Automatically, I took the hand she offered. “Partner?” It wasn’t the first time I deserved a swift kick for making the same assumptions a lot of men do.
She looked puzzled. “Lev didn’t tell you one of his partners was traveling with him?”
“For some reason, I thought he meant your husband. Sorry. If it’s about my judgment Tuesday—?”
“No, no,” she assured me. “You had no other option under the circumstances, but my sister was so sure she could convince a judge that I couldn’t talk her out of agreeing to testify.”
Either I’ve got to start working on my poker face or she’s extraordinarily intuitive because even though I was wearing three layers of makeup and dark glasses, Catherine Llewellyn caught my skepticism.
“Claire only needs the puppet when there are strangers, Judge Knott.” She glanced at my table and saw that it was set for only one person. “You’re lunching alone?”
“Yes.”
“Would it be an awful imposition if I joined you?” Her husky voice was urgent.
Curious, I gestured toward the opposite chair. “Please do.”
When the waiter returned, I ordered black bean soup and half a club sandwich; Mrs. Llewellyn opted for the crab-stuffed tomato plate.
The breeze off Taylors Creek was warm and barely ballooned the pink canvas umbrella above us, but she drew a wisp of red silk from her pocket and tied it so her hair wouldn’t blow. As we waited to be served, she spoke of the charms of Beaufort, the beauty of the Carolina coast, the friendliness of the people, the four-star comforts of the Ritchie House and the pleasures of a rare vacation. Then she asked me to call her Catherine and kept tagging so many Judge Knotts onto every sentence that I finally surrendered just as our food arrived.
“Please. Call me Deborah.”
“Deborah.” She turned my name in her mind and smiled appreciatively. “How very apt. Did your parents expect you to be a judge from birth?”
“Hardly.” Not with a father who had only grudgingly agreed to help pay for law school and who had been quite negative about my decision to run for district judge.
She had been covertly studying me ever since we sat down, yet it was as if she didn’t see my cuts and scratches because she was looking even deeper. “Deborah, may we speak frankly?”
That smokey voice, that prim Boston accent—I bet she did okay in the courtroom.
“I’ve wondered a lot about you these past few years. I hope you won’t resent that?”
I stiffened. “Resent that you wondered, or resent what you’re going to ask?”
She reached into her tote bag and drew out a lumpy envelope. “I believe these are yours?”
Inside were a dozen or more crystal beads. They flashed and sparkled against the stiff yellow paper like the prismed promises of the Crystal Coast.
“They were on the
Her indulgent smile invited me to share female solidarity over male obtuseness. I dug up a smile of my own and pasted it on my lips.
“Thanks.”
The tines of her fork toyed with the crabmeat. “I’m not trying to pry, Deborah. It’s just that I’m very fond of Lev.
He’s like the brother I never had and I don’t want to see him hurt.”
“You don’t have to worry about that from me,” I assured her.
“No? You were together how long? A year? A year and a half?”
“Something like that.”
“Did you know you were the first?”
“That he’d lived with? Yes.”
“And the last.”
I almost dropped my soup spoon. “You’re kidding!”
She shook her head. “Oh, I’m not saying there haven’t been
I was appalled. Then flattered. Then baffled. If we were all that wonderful together, how come we were apart.
Apparently, Catherine Llewellyn wondered, too.
Determinedly, I changed the subject. “Lev tells me y’all have a divorce practice.”
She was willing to wait. “Divorce and marital, yes. There are four partners and two associates: two men, four women.”
“You seem to be doing all right. Lev told me that the
“Ah, that was fun. The wife was a medical secretary, who put him through med school, struggled beside him
