Handle With Care Read online

  When I came downstairs, I heard music in the kitchen. Emma had left for the bus stop before I'd even gotten into the shower, and Rob - well, Rob had been at work by seven thirty every morning for the past three weeks. It was less of a burgeoning work ethic, I believed, than a burning desire to be out of the house by the time I awakened, just in case we'd have to have a civil conversation without Emma there to serve as a buffer.

  'It's about time,' Rob said as I walked into the kitchen. He reached over to the radio and turned down the volume, then pointed to a plate on the table that was piled high with bagels. 'The store only had one pumpernickel,' he said. 'But there's also jalapeno-cheddar, and cinnamon-raisin--'

  'But I heard you leave,' I said.

  Rob nodded. 'And I came back. Veggie cream cheese, or regular?'

  I didn't answer, just stood very still, watching him.

  'I don't know if I ever got around to telling you,' Rob said, 'but the kitchen? It's so much brighter, now that you painted it. You'd be a hell of an interior designer. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think you're better suited to be an obstetrician, but still . . .'

  My head was starting to pound. 'Look, I don't want to sound ungrateful, but what are you doing here?'

  'Toasting a bagel?'

  'You know what I mean.'

  The toaster popped, Rob ignored it. 'There's a reason we have to say "for better or for worse." I've been a total asshole, Piper. I'm sorry.' He looked down at the space between us. 'You didn't ask for this lawsuit; it was lobbed at you. I have to admit, it made me think about things I thought I'd never have to think about again. But regardless of all that, you didn't do anything wrong. You didn't provide any less than the standard of care for Charlotte and Sean. If anything, you went above and beyond.'

  I felt a sob rise in my throat. 'Your brother,' I managed.

  'I don't know how different my life would have been if he'd never been born,' Rob said quietly. 'But I do know this: I loved him, while he was here.' He glanced up at me. 'I can't take back what I said to you, and I can't erase my behavior these past few months. But I was hoping, all the same, that you might not mind me coming to court.'

  I didn't know how he'd cleared his schedule, or for how long. But I looked up at Rob and saw behind him the new cabinets I'd installed, the track of blue lighting, the warm copper paint on the walls, and for the first time I did not see a room that needed perfecting; I saw a home. 'On one condition,' I hedged.

  Rob nodded. 'Fair enough.'

  'I get the pumpernickel bagel,' I said, and I walked right into his open arms.

  Marin

  A

  n hour before the trial was supposed to start, I really didn't know whether or not my client was planning to show up. I'd tried to call her all weekend, and had not been able to reach her landline or her cell. When I reached the courthouse and saw the news crews lining the steps, I tried to phone her again.

  You've reached the O'Keefes, the message machine sang.

  That wasn't exactly true, if Sean was proceeding with a divorce. But then, if I had learned anything about Charlotte, it was that the sound bite offered to the public might not be what was true behind the scenes, and to be honest, I didn't particularly care, as long as she didn't confuse her rhetoric when I had her on the witness stand.

  I knew when she arrived. The roar on the steps was audible, and when she finally breached the door of the courthouse, the press poured in after her. I immediately hooked my arm through hers, muttering 'No comment' as I dragged Charlotte down a hallway and into a private room, locking the door behind me.

  'My God,' she said, still stunned. 'There are so many of them.'

  'Slow news day in New Hampshire,' I reasoned. 'I would have been happy to wait for you out in the parking lot and take you through the back way, but that would actually have meant you'd returned my seven thousand messages this weekend, so that we could arrange a time to meet.'

  Charlotte stared blankly out the window at the white vans and their satellite dishes. 'I didn't know you called. I wasn't home. Willow broke her femur. We spent the weekend at the hospital, having a rod surgically implanted.'

  I felt my cheeks burn with embarrassment. Charlotte hadn't been ignoring my calls; she'd been putting out a fire. 'Is she all right?'

  'She broke it running away from us. Sean told her about the divorce.'

  'I don't think any kid wants to hear something like that.' I hesitated. 'I know you've got a lot on your mind, but I wanted to have a few minutes to talk to you about what's going to happen today--'

  'Marin,' Charlotte said. 'I can't do this.'

  'Come again?'

  'I can't do this.' She looked up at me. 'I really don't think I can go through with it.'

  'If this is about the media--'

  'It's about my daughter. It's about my husband. I don't care how the rest of the world sees me, Marin. But I do care what they think.'

  I considered the countless hours I'd spent preparing for this trial, all the expert witnesses I'd interviewed and all the motions I'd filed. Somehow, in my mind, it was tangled up with the fruitless search for my mother, who had finally responded to Maisie the court clerk's phone call, asking her to send along my letter. 'Now's a little late to break this news to me, don't you think?'

  Charlotte faced me. 'My daughter thinks I don't want her, because she's broken.'

  'Well, what did you think she'd believe?'

  'Me,' Charlotte said softly. 'I thought she'd believe me.'

  'Then make her. Get up on that witness stand and say that you love her.'

  'That's sort of at odds with saying I'd have terminated the pregnancy, isn't it?'

  'I don't think they're mutually exclusive,' I said. 'You don't want to lie on the stand. I don't want you to lie on the stand. But I certainly don't want you judging yourself before a jury does.'

  'How can't they? You even did it, Marin. You as much as admitted that, if your mother had been like me, you wouldn't be here today.'

  'My mother was like you,' I confessed. 'She didn't have a choice.' I sat down on a desk across from Charlotte. 'Just a few weeks after she gave birth to me, abortion became legal. I don't know if she would have made the same decision if I'd been conceived nine months later. I don't know if her life would have been any better. But I do know it would have been different.'

  'Different,' Charlotte repeated.

  'You told me a year and a half ago that you wanted Willow to have opportunities to do things she might not otherwise be able to do,' I said. 'Didn't you deserve the same?'

  I held my breath until Charlotte lifted her face to mine. 'How long before we start?' she asked.

  The jury, which had looked so disparate on Friday, seemed to be a unified body already first thing Monday morning. Judge Gellar had dyed his hair over the weekend, a deep black Grecian Formula that drew my eyes like a magnet and made him look like an Elvis impersonator - never a good image to associate with a judge you are desperate to impress. When he instructed the four cameras that had been allowed in to report on the trial, I almost expected him to break out in a resounding chorus of 'Burning Love.'

  The courtroom was full - of media, of disability-rights advocates, of people who just liked to see a good show. Charlotte was trembling beside me, staring down at her lap. 'Ms. Gates,' Judge Gellar said. 'Whenever you're ready.'

  I squeezed Charlotte's hand, then stood up to face the jury. 'Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,' I said. 'I'd like to tell you about a little girl named Willow O'Keefe.'

  I walked toward them. 'Willow's six and a half years old,' I said, 'and she's broken sixty-eight bones in her lifetime. The most recent one was Friday night, when her mom got home from jury selection. Willow was running and slipped. She broke her femur and had to have surgery to put a rod inside it. But Willow's also broken bones when she's sneezed. When she's bumped into a table. When she's rolled over in her sleep. That's because Willow has osteogenesis imperfecta, an illness you might know as brittle bone syndrome. It means sh