Perfect Match Read online

  When the reporters run off to call their affiliates with the verdict and the crowd in the gallery thins, I notice one other man. Quentin Brown has gathered his files and his briefcase. He walks to the gate between our tables, stops, and turns to me. He inclines his head, and I nod back. Suddenly my arm is wrenched behind me, and I instinctively pull away, certain that someone who has not understood the judge's verdict is about to put handcuffs on me again. "No," I say, turning. "You don't understand ..." But then the bailiff unlocks the electronic bracelet on my wrist. It falls to the floor, ringing out my release.

  When I look up again, Quentin is gone.

  After a few weeks, the interviews stop. The eagle eye of the news refocuses on some other sordid story. A caravan of media vehicles snakes its way south, and we go back to what we used to be.

  Well, most of us do.

  Nathaniel is stronger every day; and Caleb has picked up a few new jobs. Patrick called me from Chicago, his halfway point to the West Coast. So far, he is the only one who has been brave enough to ask me how I will fill my days now that I am not a prosecutor.

  It has been such a big part of me for so long that there's no easy answer. Maybe I'll write the book everyone seems to want me to write. Maybe I'll give free legal advice to senior citizens at the town recreation hall. Maybe I will just stay at home and watch my son grow up.

  I tap the envelope in my hand. It is from the Bar Disciplinary Committee, and it has been on the kitchen counter, unopened, for nearly two months. There's no point in opening it now, either. I know what it will say.

  Sitting down at the computer, I type a very concise note. I am voluntarily turning in my license; I no longer wish to practice law. Sincerely, Nina Frost.

  I print it, and an envelope to match. Fold, lick, seal, stamp. Then I put on my boots and walk down the driveway to the mailbox.

  "Okay," I say out loud, after I put it inside and raise the red flag. "Okay," I repeat, when what I really mean is, What do I do now?

  There's always one week in January that's a thaw. Without warning, the temperature climbs to fifty degrees; the snow melts in puddles wide as a lake; people take to sitting on Adirondack chairs in their shorts, watching it all happen.

  This year, however, the thaw's gone on for a record number of days. It started the day of Nina's release. That very afternoon, the town skating pond was closed due to spotty ice; by the end of the week teenagers were skateboarding down sidewalks; there was even word of a few crocuses pushing their way up through the inevitable mud. It has been good for business, that's for sure--construction that couldn't get done in the dead of winter has suddenly been given a reprieve. And it has also, for the first time Caleb can recall, made the sap run in the maple trees this early in the year.

  Yesterday Caleb set up his taps and buckets; today, he is walking the perimeter of his property, collecting the sap. The sky seems crisp as a lancet, and Caleb has his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow. The mud is a succubus, grabbing for his boots, but even that can't slow him. Days like this, they just don't come around often enough.

  He pours the sap into huge vats. Forty gallons of this sweet juice will boil down to a single gallon of maple syrup. Caleb makes it right on the kitchen stove, in a spaghetti pot, straining each batch through a sieve before it thickens. For Nina and Nathaniel, it's all about the end product--pouring it on pancakes and waffles. But to Caleb, the beauty is in the way you get there. The blood of a tree, a spout, and a bucket. Steam rising, the scent filling every corner of the house. There is nothing quite like it: knowing every breath you take is bound to be sweet.

  Nathaniel is building a bridge, although it might turn out to be a tunnel. The cool thing about Legos is that you can change them right in the middle. Sometimes when he builds he pretends he is his father, and he does it with the same careful planning. And sometimes when he builds he pretends he is his mother, and takes a tower as high as it can go before it falls to the ground.

  He has to work around the dog's tail, because Mason happens to be sleeping right on the middle of his bedroom floor, but that's all right too, because this could be a village with a monstrous beast. In fact, he might be creating the wicked awesome getaway boat.

  But where will they all go? Nathaniel thinks for a minute, then lays down four greens and four reds, begins to build. He makes sturdy walls and wide windows. A level of a house, his father has told him, is called a story.

  Nathaniel likes that. It makes him feel like maybe he is living between the covers of a book himself. Like maybe everyone in every home is sure to get a happy ending.

  Laundry is always a good, mindless start. Ours seems to reproduce at the dank bottom of its bin, so that regardless of how careful we are with our clothes, there is always a full basket every other day. I fold the clean wash and carry it upstairs, putting Nathaniel's items away before I tackle my own.

  It is when I go to fold a pair of my jeans over a hanger that I see the duffel bag. Has it really been sitting here, shoved into the back of the closet, for two weeks? Caleb probably never even noticed; he has enough clothes in his drawers to have overlooked unpacking the bag he took with him to the motel. But seeing it is an eyesore; it reminds me of the moment he moved out.

  I pull out a few long-sleeved shirts, some boxers. It is not until I toss them into the laundry bin that I realize my hand is sticky. I rub my fingers together, frown, pick up one shirt again and shake it out.

  There is a big, green stain on one corner.

  There are stains on some socks too. It looks as if something has spilled all over, but when I look in the bag, there's no open bottle of shampoo.

  Then, it doesn't smell like shampoo either. It is a scent I cannot place, exactly. Something industrial.

  The last item in the bag is a pair of jeans. Out of habit, I reach into the pockets to make sure Caleb hasn't left money or receipts inside.

  In the left rear pocket is a five-dollar bill. And in the right rear pocket are boarding passes for two US Air flights: one from Boston to New Orleans, one from New Orleans to Boston, both dated January 3, 2002. The day after Nathaniel's competency hearing.

  Caleb's voice comes from a few feet behind me. "I did what I had to do."

  Caleb is yelling at Nathaniel to stop playing with the antifreeze. "How many times do I have to tell you ... It's poison." Mason, lapping at the puddle because it tastes so sweet; he does not know any better.

  "The cat," I whisper, turning to him. "The cat died too."

  "I know. I figure it got at the rest of the cocoa. Ethylene glycol is toxic ... but it's sweet enough." He reaches for me, but I back away. "You told me his name. You said it wasn't over yet. All I did," Caleb says softly, "is finish what you started."

  "Don't." I hold up my hand. "Caleb, don't tell me this."

  "You're the only one I can tell."

  He is right, of course. As his wife, I am not obligated to testify against him. Not even if Gwynne is autopsied, and there are traces of poison in the tissues. Not even if evidence leads right to Caleb.

  But then, I have spent three months learning the repercussions of taking the law into one's own hands. I have watched my husband walk out the door--not because he was judging me, it turns out, but because he was trying himself. I have come so close to losing everything I ever wanted--a life I was too foolish to value until it was nearly taken away.

  I stare at Caleb, waiting for an explanation.

  Yet there are some feelings so far-flung and wide that words cannot cover them. As language fails Caleb, his eyes lock onto mine, and he spells out what he cannot speak. His hands come up to clasp each other tightly. To someone who does not know how to listen in a different way, it looks like he is praying for the best. But me, I know the sign for marriage.

  It is all he needs to say to make me understand.

  Suddenly Nathaniel bursts into our bedroom. "Mom, Dad!" he yells. "I made the coolest castle in the world. You have to see it." He spins before he has even come to a complete stop, and