“What can I do for you?” He uses that fake welcoming tone of voice again. Holden would split.
I start slowly, trying to show him how reasonable and calm I am. “Can I be straight with you?”
“Of course. Whatever you say in a lawyer’s office is confidential.”
I’ve been doing some reading—in all my spare time—and I know that what he says is not exactly right. Confidentiality is for a client and I’m not his client; my parents are. But there’s no point in calling him on this when there are bigger issues at hand. It’s not what I meant anyway.
“Go ahead,” he says from behind the open briefcase in that dull voice that tells me he’s reading something.
“Aren’t my parents paying you by the hour?”
He looks across the piles at me. “Ah… yes, but—”
“Then I’ll wait until you’re done reading.”
Although he shuts the case and glares at me, at least I have his attention now. Tit for tat, my grandma used to say. He tried to make me feel small and I caught him at it. We’re even. And he knows it.
“My parents are running out of money and nothing’s been decided.”
“That’s not exactly true. They just don’t like the lower court’s decision.”
I can’t tell him that all my parents talk about at home is moving to Mexico, where they can get me a new cure, some combination of herbs and diet that Miss T. Undertaker recommends.
“What is the court’s decision? Can you put it in plain English?”
After a brief hesitation in which I wonder if he’s swallowed his gum, Walker starts. “The short list? You need to receive the prescribed chemotherapy, the follow-up radiation, and return to school. Return to your normal life. The normal life of”—he opens a pretty hefty file and scans the inside cover—“a sixteen-year-old.”
“That’s the court’s brilliant conclusion?” It’s hard to stay seated. “It doesn’t sound very legal.” I can feel my leg jiggling madly with repressed anger. “My normal life doesn’t exist. And the normal life of a sixteen-year-old isn’t my life. If you had your facts right, you’d know I’m not sixteen until November. And normal sixteen-year-olds don’t have chemotherapy or radiation or fatal—”
When the intercom buzzes, instead of telling the voice in the box he’s busy, which would be the polite thing to do, he punches another button and talks. Mumbles, really, but after I’ve calmed down, it’s pretty interesting. Some guy’s DNA has to be tested and to avoid witness tampering, they’re hiding a girl who’s been raped and two witnesses in another town under false names.
That imagination of mine takes off. Witness tampering could lead to murder, I’m thinking. I can imagine this bumbling Walker guy looking both ways before he crosses the street and his car blowing up just as he reaches the stunning expanse of the marble courthouse steps. Never mind that the Essex County courthouse has two very short, plain old poured concrete steps.
But the longer Walker talks about the faceless criminal to an unknown “buddy,” the more irritated I get. He’s so important, and dumb schmuck Daniel Landon can wait? No wonder Mom is depressed about the court stuff. Walker’s supposed to be helping us. It’s exactly Holden’s point—Walker’s like the disciples, saying one thing and doing another. Like Peter denying that he knows Jesus when the Roman soldiers ask, Walker seems to have forgotten he’s supposed to be fighting for us.
The “conflict” is coming across loud and clear, but not the kind between my parents and me that Walker was talking about. He sounds like the marketing department of the Essex County family court, when what he ought to be doing is filing motions and researching new arguments to show the court that my parents are doing their best in a bad situation. He’s not paying any attention to the Landons.
And when he’s forced to deal with us, he wimps out and tries to convince Mom and Dad that they should do what the court tells them. The county might as well be paying Walker’s fees.
I know my parents picked this pinhead, but who else was there to choose from in our crumby little town? He’s still talking into his phone, a clear violation of the privacy of some other client. I get up and walk out.
The receptionist looks at me funny. “Finished already?”
“All that time talking with his other clients better not show up on our bill.”
The shade trees in front of the Episcopal church cover the entire graveyard. My favorite grave is Benjamin Frisbie’s. For real. But he’s too ancient to be the one who invented the actual Frisbee. Friend Benjamin’s grave is all the way back from the road in a shady corner. It’s decorated with an avenging angel and the letters are gouged away into slight indentations you can barely see with the rain: A GOOD FRIEND AND PATRIOT.
I’ve always liked to sit on the tomb of good old Ben and sound off. He never argues or tells me I don’t know what I’m talking about. No one much comes through the graveyard, at least not on the afternoons I’ve been here. Mostly weekdays. I can’t even think the last time I saw anyone in here. Episcopalians must not like their relatives much.
I make up a poem about Walker and rework it until it rhymes perfectly with stick. Losing your temper is exhausting, though. The stone top is cool and once I lie down, it’s easier to close my eyes than stare at the shifting leafy ceiling, especially because the feeling that I might pitch my lunch at any second is getting stronger.
The voices drift in, at first almost like a dream. I’m half asleep anyway.
“So what are you thinking?” The voice—male, vaguely familiar—is some distance off. Slick question, soft enough that I know whoever he is, he’s talking to someone he’s trying to snow. “Come on. You can tell me.” And he’s a little pushy.
“Classes are… okay. The kids are mostly nice. I mean, we’ve only been here since August.”
I know that voice. And there can only be so many new students in a county as small as Essex. It’s Meredith. My Meredith. She talks slowly, as if she hasn’t really made up her mind and is thinking seriously about the question. No giggles, she’s not a silly cheerleader-type. And, even in my limited experience, it doesn’t sound like she’s flirting.
Filtered through the sun and the cool shadows, her voice takes on a mystical quality like the Ravi Shankar music from the seventies. I hold my breath, rabid for the next word, the next thought. They can’t have noticed me.
The guy speaks quietly, maybe close to her ear. “A hundred guys must have asked you out already.”
There’s only one guy I know who’s that smooth and over-anxious.
“Boo.” I lunge up from the tombstone. I see instantly that I’m right about the predator and do a clumsy two-step on the top. “Ta-da.”
Three graves away on the far side of one of the family monuments Meredith twists around, startled, then smiles when she sees it’s me. She climbs up on another tomb and dances back at me.
“To-di-do-di-do-do.” She’s laughing and flicking her hair off her shoulders. She swings her feet back and forth like a puppet, a mirror image of me atop old Ben’s grave.
The boy with her doesn’t respond so quickly. Slicko Leonard Yowell is not even smiling. My mother would be shocked.
At dinner my parents can’t leave off the harangue about the Social Services people. I guess they figure it’s all out in the open now since I’ve talked to the lawyer. Nick, though, is action man and he interrupts before I can confirm what they’re hinting at, that Walker is truly a jerk.