says, wiping her shoe. Ricki is a family therapist who takes clothing as seriously as codependency. She still looks put together even after a day of seeing clients; her white silk T-shirt remains unwrinkled, her lips lined. In fact, she’d look perfect if she didn’t have those rake marks on her shoulders and that goober on her shoes.
“It’ll dry.”
“Disgusting.” She slips on the shoe. “It’s the judge’s dog, isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
“Tell me you’re taking it to the pound.”
“Nope. I own it. Her.”
She stands stock-still. “You’re kidding me.”
“Don’t start with the dog. I heard it from my mother, I heard it from my daughter. You came over to be supportive, so start being supportive.” I sit down on one of the pine stools at the counter in my makeshift eat-in kitchen, and Bernice stands beside me, tail wagging. I scratch her head.
“Sorry. You want some coffee, on you?”
“I’ll make it.” I start to get up, but Ricki presses me onto the stool with a firm hand.
“Sit!” she says.
Instantly, Bernice plops her curly-coated rump onto the floor.
“Wow,” I say, astonished. “I never saw her do that.”
Bernice pants happily, her long tongue unrolling like a rug.
“Cute,” Ricki says.
“And pedigreed, too. When can I drop her off?”
“No way.” She opens the freezer.
“But you have more room than I do. You need a Swiss dog. Think of the boys, if they get lost in the mall.”
“I’m ignoring you.” She rummages through the boxes of frozen vegetables. “Where’s the coffee?”
“On the door.” I give up and watch my new dog lie down at the foot of my stool, shifting once, then again, to get comfortable on the tile floor. She needs a dog bed, but I’ll be damned if I’ll buy that, too.
“What happened to that cappuccino decaf I gave you?” Ricki shouts from inside the freezer. Icy clouds billow around her chic wedge of thick brown hair.
“It’s gone. Use the Chock Full O’ Nuts.”
“You don’t have flavored?”
“I have coffee-flavored. Now close the door.”
She grabs a can and shuts the door. “I’m going to understand your crummy mood because you’re entitled to it. You have a good reason to feel crummy.”
“Is this the supportive part?”
“Yes. I’m validating you.”
“Like parking, you stamp my ticket?”
“Just like that.” She pries the plastic lid off the can and spoons the coffee into the basket, then pours the water into the coffeemaker. I watch her as if I’ve never seen this done, my brain stuck in a sort of stasis. The red light on the Krups blinks on: a machine, highly reliable and predictable. People are not machines, and so they do unpredictable things. Things that strike like a bolt from the heavens, stunning you where you stand.
“You okay?” Ricki asks.
I watch the coffee dribble into the glass pot. “I still can’t believe it.”
“I know.” Ricki puts her arm around me, but I don’t feel her touch, not really. A spring storm howls outside, rattling the loose storm windows. These things seem like they’re happening around me, and not really to me. “It’s a shock,” she says.
I think of Armen. His hand in my hair. How easily he lifted me to the couch. The weight of his body, the strength of it. He was lovely. “It’s just not possible.”
“I know,” she says, stroking my hair.
He was happy. I know he was. “He didn’t even own a gun.”
“I read it was registered to his wife.”
Susan. She’s the one who found him. He was going to tell her about us. “She put Bernice in a
Ricki glances at Bernice, comatose on the floor. “I can see it.”
“They had a terrible marriage, no matter what she says. They were going to divorce.”
“How do you know all this?”
“He told me.”
“He told you about his marriage? Since when?”
“And Sarah, one of the law clerks, worked on Susan’s campaign. I think she came by chambers late at night. She got nervous when I told her about the tapes.”
“Tapes?”
“It was a bluff, but it worked.” I hear myself sounding slightly hyper. “Then there’s Galanter.”
“Galawho?” Ricki steps away from me, concerned.
“Judge Galanter, who becomes chief now, for the next seven years. He’d never have gotten to be chief if Armen hadn’t died. He would have been too old to be eligible, past sixty-five. I wonder if he drinks.”
“A judge, drinking? A federal appellate judge?”
“What, it’s confined to the trades?” I experience it again, as a flash of insight: the fighting, a woman’s fists pounding futilely against a man’s bulky shoulders. My mother and my father. I can’t remember any more than that. I was six when he left.
“Grace, you’re losing it.” She looks at me like I’m crazy, and maybe I am. I feel it welling up inside of me.
“Is it possible that he didn’t commit suicide? Is it possible that he was murdered?”
“What?” she says.
I tell her the whole story, about Armen and me. She looks drained when I’m done, but still caring, and I imagine that’s what she looks like after a session with one of her flakier clients. She sets down her empty coffee mug with finality. “I’m worried about you, Grace. You’ve lost a man you cared for, and not for the first time. There was Sam.”
“What’s Sam have to do with it?”
“It’s a loss.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s not a loss when you lose someone who doesn’t want you. Happily ever after, just not together.”
Ricki crosses her arms. “You don’t mean that.”
“I sure do. You may not think my life turned out so great, but I do. I’m okay. At least I was until this happened.”
“Maybe Armen’s death is kicking up a lot of stuff for you.”
“What stuff?”
“Abandonment. Loss. Think of your father.”
“My father?” I almost laugh. I hate it when she turns into a shrink. “How do you guys make these connections? My father was a drunk. Armen was wonderful.”
“But they both left you. It makes sense that you’re having trouble accepting it.”
She holds up two neatly manicured hands. “Okay. Okay. I’ll shut up. After all, you’re the cop here.”
“What’d you say?”
“You heard me.”
But she’s right. I did, and it gives me an idea.
10