an assistant to the District Attorney, and I'm responsible for your case."
"Nice to meet you, miss Kent."
"Thank you," she says. She flips open the packet. It's covered in densely-typed text that no doubt contains as much about my mother as I know myself. "Now, I've got other things to take care of today, so I hope you don't mind if I'm a little bit brief."
"By all means." Band-aid ripping has always been my preferred way to receive bad news. Maybe because I get it so infrequently. Everything with Mom has always been a long, drawn-out affair so that she can make it all as dramatic as possible.
"We're prepared to offer you a deal. Thirty hours community service, pay fifty dollars in restitution, and a class on shoplifting."
I blink. I don't know why, but I'd been so prepared for things to go wrong that the idea of things not going wrong seems strange. I look over at Mom. She's got a look on her face like someone who's just been told that they can have a cookie after all.
"I'd suggest you take it," I say softly. Mom nods.
"Of course. What do I have to sign?"
Chapter Thirty
I don't know if it was prescient or what. But I was heading over to Tom's office with a bottle of scotch, and it hadn't occurred to me that I might run into them. After all, what were the odds?
I expected to pass silently and unknown, like two ships in the night. Hours apart and besides that, hundreds of people went through that office every day. So color me real fucking surprised when I heard a voice.
"I know you from somewhere, don't I?"
She might not have recognized exactly who I was. But I knew the voice the second I heard it, even though I didn't see her. For an instant I considered not even an
swering. A few steps before I stopped walking.
"Mom, come on. Leave him be."
Hearing Autumn's voice somehow changed things a little bit. I don't know what it was, but something about her being there irked me. Something about both of them being there irked me. Here I was, just going to see an old friend.
"Deborah," I said softly. "How have you been?"
"God," she says. "You look really familiar. Have we slept together?"
My jaw tightens. Ten years is a long time, and I don't look like I did when I was twenty. My hair's shorter, and I've grown more than a few inches. But the idea that a woman who had supposedly been my mother for years couldn't place me lit a little fire.
Autumn, for her part, was so mortified that her mouth opened and closed like someone making a fish face.
"You were married to my father," I say softly. It's easiest if I keep it simple.
"Paul? You're Paul's son?"
"No," I answer. I would like to leave. "Then. Huh. You're…"
"Eric Warren."
"Dave's son. Right. I'm sorry, I don't know how I didn't recognize you. How's Dave doing? I haven't heard from him in a while."
"No, I guess you wouldn't have," I answer. I thought I was over it. It was just what it was. And everything was fine. She wasn't going to make anything any worse than it already was. But it doesn't feel fine.
"What's wrong? You look a little weird."
"I don't really want to talk about it right now, Deb."
I don't know how much she remembers at this point, but I don't care. I just want to move on. I just want to leave. To say that she's starting to piss me off is an understatement.
"No, I don't know. Something. There's something. Something I'm forgetting."
"I'm sure there is. Autumn, I'm going to get going."
"I'll see you at work," she says, evenly. She's starting to regain some degree of control over herself, which is good. At least one of us is.
"Oh, now I remember," she says, as Autumn turns her towards the door. "I cheated on his father."