Then, out of the blue, he proposed to me last year. I thought it would be a marriage of convenience for both of us, but to my complete and utter surprise, after a lifetime of taking him for granted, I found myself falling wildly in love. It was like taking a second look at a chunk of glass and discovering a diamond.
“Do I pass inspection?” he asked in a lazy voice with his eyes still closed.
“Absolutely,” I said and tucked myself under his arm. With my head nestled on his chest, we both fell asleep again.
When we finally awoke for good, we were well into Virginia. In Washington, our diesel engine was changed over for an electric one, which gave us enough time to go up into Union Station and grab sandwiches to take back to our seats.
While Dwight worked on a proposal the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department planned to present to the county commissioners at their February meeting, I took out my laptop to review some of the work that would be waiting for me when I got back. Most of the cases were routine, but I was truly conflicted about a custody battle that loomed on my calendar. Jenny and Max Benton are both casual friends, which is the trouble with living and working your whole life in a small town that’s also the county seat. All my judicial colleagues know the Bentons one way or another and several are related through blood or marriage. I tried to recuse myself from their case when it was first assigned, but they both wanted me and they both swore they would abide by whatever ruling I made without bitching about it afterwards.
I’m cynical enough to know that won’t happen. Jenny’s probably counting on the fact that we serve on a charitable board together and often have lunch with some of the other members after the meetings. Max, on the other hand, has been my insurance agent ever since I had anything worth insuring. When my car was totaled last year, he got me the maximum from the underwriter and expedited the process.
Both work full-time, but Jenny’s a control freak and a micromanager, who would drive me crazy if she had any say in my life. She’s devoted to Jamie, the sixteen-year-old in dispute. Very conscientious about his well-being. Too conscientious, say some. She never gives him a chance to fail, and he would probably be a neurotic mess without the leavening influence of his dad.
Max is more laid-back. An ad hoc guy, he takes life as it comes and each day is filled with mostly happy surprises for him, thanks to an efficient secretary who keeps his workday on track. He loves the outdoors and takes the boy fishing and camping whenever they can sneak away—activities too unstructured for Jenny to join them.
On the face of it, Max would be the better custodial parent of a teenage boy, but Max is also a high-functioning alcoholic who has no desire to exchange malt liquor for Adam’s ale. I’m told that he usually limits himself to a single shot of scotch every evening, but once or twice a year he goes on monumental benders that can last a week.
Overprotective mother or unpredictable father?
I’m sure their lawyers will present both arguments and everyone will expect the wisdom of Solomon. I just hope I don’t have to get out my sword.
Our train pulled into New York right on schedule, a little after seven. Here at the tail end of rush hour, Penn Station was a confusion of shops and exits, and the space swarmed with people who all seemed to know exactly where they were going. I hadn’t been there in several years and would have stopped to savor the scene if Dwight hadn’t already been heading toward the Eighth Avenue escalator for a cab going uptown.
A short and skinny teenage boy might have fit into the backseat of the first taxi, but there was no way Dwight’s long legs would. The second one was only marginally better, so Dwight slid into the front seat, which left me in possession of all the windows in the rear. Rather dirty windows actually, but I didn’t care. By the time we got up to Kate’s apartment in the West Seventies, I almost had whiplash from trying not to miss a single neon sign.
The cab let us out in front of the building’s nondescript brick exterior, a block off Broadway, and we stepped into a frigid wind straight off the Hudson River. It stung our cheeks and almost blew Dwight’s hat off. The inner door was locked, but before we could ring, an elderly gentleman was leaving and he courteously held the door open for us. Inside the lobby, the elevator man watched as we approached, trailing our roller bags behind us across a floor tiled in earth-tone ceramic squares. A hair or two taller than me and trim in a dark brown uniform, he had skin the color of weak tea, his dark hair was going gray, and he wore a pencil-thin gray mustache above narrow lips that pursed in disapproval. A brass name tag identified him as Sidney.
“Does Mr. Gorman know you?”
“The man who just left?” asked Dwight. “No.”
“He should not have let you in.” He spoke sternly in an accent that sounded slightly Asian to me. “No one is supposed to enter this building without proper identification.”
I tried not to smile. This Sidney had a wiry, muscular build as if he worked out regularly, but unless he had a black belt in martial arts, no way could he have physically stopped someone Dwight’s size once he was inside the lobby.
Instead of arguing, Dwight simply flipped open his wallet and held out his driver’s license. “I believe Kate Bryant, the owner of 6-A, notified the super that we were coming?”
“Mrs. Bryant? Oh. You mean Mrs. Honeycutt that was.” He squinted at Dwight’s ID, then reluctantly stepped aside so we could enter the elevator.
Almost immediately, five more people pushed through the outer lobby door, two women and three men. Like us they were muffled and hatted against the icy wind. Laughing and chattering, they greeted Sidney by name as they converged on the elevator. The alpha female pushed back the fur-lined hood of her black parka and let a cascade of blonde hair swing free. Her face was too long and thin and her chin a bit too pointed for conventional beauty, but from the indulgent smile she was getting from ol’ Sidney, she could have been a glamorous A-list movie star. There was a familiar lilt to her voice, and for a moment I wondered if I had indeed seen her before. If not on the big screen, maybe television?
Dwight and I stepped back and pushed our bags closer together. Even so, there was no room for all of them.
“Sorry, boys. You’ll have to wait,” the blonde said as she pulled the other woman, a small brunette, into the car with her. One of them wore a delicate spicy scent that contrasted pleasantly with the smell of cold wool.
The blonde gave us a friendly smile and then read the tag on my suitcase with blatant curiosity. “Cotton Grove, North Carolina? Where’s that? Anywhere near Charlotte?”
“A few miles south of Raleigh,” I said.
