Nineteen Minutes Read online

  Swallowing, she stared at Peter, trying to think of what she could do to spur him to self-defense, which punishment would make him change his behavior, even as it broke her heart to make him do just that. "If this happens again . . . no playdates with Josie for a month."

  She closed her eyes at the ultimatum. It was not the way she liked to parent, but apparently her usual advice--be kind, be polite, be what you want others to be--had done Peter no good. If a threat might make Peter roar, so loud that Drew and all those other awful children slunk away with their tails between their legs, then Lacy would do it.

  She brushed Peter's hair back from his face, watching the play of doubt cloud his features--and why shouldn't it? His mother had certainly never given him a directive like this before. "He's a bully. A jerk, in a tiny package. But he'll grow up to be a bigger jerk, and you--you're going to grow up to be someone incredible." Lacy smiled widely at her son. "One day, Peter, everyone's going to know your name."

  *

  There were two swings out on the playground, and sometimes you had to wait your turn for them. When that happened, Peter would cross his fingers and hope that he got the one that hadn't been swung around the top bar by a fifth grader, making it so that the seat was incredibly high off the ground and hard to get into. He was afraid he would fall off, trying to get on the swing, or, even more embarrassing, not even be able to hike himself up in the first place.

  When he waited with Josie, she always took that swing. She pretended she liked it, but Peter realized she was only pretending she didn't know how much he disliked it.

  Today at recess, they weren't swinging. Instead, they'd twisted the chains round and round until they were as knotted as a throat, and then they'd lift up their feet and go spinning. Peter would sometimes look back at the sky and imagine that he was flying.

  When they stopped, his swing and Josie's staggered against each other and their feet got all tangled. She laughed, and lightly locked their ankles together so that they were connected, a human chain link.

  He turned to her. "I want people to like me," he blurted out.

  Josie tilted her head. "People do like you."

  Peter split his feet, disengaging them. "I meant people," he said, "who aren't you."

  *

  The application to become a judge took Alex two full days to complete, and as she filled it out, a remarkable thing happened: she realized that she did actually want to be a judge. In spite of what she'd said to Whit, in spite of her earlier reservations, she was making the right decision for the right reasons.

  When the Judicial Selection Commission called for an interview, they made it clear that such invitations were not extended to just anybody. That if Alex was being interviewed, she was being seriously considered for the position.

  The job of the commission was to give the governor a short list of candidates. Judicial commission interviews were conducted at the old governor's mansion, Bridges House, in East Concord. They were staggered, and candidates entered through one entrance and left through another, presumably so that no one knew who else was up for the job.

  The twelve members of the commission were lawyers, policemen, executive directors of victim's advocacy organizations. They stared so hard at Alex that she expected her face to burst into flames. It did not help, either, that she had been up half the night with Josie, who'd awakened from a nightmare about a boa constrictor and refused to go back to sleep. Alex didn't know who the other candidates were for this position, but she'd wager that they weren't single moms who'd had to poke the radiator vents with a yardstick at 3:00 a.m. to prove that there weren't any snakes hiding in the dark tunnels.

  "I like the pace," she said carefully, replying to a question. There were answers she was expected to give, she knew. The trick was to somehow imbue the stock phrases and anticipated responses with part of her personality. "I like the pressure of making a quick decision. I'm strong on the rules of evidence. I've been in courtrooms with justices who don't do their homework in advance, and I know I won't function that way." She hesitated, looking around at the men and women, wondering if she should cultivate a persona like most of the other people who applied for judicial positions--and who'd come through the hallowed ranks of the prosecutorial office--or if she should be herself and allow the petticoat hem of her public defender background to peek out.

  Oh, hell.

  "I guess the reason I really want to be a judge is because I love the way a courtroom is an equal opportunity environment. When you come into it, for that brief amount of time, your case is the most important thing in the world, to everyone in that room. The system works for you. It doesn't matter who you are, or where you're from--your treatment will depend on the letter of the law, not on any socioeconomic variables."

  One of the commission members looked down at her notes. "What do you think makes a good judge, Ms. Cormier?"

  Alex felt a bead of sweat run down between her shoulder blades. "Being patient but firm. Being in control but not being arrogant. Knowing the rules of evidence and the rules of a courtroom." She paused. "This is probably not what you're used to hearing, but I think a good judge probably is a whiz at tangrams."

  An older woman from a victim's advocacy group blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

  "Tangrams. I'm a mom. My little girl, she's five. And there's this game she has where you're given a geometric outline of a figure--a boat, a train, a bird--and you somehow construct it from a set of puzzle pieces: triangles and parallelograms--some bigger than others. It's easy for a person with good spatial relations skills, because you really have to think outside the box. And being a judge is like that. You've got all of these competing factors--the parties involved, the victims, law enforcement, society, even precedent--and you somehow have to use them to solve the problem within a given framework."

  In the uncomfortable silence that followed, Alex turned her head and caught a glimpse through a window of the next interviewee arriving through the entrance vestibule. She blinked, certain she'd seen wrong, but you did not forget the silvered curls that you'd once run your fingers through; you did not put out of your mind the geography of cheekbones and jaw you'd traced with your own lips. Logan Rourke--her trial advocacy professor; her old lover; her daughter's father--headed into the building and closed the door.

  Apparently, he was a judicial candidate as well.

  Alex drew in her breath, even more determined to win this position than she had been a moment ago. "Ms. Cormier?" the older woman said again, and Alex realized she'd missed her question the first time around.

  "Yes. Sorry?"

  "I asked how successful you are when you play tangrams."

  Alex met her gaze. "Ma'am," she said, letting a broad smile escape, "I'm the New Hampshire State Champion."

  *

  At first, the numbers just looked fatter. But then they started to twist a little, and Peter had to either squinch up his face or get closer to see if it was a 3 or an 8. His teacher sent him to the nurse, who smelled like teabags and feet, and she made him look at a chart on the wall.

  His new eyeglasses were light as a feather and had special lenses that wouldn't scratch even if he fell down and they went flying across a sandbox. The frames were made out of wire, too thin, in his opinion, to hold up the curved pieces of glass that made his eyes look like an owl's: oversized, bright, so blue.

  When Peter got his glasses he was amazed. Suddenly, the blur in the distance coagulated into a farm with silos and fields and spots of cows. The letters on the red sign said STOP. There were tiny lines, like the creases on his knuckles, at the corners of his mother's eyes. All superheroes had accessories--Batman's belt, Superman's cape--this was his, and it gave him X-ray vision. He was so excited about having his new glasses that he slept with them.

  It wasn't until he got to school the next day that he understood that with better vision came perfect hearing: Four-eyes; blind as a bat. His glasses were no longer a mark of distinction but only a scar, something else that made hi