Nineteen Minutes Read online

  Five minutes later, she went into the coffee shop and ordered a latte with skim milk. The barista was a girl with improbable purple hair and a straight piercing that went across the bridge of her nose at the level of her eyebrows; when Josie was little and they'd come here, Alex would have to tell her not to stare. "Would you like biscotti with that, Judge?" the barista asked.

  She went into the bookstore, the pharmacy, and the gas station, and in each place, she could feel people staring at her. She knew she was naked. They knew she was naked. But no one said anything until she got to the post office. The postal clerk in Sterling was an old man who had been working there, probably, since the changeover from the Pony Express. He handed Alex a roll of stamps, and then furtively covered her hand with his own. "Ma'am, it might not be my place to say so . . ."

  Alex lifted her gaze, waited.

  The worry lines on the clerk's forehead smoothed. "But that's a beautiful dress you've got on, Your Honor," he said.

  *

  Her patient was screaming. Lacy could hear the girl sobbing all the way down the hall. She ran as fast as she could, turning the corner and entering the hospital room.

  Kelly Gamboni was twenty-one years old, orphaned, and had an IQ of 79. She had been gang-raped by three high school boys who were now awaiting trial at a juvy facility in Concord. Kelly lived at a group home for Catholics, so abortion was never an option. But now, an ER doctor had deemed it medically necessary to induce Kelly, at thirty-six weeks. She lay in the hospital bed with a nurse trying ineffectually to comfort her, as Kelly clutched a teddy bear. "Daddy," she cried, to a parent who had died years ago. "Take me home. Daddy, it hurts!"

  The doctor walked into the room, and Lacy rounded on him.

  "How dare you," she said. "This is my patient."

  "Well, she was brought into the ER and became mine," the doctor countered.

  Lacy looked at Kelly and then walked into the hall; it would do Kelly no good to have them fighting in front of her. "She came in complaining of wetting her underwear for two days. The exam was consistent with premature rupture of membranes," the doctor said. "She's afebrile and the fetal monitor tracing is reactive. It's completely reasonable to induce. And she signed off on the consent form."

  "It may be reasonable, but it's not advisable. She's mentally retarded. She doesn't know what's happening to her right now; she's terrified. And she certainly doesn't have the ability to consent." Lacy turned on her heel. "I'm calling psych."

  "Like hell you are," the doctor said, grabbing her arm.

  "Let go of me!"

  They were still screaming at each other five minutes later when the psych consult arrived. The boy who stood in front of Lacy looked to be about Joey's age. "You've got to be kidding," the doctor said, the first comment he'd made that she agreed with.

  They both followed the shrink into Kelly's room. By now, the girl was curled into a ball around her belly, whimpering. "She needs an epidural," Lacy muttered.

  "It's not safe to give one at two centimeters," the doctor argued.

  "I don't care. She needs one."

  "Kelly?" the psychiatrist said, squatting down in front of her. "Do you know what a C-section is?"

  "Uh-huh," Kelly groaned.

  The psychiatrist stood up. "She's capable of consent, unless a court's ruled otherwise."

  Lacy's jaw dropped. "That's it?"

  "I have six other consults waiting for me," the psychiatrist snapped. "Sorry to disappoint you."

  Lacy yelled after him. "I'm not the one you're disappointing!" She sank down beside Kelly and squeezed her hand. "It's okay. I'm going to take care of you." She winged a prayer to whoever might move the mountains that could be men's hearts. Then she lifted her face to the doctor's. "First do no harm," she said softly.

  The doctor pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'll get her an epidural," he sighed; and only then did Lacy realize she had been holding her breath.

  *

  The last place Josie wanted to go was out to dinner with her mother, so that she could spend three hours watching maitre d's and chefs and other guests suck up to her. This was Josie's birthday celebration, so she didn't really understand why she couldn't just demand take-out Chinese and a video. But her mother was insisting that it wouldn't be a celebration if they just stayed at home, and so here she was, trailing after her mother like a lady-in-waiting.

  She'd been counting. There were four Nice to see you, Your Honors. Three Yes, Your Honors. Two My pleasure, Your Honors. And one For Your Honor, we have the best table in the house. Sometimes Josie read about celebrities in People magazine who were always getting handouts from purse companies and shoe stores and free tickets to opening nights on Broadway and Yankee Stadium--when you got right down to it, her mother was a celebrity in the town of Sterling.

  "I cannot believe," her mother said, "that I have a twelve-year-old."

  "Is that my cue to say something like, you must have been a child prodigy?"

  Her mother laughed. "Well, that would work."

  "I'm going to be driving in three and a half years," Josie pointed out.

  Her mother's fork clattered against the plate. "Thanks for that."

  The waiter came over to the table. "Your Honor," he said, setting a platter of caviar down in front of Josie's mother, "the chef would like you to have this appetizer with his compliments."

  "That's so gross. Fish eggs?"

  "Josie!" Her mother smiled stiffly at the waiter. "Please thank the chef."

  She could feel her mother's eyes on her as she picked at her food. "What?" she challenged.

  "Well, you sounded like a spoiled brat, that's all."

  "Why? Because I don't like fish embryos sitting under my nose? You don't eat them either. I was at least being honest."

  "And I was being discreet," her mother said. "Don't you think that the waiter is going to tell the chef that Judge Cormier's daughter is a piece of work?"

  "Like I care?"

  "I do. What you do reflects on me, and I have a reputation I have to protect."

  "As what? A suck-up?"

  "As someone who's above criticism both in and out of the courtroom."

  Josie tilted her head to one side. "What if I did something bad?"

  "Bad? How bad?"

  "Let's say I was smoking pot," Josie said.

  Her mother froze. "Is there something you want to tell me, Josie?"

  "God, Mom, I'm not doing it. This is hypothetical."

  "Because you know, now that you're in middle school, you're going to start coming across kids who do things that are dangerous--or just plain stupid--and I would hope you'd be--"

  "--strong enough to know better than that," Josie finished, echoing her in a singsong. "Yeah. Got it. But what if, Mom? What if you came home and found me getting stoned in the living room? Would you turn me in?"

  "What do you mean, turn you in?"

  "Call the cops. Hand over my stash." Josie grinned. "Of hash."

  "No," her mother said. "I would not report you."

  Josie used to think, when she was younger, that she would grow up to look like her mother--fine-boned, dark-haired, light-eyed. The combination of elements were all there in her features, but as she'd gotten older, she started to look like someone else entirely--someone she had never met. Her father.

  She wondered if her father--like Josie herself--could memorize things in a snap and picture them on the page just by closing his eyes. She wondered if her father sang off key and liked to watch scary movies. She wondered if he had the straight slash of eyebrows, so different from her mother's delicate arches.

  She wondered, period.

  "If you didn't report me because I'm your daughter," Josie said, "then you're not really being fair, are you?"

  "I'd be acting like a parent, not a judge." Her mother reached across the table and put her hand on Josie's, which felt weird--her mother wasn't one of these touchy-feely types. "Josie, you can come to me, you know. If you need to talk, I'm there to list