“ Buenas noches, senorita. What’s for dinner?”
Her brown face turned up from the stainless-steel stove, and she smiled. “Enchiladas, Senor Fenney. Especial for you.”
He walked over, put an arm around her, and said, “Consuela, don’t worry. Esteban will be back soon.”
She fought back tears. “ Si. He will come.”
Consuela de la Rosa was twenty-eight, short, and chubby. She lived in the pool cabana out back, just like countless other illegal Mexican maids throughout the Town of Highland Park, which effectively granted them political asylum from the INS. Their presence was certainly no secret; strolling the aisles of the Highland Park gourmet grocery store on a weekday when the maids did the family shopping qualified as a conversational Spanish lesson these days. The real threat to his maid was not the INS but Esteban’s hormones. If her hombre got her pregnant, Consuela would have to leave town per the tacit agreement in Highland Park: Spanish spoken in the grocery store was acceptable; Spanish spoken in the schools was not.
“Mrs. Fenney home?”
“No. Senora, she gone all day. She hit the golf ball.”
“With all the golf lessons she’s taken, she ought to be on the women’s pro tour by now.”
In keeping with his daily routine, Scott climbed the back stairs two steps at a time to the second floor. He walked down the hall and up another set of stairs to the top floor that was his nine-year-old daughter’s domain. Hers was not a kid’s room; there were no posters on the wall of Britney Spears or the Olsen twins. There were books, books on the bookshelves, books on her desk, books on her night table, books on the floor. Even at nine, she was a serious child, thoughtful, smart beyond her breeding. Scott found her at her desk tucked under the dormer, barefooted and wearing overall shorts and a green Dallas Mavericks T-shirt, notwithstanding her mother’s threats to disown her if she didn’t start dressing in designer outfits from Neiman Marcus like the other Highland Park girls her age. But she had steadfastly refused, saying she had her own identity, to which her mother would always retort, “As what, a boy?”
“Hey, Boo.”
Barbara Boo Fenney. She was named after his mother, who had died before Boo was born. Scott’s mother had not lived to see her son’s mansion or her granddaughter. Boo spun around in her swivel chair, her shoulder- length red hair whipping around, and she gave him a smile that shot straight to his heart. Scott loved his wife, but Boo was the love of his life.
“Hey, A. Scott.”
He cupped her face, leaned down, and kissed her forehead.
“Did you have a good day, baby?”
“Oh, I read and played computer games, watched TV, cooked with Consuela, you know, the usual…until Esteban called. Thanks for calming Consuela down-she’d still be crying.”
Scott nodded. “Your mother’s been gone all day?”
She gave him a look. “Duh.”
“It’s summer, she ought to spend more time with you.”
“Well, I’m not on the Cattle Barons’ Ball committee.” She smiled. “How was your day?”
“Okay.”
“Did you do important lawyer stuff?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Like what?”
Scott recalled his day-billing twelve hours for the nine he was at the office; giving his Atticus Finch speech at the bar luncheon; flirting with Missy while reeling in a law student like a hooked fish; voting to fire John Walker; flirting with Dibrell’s receptionist; hiding lead contamination behind the attorney-client privilege; threatening to destroy a young woman by revealing her sexual history at trial in order to obtain a favorable settlement-and quickly decided, as he always decided, that a lawyer’s day was best left at the law office. So he said, “Oh, just the things lawyers do.”
“Unh-huh.” She gave him another look. “You just tell me what you want me to know, don’t you?”
He gave her a smile. “Yep.”
She frowned. “It’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair?”
“I’m stuck here all day while Mother meets her lady friends for lunch and plays golf and you go to your office and do your lawyer work. Mother comes home and wants to tell me all about her day, but I want to know about your day, and you won’t tell me. It’s not fair.”
Scott sat on the edge of Boo’s bed and looked at his daughter, her cute little face contorted into a frown. He knew she wasn’t really mad, but it still bothered him. So he thought through his day again and decided he could tell her one thing.
“Okay, I’ll tell you something about my day. I got appointed to represent a criminal defendant, the woman who murdered Senator McCall’s son.”
Her face brightened and all was well again.
“You’re not a criminal lawyer.”
“Some people say all lawyers are criminal.”
Boo smiled. “You know what I mean.”
“Well, I’m hoping there won’t be a trial, that she’ll cop a plea.”
“What’s cop a plea?”
“Say she’s guilty.”
“Is she?”
“Probably.”
“Are you gonna ask her?”
“Maybe…I mean, yeah, sure.”
“Why do you want her to cop a plea? I thought you make more money when a case goes to trial.”
“Not this trial. I’m doing it for free.”
“Why?”
“Judge Buford’s making me.”
“He can do that?”
“Yeah. I practice in federal court, so he can do that. It’s a rule.”
“Support his opponent in the next election.”
He had taught her well.
“Judge Buford’s a federal judge, appointed for life.”
“Shit.”
“Boo, don’t cuss.”
“Mother does.”
“Well, she shouldn’t. And you shouldn’t either. It makes you sound trashy.”
“They cuss in the movies, even the PGs. And all the other kids cuss.”
“That doesn’t make it right. Don’t be a follower, Boo. Don’t do the wrong thing just because everyone else does. Do the right thing.”
“I don’t say the F-word.”
Scott smiled. “Well, that’s good.”
“I don’t even know what it means.”
“I hope not.”
“Sally down the street, she says her dad says the F-word all the time when he thinks she’s not around. And sometimes even when she is. You don’t say the F-word when I’m not around, do you?”
“No, of course not.”
A small lie.
“So she doesn’t have any money to pay you?”
“Who, the defendant? No.”
“Doesn’t she have a job?”
“She’s a, uh…”
