“So?”
“So . . .” But what could he say to Delores? That he loved having a young boy in the house again? That he’d wanted Anton to stay with them a little while longer? That he was irrationally, unreasonably angry with his friend the county prosecutor for following the law?
“David.” Delores took a step forward and touched him lightly on the arm. “Honey. He’s not our child. We’re just . . . his temporary custodians. We knew that going in. And you know how much he misses his mom.”
“But—”
“It doesn’t matter what she did. She’s his mom. Don’t you get that? It’s . . . it’s biology.”
She was right. She was right. They would have to give him up soon. If they were lucky, Anton would maybe finish one semester of school here before returning home. And if that was the case, David didn’t want to waste another moment at this party, didn’t want to share Anton with people like Connor, who hadn’t even wanted to meet him in the first place. “Let’s get out of here,” he said to Delores. “You were right. We shouldn’t have come.”
“Oh, David. Don’t be like this. Go make up with Connor. I don’t want to leave yet.”
“No, it’s better if he and I don’t talk until this whole business is sorted out.” He bent to kiss the top of Delores’s head. “Let’s stay for another half hour and then go, okay?”
They walked out of the room and Delores was nabbed by Patti Schik, who lived two streets down from them and whose husband was president of the local chamber of commerce. David headed to a corner of the lawn where a group of kids were playing cornhole. “Uncle David,” Bradley said excitedly as he approached. “We’re winning.”
“Who’s we?”
“Anton and me.” Bradley grinned. “He’s pretty good.”
And as if to prove his new friend right, Anton landed the bag in the hole. He glanced up and smiled shyly at David, who beamed back.
“Hey, let’s switch teams,” said Joshua, one of the other players.
“No way,” Bradley cried.
“But that’s not fair. You guys will just keep winning if—”
“Boys, boys,” Anton said in the pseudo-serious tone of a teacher while flapping his hands like a bird. “No fighting. There’s enough of Anton to go around.”
David stared at the boy incredulously for a moment and then guffawed. Anton was a ham. Who would’ve known it?
As the other boys tittered appreciatively at Anton’s performance, David glanced at his watch, rethinking his earlier plan to leave early. Anton was so obviously blossoming in the company of the other children. David felt a rush of affection for Bradley, who had effortlessly included the new boy in his circle of friends. Much as Bradley’s father had included him in a different time and place, he reminded himself, and felt another twinge of remorse for making Connor an easy target for his frustration and fear.
Don came up to him again and thrust a beer into his hand. They stood silently watching the boys play, and then, without warning, Don grabbed one of the beanbags from Joshua and began tossing it himself. “Come on, David,” he yelled. “Best of ten.”
David was aware of Anton’s gaze on him as he played. His heart swelled when he heard the boy’s “Yay, David” each time he scored. He knew that it would behoove him to let the older man win, both for his obligations as a guest and because of the promise that Smithie had dangled before him, but found that he couldn’t. Anton’s pride in him carried the day, and it was the sound of Anton’s victory whoops that rang in his ears rather than Don’s hearty “Good job, David. I’ll whup your ass next time.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” David said. Good humor restored, he decided they didn’t need to rush home after all. “You hungry, bud?” he asked Anton, who nodded. “Good. Let’s go get you some food.”
He walked back toward the house, flanked by Anton and Bradley. “We have a pool,” he heard Bradley say. “You should come swim.”
“I don’t know how,” Anton confessed, and David tensed, preparing himself for a wisecrack or, worse, an expression of incredulity from Bradley. But Brad only said, “I’ll show you how.” David looked down at the red-haired boy in admiration. Connor and Jan had raised one terrific kid.
“Can I go to Brad’s house?” Anton asked, tugging at David’s sleeve, and he hated himself for answering with a noncommittal “We’ll see.”
They found Delores, and she led Anton to the enormous buffet table. David tried to look at the banquet, with its conspicuous excess, from Anton’s eyes. What did it feel like to go from eating moldy cheese from a food pantry to this? Not for the first time, he admired the child’s equanimity, how he appeared to take things in his stride. Anton actually was better-behaved as he stood in the buffet line than many of the other children. David wondered if Delores was aware of it, too, the nobility that resided in this little boy whom fate had delivered to them.
“David.” Jan had come up behind him so quietly, he hadn’t heard her. “Connor told me that you were pretty upset earlier.” He opened his mouth to apologize, but she shushed him. “I just want to say that if I were in your shoes, I’d be pretty upset, too.” She leaned in toward him, and he could smell the alcohol on her breath. “I’m sick and tired of spending our tax money on these people,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, they should lock the bitch away forever and let you keep that poor child.”
He took an involuntary step away from her. He loved Jan, but he was repulsed by what she was saying. He had been in the legal profession long enough to know that human behavior was complicated and unpredictable and that justice always had to be tempered with mercy. But she was looking at him expectantly, as if she wanted his gratitude for siding with him against her husband. Unsure what to say, he looked down at her and muttered, “Thanks.”
Before she could say another thing, he squeezed her shoulder, smiled, and stepped away to join his wife. “Hi,” he said softly, wishing he could burrow in to Delores and get away from all these people whom he had known and liked for years but who today were getting on his nerves. “Will you be ready soon?”
“You’re not eating?”
“I think not. It’s too hot.”
“Everything okay?”
“I think so . . . Jan is drunk.”
They exchanged a look. “Fifteen minutes,” Delores said. “And we’ll leave. Go say our goodbyes to Don and his wife.”
He walked around the enormous house looking for his host. Twice he spotted Connor, but each time both men looked away. He finally found Don ensconced among a group of local businessmen. “Thanks, Don,” he said. “Great party.”
“You’re not leaving?”
“Afraid so. Delores has a bad headache.”
“Aw, shit. That’s too bad.” They spoke for a few more minutes, and then David excused himself from the group.
“Don’t forget what we talked about,” Don called, and David gritted his teeth as he walked away. “I won’t,” he said without looking back.
It wasn’t until the three of them were in his car and heading home that David felt his body relax. Looking at Delores in the passenger seat and Anton asleep in the back, he smiled to himself. Screw Connor, Jan, Don, the whole lot of them. He knew that Anton was on loan to him for a very short while. He was bound and determined to enjoy every second they had together.
CHAPTER SIX
David was in his chambers, catching up on some paperwork, when there was a light, perfunctory knock on his open door. He looked up to see his colleague Bob Campbell. “You busy?” Bob asked.
“No, no, come on in,” David said as he capped his pen and rested it on the pile of papers on his desk. “I’m happy to take a break.”
“Good.” Bob lowered himself onto the wooden chair across from David. “Haven’t seen you much these past few weeks.”
“Yes, well.” David felt embarrassed. “Some of that is deliberate. I just thought it was better if we kept our distance until, you know, the Vesper case was resolved.”
There
was an expression on Bob’s face that David couldn’t quite read. “Ah. I figured as much. Well, we don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
David stretched his arms above his head and leaned back in his chair. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, it’s over. I sentenced her this morning.”
A sudden heaviness came over David as he stared at Bob, who stared back, the small eyes under his dark, bushy eyebrows blinking rapidly. “Aren’t you going to ask me what the sentence was?” Bob asked at last.
David shrugged. At this point, he had reconciled himself to the matter. Four months or six, what did it matter? Anton would be back home, either way, before his mom had any realistic chance at rehabilitating herself.
But then a sliver of doubt entered his mind. The Family Division of the superior court, where Bob presided, was located on the sixth floor of the courthouse. His office in the Criminal Division was on the fourth. This was no ordinary drop-in. Bob had clearly made an effort to come see him.
“Are you going to tell me?” David asked. “Or is there some—”
“Two and a half,” Bob said abruptly.
David gripped the edge of his desk in an attempt to control his fury. “That’s ridiculous,” he snapped. “I’ve handed out sentences for animal abuse that were longer than that.”
Bob stared at him from under those expressive eyebrows. “Years.”
“What’s that?”
“Two and a half years. That’s what she got.”
David couldn’t trust himself to speak. He tried to, but his mouth moved wordlessly.
Bob grinned, clearly pleased with the impact of his words. “Wow, Dave. Never seen you speechless before.”
David’s head felt cloudy, even as a ray of happiness kept trying to pierce through. “How? I thought . . . Didn’t Connor agree to the plea bargain?”
“Sure. And it got her to plead guilty. Saved the court a lot of time and money.” Bob scowled suddenly. He has the most mercurial face, David thought absently. “Her plea bargain was with the prosecutor’s office,” Bob continued. “But I’m the goddamn judge. Nothing in the law says I couldn’t give her the maximum sentence.”
David felt as if air were being pumped into his lungs and he could breathe normally for the first time in weeks. He had been waiting for the other shoe to drop, had been grieving the imminent loss of Anton ever since Don Smith’s party. “Was Connor upset?”
Bob looked at him incredulously. “Upset?” He rose from his chair, walked the few paces to shut the door to David’s office, and sat down again with a thump. “He was thrilled. If he was upset about anything, it was about upsetting you at that party.”
“You heard about that?”
“David. Please. It’s a small community. Everybody who was at that party was talking about how wonderful it was to see you and Delores looking happy again. In any case, I saw Connor at the club soon after, and he said he regretted the plea bargain. Well, I told him right there and then that he was making an awfully big assumption—that I would go with the lower end of the sentencing guidelines.” Bob smiled broadly.
David leaned back in his chair, stunned by what he was hearing.
Bob raised an eyebrow. “Well? Have I truly rendered the Honorable David Coleman mute?”
He knew he should say something, pump Campbell’s hand and thank him. He knew that was what the burly man across from him was expecting. But David felt cold and removed, as if watching himself and Bob from a distance. He had an urge to tell Bob that he had made a terrible mistake, that a law greater than the one they both practiced had triumphed—the law of unintended consequences. He had quarreled with Connor, yes, but once he’d calmed down, he had accepted the decision. He had not wanted anyone to intercede on his behalf and corrupt the law, this law that he had embraced precisely because it was so much cleaner and more clear-cut than the family business of politics; he did not want to be the recipient of Bob Campbell’s largesse or pity; did not want Connor to compromise his ethics in order to salvage the friendship with his best friend. And yes, he didn’t want a poor, uneducated black woman to be railroaded by a bunch of white guys with law degrees, to be cheated by a legal system that she and her ancestors had played no role in designing; or to be robbed of her own child by duplicitous means. He wanted Anton, yes, but not like this. Never like this.
But how could he say any of this to Campbell without earning his contempt and enmity? How could he prevent some part of his heart from reacting with joy, from believing that, in denying justice to Anton’s mother, a greater justice had been done? The world belonged to the young, he had always believed that, and what if locking the woman up for a little longer gave Anton a chance to shine, gave him and Delores more time to rub off the grime of poverty and bad nutrition and a failed education? Who could claim that this was a lousy trade—that instead of lying half-dead in a crack house, Anton’s mom would instead spend her days in jail, where there was at least a reasonable chance that she could get clean and, by doing so, give her son a shot?
Bob Campbell cleared his throat. “Whatsa matter, David? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Connor and I—we’d expected a different reaction.”
David looked up. His eyes were misty. “No. Sorry, Bob. No, of course I’m happy. I just . . . It’s a lot to take in.”
Bob rose to his feet with a grunt. “Well, if that’s your happy face, David, I’d hate to see your sad one.” He stuck out a beefy hand. “See you around.”
David mustered up a grin and shook Bob’s hand as heartily as he could. “Thanks again, Bob. Really. Thanks.”
David left work early that day, but instead of going home, he drove to a nearby park. He wanted to walk along the mulched pathway beside the lake but decided against it for fear of running into someone he knew. Instead, he sat in the Audi with its tinted windows and peered out at a pair of squirrels chasing each other. It was the first week of August. Anton would be starting at his new school in twelve days. David and Delores would work extra hard to make sure that he was ready. Everything was different than it had been just a few hours ago. Two and a half years. Now there was a real chance to have an impact on the boy’s life, to create changes that would last a lifetime.
Connor. David didn’t want to wait until he got home to thank him. He pulled out of the parking lot and drove to a restaurant at the corner of Hive and Broad where there was a phone booth. David dialed Connor’s direct line. “Joanne, it’s me,” he said to Connor’s secretary. “Is he in?”
“Just a minute, Judge Coleman,” she said, putting him through.
He held the phone, not knowing which should come first—his apology or his thanks. As it was, Connor made the decision for him. “Hiya,” he said. “You talk to Bob yet?”
David swallowed the lump that formed in his throat. Connor sounded so excited—for him. He knew how seriously Connor took the law and what it must’ve cost him to talk to Bob Campbell. “I did. Connor, I . . . I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s nothing to say. In any case, it was up to Bob to determine whether to accept the plea or not. And however it came down, it’s in the kid’s best interest.”
So that’s how Connor would justify it to himself—not as a favor for a friend but as a service to a young boy who deserved better than the cards fate had dealt him. That was a story they both could—would—live with.
“I’m sorry for my reaction at the party. I . . . You just caught me by surprise.”
There was a brief silence and then Connor said, “David. Let’s not do this. We don’t need to talk about this again. The only thing I ask is you don’t ever let slip to Anton that I prosecuted his mom.”
“I’m fine with that.” David’s voice was husky. He didn’t deserve a friend like Connor. He never had.
“So go home and celebrate. Go home to your wife and your . . . family.”
“Okay. We’ll see you guys soon, right?”
“Right-o.”
David hung up, got in his car, and drove dir
ectly home. Delores and Anton were at the kitchen table, a bunch of biology textbooks scattered around them. David bent down to kiss his wife, rubbed Anton’s back in greeting, and then said to Delores, “Can I talk to you for a moment?”
“I’ll be right back,” she said to the boy. “Keep reading.”
“Can I get a glass of chocolate milk?”
“Anton,” she said warningly. “I’m hip to your procrastination. If you haven’t finished this chapter by the time I get back . . .”
The boy grinned. David marveled at how easily the two of them got along. Would he ever have as close a relationship with Anton?
As they left the kitchen, he took his wife’s hand and led her to the far end of the house, to the guest bedroom. He shut the door.
She shot him a look. “David, if you’re . . .” she started, and he shook his head. “No. Not that. Would love to, but—”
Without warning, her face crumbled. “Well, what, then? Is it bad news?”
He knew exactly what she was thinking, her mind flying back to that awful night when he’d received the phone call from the police and entered their bedroom unsure of how to form the words that he knew would destroy her life forever. She was remembering how he’d come up behind her, turned her around, held her by both shoulders, and sat her down on the bed.
“No, no, no,” he hurried to reassure her now. “Honey. It’s not bad news. Not at all. It’s terrific news, actually.”
“Spit it out.”
“It’s . . . well, they sentenced Anton’s mom.” He heard Delores exhale loudly, as if whatever he was about to say would be anticlimactic, but he ignored her. “They gave her two and a half years in prison.”
“Oh my God. That poor woman. Is that normal? I mean, isn’t that excessive?”
Why did she not understand what he was telling her? Instead of celebrating the news, why would she concern herself with a drug-addled woman she didn’t know? “What this means is . . .” he began.
“. . . that poor Anton is going to be separated from his mother for more than two years.” She turned to face her husband. “You said you had good news?”
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