House on Fire

by Bonnie Kistler

  “It wouldn’t necessarily be the same judge,” Leigh said. “And no matter who it is, he can’t issue a protective order unless there’s been violence or a threat of violence.”

  For a moment Jenna stared blankly. Then her wild eyes squeezed shut, her lovely complexion erupted in mottled red patches, and she shrieked, “By then it’s already too late!” and burst into furious tears.

  “Jenna, honey—”

  A third vehicle rattled into the driveway, and Leigh was relieved to see the Dietrichs’ old farm truck. Carrie jumped down from behind the wheel, a faded blonde with a hard-muscled body clad in denim from collar to cuff. “Jenna, my God, look at you!” she said, charging up to her daughter. “Not even dressed and bothering Leigh at this hour!” She took the girl by the arm as her husband, Fred, climbed out the other side of the truck cab. “Come on now, let’s get you home before you catch cold. Out here in this damp with practically nothing on.”

  Jenna flailed for a bit but there was no vigor in it, and she didn’t resist as her parents hoisted her into their truck. Carrie looked at Leigh and mouthed Sorry as Fred headed for Jenna’s car. He was a stoop-shouldered man in glasses and a gray cardigan, a gentle soul Leigh always thought, but he was scowling ferociously now. “You didn’t hear anything?” she asked him.

  He shook his head. “No footprints either. With all that rain yesterday, there’d have to be some kind of tracks.” His mouth pulled tight. “That son of a bitch did some number on her. I don’t know what.”

  Nobody did. Leigh had questioned Jenna about physical abuse or any other fault grounds that would have allowed her to file for divorce without waiting out the year’s separation, but Jenna refused to answer. “Try not to worry,” Leigh said to Fred. “She’ll be herself again when this is all over.”

  He sank behind the wheel of Jenna’s car. “You know the worst of it? We were thrilled when they got married. It was like our girl won the lottery. Like she was crowned Miss America.” He looked up at Leigh with bleak eyes. “Some parents we turned out to be.”

  “No, Fred—”

  He shook off her attempt to reassure him and slammed the door and followed his broken family as they clattered down the road.

  Leigh’s meeting this morning was in an odd venue—the Saks Fifth Avenue store in Tysons Galleria—and at an odd time, since the mall wouldn’t be open for another hour. Nevertheless, a well-dressed young woman was waiting outside the main entrance to greet her as she pulled up. “Leigh Huyett?” she asked through the car window. ASHLEY GREGG, her name tag read, PERSONAL SHOPPING CONSULTANT. She placed a parking permit on the dash and pointed Leigh into a towaway zone next to the entrance. She used a security card to unlock the door and led the way through a cool array of glass-encased cosmetics and perfumes until they reached a private elevator at the back.

  Upstairs Leigh followed her past racks of beautiful clothes and around headless mannequins draped in exquisite fabrics and finally into a room lined with three-way mirrors and furnished with divans upholstered in a pale mauve silk. It was the designer wear salon, a place Leigh had only ever dreamed of visiting. A silver tea service gleamed on a glass-topped table next to a plate of berry-studded biscotti. “Please help yourself,” the young woman said as she took her leave. “The sheikha should be here shortly.”

  Sheikha? Leigh’s eyes opened wide in twelve different mirrors around the room. Richard Lowry hadn’t mentioned that when he called with the referral. He said only that she was the wife of a wealthy Middle Easterner. He received the referral from a solicitor in London who was relaying it from his correspondent counsel in Dubai. Richard received many such referrals—he was internationally known as the dean of U.S. matrimonial law—but divorces were intensely local affairs, which meant he usually served as a kind of switching station to refer the matter out again. When he learned of the Washington locus for this case, he thought of Leigh. He remembered a journal article she’d written a few years ago dealing with the intersection of religious law with U.S. divorce law—specifically whether the Jewish ketubah and the Islamic mahr could be viewed as enforceable prenuptial agreements. That would be the key issue in this case, he told her. That article contained the sum and substance of Leigh’s knowledge of Islamic matrimonial customs, but she was intrigued by this new case. A wealthy client combined with challenging legal issues was at the top of every lawyer’s wish list.

  Her phone beeped as she opened her briefcase, and she frowned when she saw Kip’s name glowing on the screen. She knew why he was calling—to lobby for her support in this fracas with his father. He’d make her the first stop on his comeback tour. Loosen her up with his patented Kip Conley charm, and let her do all the heavy lifting with his dad. Leigh had a real soft spot for Kip—he was smart and lively and she loved how he made her laugh—but he could be manipulative. Christopher Con Man, she called him whenever she caught him running another scam. She often joked that he was either headed for two terms in the White House or one long term in the penitentiary. But this was no joke. She mustn’t let him manipulate her into taking sides against Peter. She turned the phone off and put it away.

  She took out the checklist she’d developed for initial client interviews in cases like this. Matrimonial law was all she’d done for most of her career, though not by choice. She started her career as a litigator with dreams of trying the big corporate cases: IBM, Microsoft, Pennzoil versus Texaco. But when her first baby turned out to be twins, she quickly got mommy-tracked at the firm. The big cases were all-consuming, and the wise old men who ran the management committee didn’t believe she could handle them and motherhood, too. They shunted her off to the family law department, and she didn’t have the energy to fight back, which probably meant the old men were right after all. She made the best of it, though. Earned a pretty good living and built a pretty good reputation. Good enough at least to land her this referral today.

  The door to the salon opened, and a Middle Eastern man in a dark suit entered and swiftly surveyed the room. He looked like a Secret Service agent except without the sunglasses and coiled wire at his ear. He stepped back with a bow, and into the room swept a figure swathed in black silk from head to foot. Nothing of her was visible but her eyes behind a gauze-veiled slit in her niqab. She murmured something to the man, and he backed out of the room and closed the door.

  Leigh rose to her feet. “Good morning.”

  The woman didn’t speak as she glided across the floor to the mirrors and slowly began to remove her wrappings. They came off in a spiral, a whisper of tissue-soft silk that drifted slowly to her feet. Underneath was a stylish figure wearing a St. John suit in a bright coral pink. She turned, a beautiful woman on the bright side of forty with a chic layered haircut and eyes like black coffee. “I must apologize for the cloak-and-dagger,” she said. At the word cloak, she cast a look down at her abaya where it lay puddled on the floor.

  “How do you do—sheikha?” Leigh said uncertainly. “I’m Leigh Huyett.”

  “Please. You must call me Devra.” The woman set what looked like a genuine Birkin bag on the floor beside the divan and sat down with an elegant cross of her legs. She nodded for Leigh to sit as well. “You come highly recommended. I’m told you specialize in divorce cases?”

  “Yes. Are you contemplating divorce?”

  “Every moment of every day.”

  She pronounced the words like a death sentence. Leigh had represented a lot of distraught wives and a lot of angry, vindictive wives, too, but there was something peculiarly desolate in the sheikha’s tone.

  “How may I help?”

  The woman poured herself a cup of tea and took a delicate sip. “I wish to understand what my rights would be should I seek a divorce in your American courts. Whether it is even possible for me to seek a divorce.”

  “So long as you meet the residency requirements, of course it’s possible.”

  “In my home country, it is not. Under sharia law, I have no right to divorce my husband absent his consent.�
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  “Which you don’t believe he would grant?”

  The woman let out a mirthless laugh. “Never.”

  “May I ask how long you’ve been living in this country?”

  “A little more than one year.”

  “I would have thought much longer. Your accent is flawless.” Leigh would have guessed that most highborn Middle Easterners had English accents, but the sheikha’s was distinctly American.

  “My mother was an American. Which makes me an American, too, I suppose. But I never lived here until my husband brought us over last year.”

  Leigh picked up her intake form. “May I have your address?”

  “No.”

  Her head came up. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m afraid I cannot disclose my address at this time. Or, indeed, my true name. I do apologize for the secrecy, but there are—circumstances.”

  “Sheikha—Devra—you do understand our discussions here today are confidential? Even if you decide not to retain me, I can’t disclose anything you tell me.”

  Devra shook her head. “In our next meeting perhaps.”

  Leigh couldn’t proceed on this basis. She couldn’t advise this woman of her rights until she knew where she lived, because each jurisdiction’s laws were different, and she couldn’t represent her at all until she knew her name. Whenever she took on a new client, she had to first confirm there was no conflict of interest with any other client her firm represented, and the only way to do it was to run the full legal name through their database.

  “In that case.” She slid her useless checklist back in her briefcase.

  “Oh, but—”

  “We’ll discuss these matters on a hypothetical basis, shall we?”

  The sheikha sank back against the divan cushions. “Thank you, yes.”

  “I practice in the courts of Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. May I assume you reside in one of those three jurisdictions?”

  “You may.”

  Leigh briefly summarized the grounds for divorce under Virginia and Maryland law: no-fault if the parties were separated for at least one year; otherwise the petitioning spouse had to prove one of the enumerated fault grounds. The District of Columbia was strictly no-fault, but the spouses had to be separated for at least six months, or separated from bed and board for at least one year.

  “What does this mean? Separated from bed and board?”

  “Living under the same roof but not as a married couple. Essentially, not having sexual relations.”

  “I see. This is true also in Maryland and Virginia?”

  “No, there you must be physically living apart for a year before seeking a no-fault divorce.”

  “And if this is not possible?”

  Leigh cocked her head. “You’re still living with your husband?”

  Devra nodded.

  “Well, if he won’t leave, then you should. If money’s the problem,” Leigh added, “we can petition for a temporary support order.”

  “That is not the problem.”

  “If there are children to consider—”

  “There are none.”

  She was at a loss. “You wish to divorce him but not to leave him?”

  “Of course I wish to leave him. But he would never allow it. You must understand. In my country, in our culture, a wife cannot leave her husband, not without his consent.”

  “But you’re in America now. Things are different here.”

  Devra sighed. “One does not live in a country. One lives in a marriage and a household and a culture.” She folded her hands. “And so you are telling me divorce is not possible for me in my circumstances.”

  “Not in the District,” Leigh said. “Not unless you can prove you’re not living as husband and wife. But it is possible to divorce in Maryland or Virginia, even in the absence of separation, if you can prove one of the enumerated fault grounds.”

  “Which are?”

  Leigh ticked them off. Desertion. Felony conviction. Cruelty. Adultery.

  Devra leaned forward at the last point. “Defined as?”

  “Sexual relations with someone other than his spouse.”

  “What does spouse mean?”

  “A husband or wife,” Leigh answered slowly, as if speaking to a child. Then she realized. “Oh! Are you asking about plural marriage? Only the first spouse qualifies as the spouse. Sexual relations with any subsequent partner would constitute adultery.”

  “Even if the subsequent marriages were lawful in our home country?”

  “Even so.”

  “Even if they were sanctified by Allah?”

  “In this country, divorce is a civil matter only. Religion is irrelevant.”

  Devra shook her head. “I confess, I cannot comprehend such a thing. In my country, law and faith are one and the same.” She paused. “And it presents a further difficulty. If your courts will not burden me with the requirements of sharia law in seeking a divorce, then I assume I must likewise forfeit the benefits I would have received under sharia law?”

  “You’re referring to the mahr?”

  “Yes. Specifically, the deferred part of the mahr, the mu’akhkar. This is the sum agreed upon at the time of our marriage to be paid to me in the event of divorce. How can I hope to receive that money if sharia law is not enforced?”

  This was the subject of Leigh’s article, so she could answer with some confidence. “Courts in this country have ordered payment of the mahr without treading into questions of religion, by treating it the same as any nonreligious prenuptial agreement. It simply has to meet the statutory requirements for an enforceable prenup. Namely, that the agreement be in writing and entered into voluntarily, after a full and fair disclosure of assets.”

  Devra seemed stunned. “So it is actually possible your court would grant me a divorce over my husband’s objection, and at the same time compel him to pay me the mu’akhkar?”

  “Certainly it’s possible.”

  “Well.” She sat back with a dazed look in her deep dark eyes. “My mother told me things were different in America, but I never . . .” Her voice trailed off. She was silent for a long moment before she forced a smile at Leigh. “You’ve given me a great deal to reflect upon. May I ask that we meet again in a few weeks to discuss these matters further?”

  “Yes, I’d be happy to.”

  She pressed a button on the end table beside her. “Someone will contact your office with the particulars.”

  A brisk knock sounded on the door, and it swung open to admit a rolling rack of clothes steered by the personal shopper.

  “And now if you will excuse me,” Devra whispered with a glance at the bodyguard standing at attention outside the salon. “I must spend enough money to convince my husband I’ve been shopping this morning.” She raised her voice. “So you recommend the Versace?”

  “Ye—es.” Leigh faltered only slightly. “Yes, I think that would suit you best.”

  “Very well. I thank you.”

  The bodyguard escorted Leigh to the elevator and glowered at her until the doors closed. On the ground floor, she hurried through the empty store, and as soon as she cleared the front door, she took out her phone and powered it up. She couldn’t wait to get home to tell the kids about this encounter. Chrissy was studying the Middle East in her World Cultures class this term and was fascinated by it. She’d be thrilled to hear about her mother’s meeting with a real live sheikha. While Kip would get on the internet and figure out in five minutes exactly who this woman was.

  She slid into the car as her phone glowed to life. Six calls had piled up since she turned it off. Three from Kip, two from Peter. And the last one from the hospital.

  Chapter Five

  Pete swerved into the parking lot and squealed to a stop at the ER entrance and tore inside to the reception kiosk. But he was already too late, and they sent him to Admissions, but Admissions wouldn’t tell him anything except how to fill out the paperwork. When that was done they sent him to the surg
ical floor, but the elevator wouldn’t come no matter how hard he punched the up button, and he finally gave up and ran to the stairwell and galloped up four flights and down a couple of halls until at last he burst panting into the room.

  Kip didn’t look up at Pete’s arrival. He was staring at his hands, cradling his phone like a bird with a broken wing. His mouth trembled when he spoke. “They made me turn it off. I never got through to Leigh.”

  “I reached her. She’s on her way.”

  “I was googling these words. Cerebral aneurysm. Subarachnoid hemorrhage. I don’t know what they mean. I’m not even sure I’m spelling them right. They made me turn off my phone before I could figure anything out.”

  Pete stared, too, not at the phone but at Kip’s fingers. The tips were still smudged black with the ink residue from last night’s fingerprinting. “Where’s the doctor?”

  “I don’t know. They won’t tell me anything.”

  Pete went back out in the hall and did another circuit of the floor until he came to a glass-walled room with a row of doors along the back wall. He thought it might be the nurses’ station but there was no reception desk and no one inside the cube was looking outward. They were all looking at screens and talking on phones.

  A phone was hooked on the wall next to Pete. He picked it up and it rang automatically. A woman answered, though no one in the glass cube looked his way.

  “I’m looking for Dr. Rowan, I think it is?”

  “He’s in surgery.”

  “With Christine Porter?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Pete Conley. I’m her stepfather.”

  There was a pause. “I have a note here that the mother is en route.”

  “My wife, yes.”

  “Have a seat in the waiting room until she arrives.”

  The phone went dead in his hand, and still he couldn’t tell which nurse he’d spoken to. He hung it back on the hook and returned to the lounge down the hall. It was decorated in prints and plaids in shades of red and yellow, homespun and cheery, the kind of room often adorned with uplifting proverbs in framed needlepoint. These walls were blank.