Nineteen Minutes Read online

  Alex followed her into Peter's bedroom, where Lacy threw open the closet doors and checked beneath the bed. From there, they checked the bathroom, Joey's room, and the master bedroom. It wasn't until they went downstairs again that they heard voices coming from the basement. "It's heavy," Josie said.

  Then Peter: "Here. Like this."

  Alex wound down the wooden stairway. Lacy's basement was a one-hundred-year-old root cellar with a dirt floor and cobwebs strung like Christmas decorations. She homed in on the whispers coming from a corner of the basement, and there, behind a stack of boxes and a shelf full of home-canned jelly, was Josie, holding a rifle.

  "Oh my God," Alex breathed, and Josie swung around, pointing the barrel at her.

  Lacy grabbed the gun and pulled it away. "Where did you get this?" she demanded, and only then did Peter and Josie seem to realize that something was wrong.

  "Peter," Josie said. "He had a key."

  "A key?" Alex cried. "To what?"

  "The safe," Lacy murmured. "He must have seen Lewis taking out a rifle when he went hunting last weekend."

  "My daughter has been coming over to your house for how long now, and you've got guns lying around?"

  "They're not lying around," Lacy said. "They're in a locked gun safe."

  "Which your five-year-old can open!"

  "Lewis keeps the bullets--"

  "Where?" Alex demanded. "Or should I just ask Peter?"

  Lacy turned to Peter. "You know better. What on earth made you do this?"

  "I just wanted to show it to her, Mom. She asked."

  Josie lifted a frightened face. "I did not."

  Alex turned. "So now your son's blaming Josie--"

  "Or your daughter's lying," Lacy countered.

  They stared at each other, two friends who had separated along the fault lines of their children. Alex's face was flushed. What if, she kept thinking. What if they'd been five minutes later? What if Josie had been hurt, killed? On the edges of this thought, another one ignited--the answers she'd given the Executive Council weeks before. Who has the right to judge someone else?

  No one, she had said.

  And yet, here she was doing it.

  I am pro-firearms, she had told them.

  Did that make her a hypocrite? Or was she only being a good mother?

  Alex watched Lacy kneel beside her son and that was all it took to trip the switch: Josie's steadfast loyalty to Peter suddenly seemed to only be a weight dragging her down. Maybe it was best for Josie if she started making other friends. Friends who did not get her called to the principal's office and who placed rifles in her hand.

  Alex anchored Josie to her side. "I think we ought to leave."

  "Yes," Lacy agreed, her voice cool. "I think that would be best."

  *

  They were in the frozen-food aisle when Josie began her tantrum. "I don't like peas," she whined.

  "You don't have to eat them." Alex opened up the freezer door, letting the cold air kiss her cheek as she reached for the Green Giant vegetables.

  "I want Oreos."

  "You're not getting Oreos. You already had animal crackers." Josie had been contentious for a week now, ever since the fiasco at Lacy's house. Alex knew she couldn't keep Josie from being with Peter at school during the day, but that didn't mean she had to cultivate the relationship by allowing Josie to invite him over to play afterward.

  Alex hauled a vat of Poland Spring water into her cart, then a bottle of wine. On second thought, she reached for another. "Do you want chicken or hamburger for dinner?"

  "I want tofurkey."

  Alex started laughing. "Where did you hear about tofurkey?"

  "Lacy made it for us for lunch. They're like hot dogs but they're better for you."

  Alex stepped forward as her number was called at the meat counter. "Can I have a half pound of boneless chicken breasts?"

  "How come you get what you want, but I never get what I want?" Josie accused.

  "Believe me, you're not as deprived a child as you'd like to think you are."

  "I want an apple," Josie announced.

  Alex sighed. "Can we just please get through the grocery store without you saying I want again?"

  Before Alex realized what her daughter was doing, Josie kicked out from the seat of the shopping cart, catching Alex hard in the middle. "I hate you!" Josie screamed. "You're the worst mom in the whole world!"

  Alex was uncomfortably aware of the other shoppers looking at her--the old woman feeling melons, the grocery employee with his fists full of fresh broccoli. Why did kids always fall apart in venues where you would be duly measured for your actions? "Josie," she said, smiling through her teeth, "calm down."

  "I wish you were like Peter's mother! I wish I could just go live with them."

  Alex grasped her shoulders, hard enough to make Josie burst into tears. "You listen to me," she said in a heated undertone, and then she caught a distant whisper, and the word judge.

  There had been an article in the local paper about her recent appointment to the district court; it ran with a photo. Alex had felt the spark of recognition when she passed people in the baking aisle and the cereal aisle: Oh, that's her. But right now, she also felt the checks and balances of their stares as they watched her with Josie, waiting for her to act--well--judiciously.

  She relaxed her grasp. "I know you're tired," Alex said, loud enough for the rest of the entire store to hear. "I know you want to go home. But you have to behave when we're out in public."

  Josie blinked through her tears, listening to the Voice of Reason and wondering what this alien creature had done with her real mother, who would have yelled right back at her and told her to cut it out.

  A judge, Alex suddenly realized, doesn't get to be a judge only on the bench. She's still a judge when she goes out to a restaurant or dances at a party or wants to throttle her child in the middle of the produce aisle. Alex had been given a mantle to wear, without realizing that there was a catch: she would never be allowed to take it off.

  If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask . . . with nothing beneath it?

  Alex pushed the cart toward the checkout lines. By now, her raging child had turned into a contrite little girl again. She listened to Josie's diminishing hiccups. "There," she said, to comfort herself as much as her daughter. "Isn't that better?"

  *

  Alex's first day on the bench was spent in Keene. No one but her clerk would know officially that it was her first day--attorneys had heard she was new, but weren't sure when she quite started--and yet, she was terrified. She changed her outfit three times, even though no one would see it underneath her robe. She threw up twice before she left for the courthouse.

  She knew how to get to chambers--after all, she'd tried cases here on the other side of the bench a hundred times. The clerk was a thin man named Ishmael who remembered Alex from their previous meetings and hadn't particularly liked her--she'd cracked up after he introduced himself ("Call me Ishmael"). Today, however, he practically fell at her high-heeled feet. "Welcome, Your Honor," he said. "Here's your docket. I'll take you to your chambers, and we'll send a court officer in to get you when we're ready. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

  "No," Alex said. "I'm all set."

  He left her in chambers, which were freezing cold. She adjusted the thermostat and pulled her robe out of her briefcase to dress. There was an adjoining bathroom; Alex stepped inside to scrutinize herself. She looked fair. Commanding.

  And maybe a little like a choirgirl.

  She sat down at the desk and immediately thought of her father. Look at me, Daddy, she thought, although by now he was in a place where he couldn't hear her. She could remember dozens of cases he'd tried; he'd come home and tell her about them over dinner. What she couldn't remember were the moments when he wasn't a judge and was just her father.

&nbs