Family Law

by Gin Phillips

  I was open to interpretation.

  I saw a stream of headlights a block or two ahead of me. A line of cars, all turning right from the same parking lot. I saw windows, lit, and a gas streetlamp by a stone fountain.

  I didn’t slow down until I reached the curb. I noticed the street sign that said Gilmer, and I waited for a gap in the line of cars. When I was midway across the street, I spotted Evan’s car in the parking lot, and then I saw Lucia near a car I didn’t recognize.

  Lucia.

  It felt like years since I had seen her.

  I stopped next to a white van that was pulled up close to the house, which wasn’t quite as big as I’d expected, although it was like Mr. Cleary described, Tara-ish. The black shutters were glossy, and through the front windows I could see chandeliers and fireplaces and pictures on the walls so vivid that they looked like the paint was still wet. The side door of the house was propped open with a broom. The back doors of the van next to me were wide open, too, with stacks of aluminum trays and cardboard boxes crammed across the entire floor. The inside of the van was unlit, but all the aluminum reflected the streetlights, and I could see my face looking back at me in one of the lids. The boxes mostly held wine, dozens of bottles, only their necks sticking out. I could hear the water in the fountain splashing, and, from inside the McNally House, I could hear voices that I imagined belonged to whoever owned all the stuff in the van.

  I stepped behind one of the open doors, thinking it would make me less obvious. I didn’t want to interrupt Lucia, but I also didn’t want her driving off without seeing me. I’d need a ride home, wouldn’t I?

  I glanced into the street again. No sign of Mr. Cleary. I glanced down at my skinned knee, and the blood had started to gel.

  Lucia was wearing a gown that caught the headlights, and her hair was piled up in the way I loved. She was fidgeting, lifting one foot and then the other as she leaned into the passenger side of a red sports car. I heard footsteps behind me, and when I turned, I saw a man in a dark suit stepping off the curb, head swiveling. Left, right, left, right, he looked, all the way across the pavement.

  I didn’t recognize him until I saw the dogs smack against the car window. The Moxie kidnapper had come to the banquet? I looked back at Lucia, who was pushing away from the car, seeing him, too. She called his name, and he opened his car door. The dogs slipped out and ran.

  No one has any reason to be out after 9:00 p.m., I thought of Mom saying. Nothing good happens.

  The headlights were too bright, and I had to put a hand over my eyes. Someone screamed—maybe Lucia. The sports car jerked, cutting sharply into the street, and the dog just kept coming, and then it lay there in the road. I looked around the parking lot. The door to the house was still open, and the white light came through it, comforting and safe, and I willed someone to step into the doorway. Someone would come.

  Only they didn’t.

  Lucia leaned over the dog, and so did the man—Marlon—and he looped an arm around his other dog, pulling him close. Then Lucia and Marlon were standing, and Lucia held a hand out, like Diana Ross.

  The car, I realized. The car was still running. I saw it jolt forward as Lucia and Marlon backed away, too slowly. I couldn’t see anything of the driver—there was only a dark rectangle of windshield—but I could tell the driver was aiming for them. I felt the anger wash over me, and it simplified everything. My hands were empty, but I was capable of slaying all sorts of creatures.

  Watch this.

  Maybe terrible things happen. Maybe riptides and car wrecks and divorce and gunshots fall out of the sky, and maybe you are powerless against it. But maybe not.

  I reached into the dark cave of the van and grabbed two bottles of wine, heavy and solid, and they fit perfectly in my hands. The car jerked toward Lucia, and as it did, I swung the bottles and let them go. One crashed against the road but another sailed over Lucia’s head and smashed against the hood of the car, and it was as if I had some hidden talent for freezing time. The car screeched and stopped. For a moment, so did Lucia and Marlon and even the beagle in his arms. The bottle wasn’t a bottle anymore—the glass had turned into confetti. Wine ran down the fenders and bumper, pooling on the asphalt, and any fear or anger inside me all at once tilted toward something like joy.

  A woman inside the car shrieked, high pitched and helpless. Marlon leaped back, his hands wet and shining, barely keeping hold of his dog. Lucia turned, too, stepping to the curb and dragging him with her. Wine spilled everywhere.

  I picked up another bottle, swinging it, and I was denser and lighter and more. I had no idea there would be such bliss in breaking things. A woman leaned out of the driver’s window and then pulled her head back into the car like a scared turtle, and I wanted her scared.

  I could see when Lucia spotted me. Her hand stretched toward me, nails shining, so familiar that they were almost my own hands.

  “Rachel,” she called, and I had missed hearing her say my name.

  Lucia

  I.

  There was red wine everywhere. It looked as if the car had slaughtered her and Marlon then rewound back to where it started.

  Donna was still screaming. The woman could do nothing but scream.

  “What the hell?” said Marlon.

  Lucia didn’t bother answering. Her skirt was soaked. Marlon, on one knee next to her, had wine running down his beard and his arms. He looked almost biblical. A shard of bottle had jammed under a windshield wiper, so when Donna turned them on, only one blade cut a swathe through the red. The other jerked and jolted, paralyzed.

  The neck of the bottle was on the hood of the car, still corked.

  Lucia looked at Rachel, who looked unhinged but ecstatic, smiling, another wine bottle in her hand. Claws scrabbled against asphalt: a few feet away, the injured dog was easing to its feet. Marlon still held the other beagle in his arms, its tongue curling at the air.

  Lucia sank to the curb, something shellacked and leggy moving against her fingers. The glow of the streetlamp circled her, and she welcomed the light, even though the last few minutes had proven that it offered no protection at all.

  Donna, head down in her burgundy-spattered car. Evan running down the sidewalk, his jacket flapping open like a cape.

  Dark shapes fluttering around the streetlamp.

  The moon, pearled and pointed.

  All a jumble, spilling around her, and Lucia tried to follow each curl of sound and movement. The bright light seemed to be, in fact, the opposite of a barrier—it was drawing everything closer, and that was a good thing. She was surrounded. Evan’s hands on her shoulders. The quick slap of his dress shoes—a car door opening and the jangle of keys ripped from the ignition. Headlights gone dark. Marlon threading his fingers through hers. Rachel, wine bottle in hand, edging into the bright circle. Lucia had missed all the pieces of her: falling-down hair and flip-flops and sharp jaw. Her head thrown back as if she found something funny in the tree above. A skinned knee—from broken glass or something else? Blood oozing slick and dark, and there was no telling what had marked her, but Lucia would ask. She would ask and Rachel would tell and Lucia would have all the time in the world to listen.

  The burn on her thumb pulsed.

  Rachel took another step, swinging the bottle in a slow rhythm. A metronome. Lucia could almost feel the sloshing weight of the wine. When the bottle hit the asphalt, she felt the shattering, and it occurred to her that maybe this was not her story.

  Acknowledgments

  This book draws from my own childhood in Alabama, as well as from plenty of other women’s experiences. I’m forever grateful to Lisa and Jeff Woodard, who were always willing to open the door. You showed me many things, including what a great marriage looks like.

  I couldn’t have written this book without Judy Crittenden, who made Lucia’s world come to life with incredible intelligence, charm, and wit. I dee
ply appreciate all the hours, all the stories, and all the notes in the margins!

  Thank you to the smart, funny, kind, all-powerful women who had a hand in shaping my younger self (and who had no obligation to do so since they weren’t even related to me). Mary George Jester, you showed me—you showed all of us—what wonderful things happen when a woman is in charge. Diann Frucci, you made me love John Donne, and I can never hear the words “Truman Capote” or “The Three Witches” without hearing your voice. I’d give a great deal to sit in your classroom one more time and listen to you work your magic. Karen Etheridge, you taught me to love Shakespeare and Dickens, and you showed me that there’s such a thing as a healthy level of intimidation.

  I appreciate Phillip Harris for sharing his time and expertise and for repeatedly steering me away from stupid mistakes about police procedure in the 1980s. Thanks to Rev. Sarah Shelton, one of my favorite prophets, for talks about rocks through windows and feminism. Any and all uses of “murmuring” are for you. Thanks to Audreyalice Kubesch Warner for the epigraph, as well as to Polly Dobbs, Alistaire Tallent, and Tina Noyes for lines that stuck in my head enough for me to write them down. Lucia Watson, I’ve always loved your name!

  Thanks to Anne Collins for her elegant edits and for, in general, sharpening and deepening every page of this book. Thanks to Kim Witherspoon for perpetual competence and force of nature-ness—you were on my mind in the early stages of imagining Lucia. Jane Cavolina, you did a beautiful job with the copyedits. And, Laura Tisdel, work never feels like work when I’m doing it with you. Every conversation is a joy.

  Thanks, as always, to Fred. You leave no part of me floating.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gin Phillips is the award-winning author of Fierce Kingdom and The Well and the Mine. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with her family.

  What’s next on

  your reading list?

  Discover your next

  great read!

  Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.

  Sign up now.