just a hobby for her. We were very different.” To say the least.
“My husband and I practiced law together for eighteen years, we had a good time together. It’s nice being in the same line of work,” Liz said quietly, trying not to think of him too much. She was tired, and emotional, and she knew she would cry easily if Bill asked the right questions about Jack. “To be honest, he liked family law more than I did. I always liked the philanthropic stuff, and hopeless causes, fighting for the rights of the underdog. But he had a good sense of where the money was, and he was right, we had five kids to think of.”
“And now? You’re still doing divorce work?” She nodded. “Why? You could do anything you want.”
“Not exactly,” she smiled. “I still have the same five kids, their feet are bigger, and their shoes are more expensive than ever. So is their education. One of these days I’ll have four in college. Jack was right. Family law is very lucrative, even if it gets me down sometimes. In divorce work, you see people at their worst. The nicest people turn into monsters when they’re mad at their spouses. But I feel I owe it to my husband to keep our practice going. He worked hard building it, I can’t just walk away now.” From that, or their kids, or their house, or their responsibilities, it was all hers now, and Bill got that.
“Do you ever think about doing a different kind of law?” he asked, intrigued by her. She was smart, and nice, and very pretty. There was a softness to her which appealed to him, and a love for her son that touched his heart.
“Sometimes I think about doing something else,” she answered him, “but not very often. Do you?” She turned the question on him, and he poured some more coffee into his mug and shook his head.
“Never. I love this. It’s about as high pressure as it gets, you have to make split-second decisions, and they have to be the right ones. The stakes are high, and there’s no room for mistakes. It forces me to be the best I can be all the time. I like that.”
“It sounds like climbing Everest every day, and it must be heartbreaking sometimes.” She was thinking of Peter the day before and how easily they might have lost him. And the two children he had lost that night.
“It’s heartbreaking too often,” Bill answered. “I hate losing.”
“So did Jack,” she smiled. “I’m not too crazy about it myself, but for him it was a personal affront if he lost a single motion. He had to win every time, which is probably what cost him his life. He played hardball with a man who went berserk over it. I was afraid of it … I warned him … but he didn’t believe me. I guess no one could really have predicted what happened. It was an insane thing for our client’s husband to have done. But he was insane. He killed his wife, and then my husband, and then shot himself in our office.” Just saying it reminded her of the grisly scene again and she closed her eyes for a second, as Bill watched her.
“It must have been a nightmare for you and the kids,” he said, sorry for her.
“It still is sometimes. It’s going to take us a long time to get over it, but we’re doing better. We were married for nineteen years, you don’t forget all that in a few months, we were very happy for a long time.”
“You were lucky,” he said quietly. He had never felt that way about anyone, not even the woman he’d married, or the two he lived with after her. And in the years since, he had given up his search for the perfect woman. Women drifted in and out of his life from time to time, and he never got too attached to them anymore. It seemed safer that way, and simpler. He didn’t need or want more than that.
“We were very lucky,” Liz echoed, and then stood up finally and thanked him for the tea. “I guess I’d better try to get some sleep before Peter wakes up. I was going to try and go to the office in the morning, and come back in the afternoon with Jamie.”
“I’ll be here.” Bill smiled at her, and reminded her that he wanted to meet Jamie when he came in.
She turned in the doorway then, and looked at him, with a look of sorrow in her eyes. As she had said to him, for her, the nightmare of losing Jack was not yet over. “Thanks for letting me talk. It helps sometimes.”
“Anytime, Liz.” But he hadn’t done it entirely for her. He liked talking to her, liked the boy. He was just sorry they’d had so much trouble, so much pain.
She went back to the couch in the waiting room then, and lay awake for a long time. She was thinking about him and the lonely, demanding life he led. It didn’t seem like much of a life to her, but these days hers wasn’t much of a life either, except for her work and her kids. She fell asleep finally, dreaming about Jack, and he seemed to be saying something to her. He was pointing at something and trying to warn her, and when she turned, she saw Peter diving neatly off a high diving board, into concrete. She awoke with a feeling of panic, mixed in with the old familiar sadness again. There was always that terrible moment when she woke up when she remembered that something horrible had happened. And then in an instant, she would remember that Jack had died. She still hated waking up in the morning. It was what made it so hard to go to sleep at night, knowing she’d have to wake up and face the sharp blow of reality all over again.
She had combed her hair and washed her face and brushed her teeth, but she still felt rumpled and messy. Peter was awake when she went back to the ICU in the morning. And he was complaining about the fact that he was hungry and no one would feed him. Eventually, they gave him a bowl of oatmeal, and he made a terrible face as his mother fed it to him.
“Yerghkkkk!” he said, looking five instead of seventeen. “That’s disgusting.”
“Be a good boy, and eat it. It’s good for you,” she scolded him, but he clenched his teeth and pursed his lips, and when she set the spoon down, she was laughing. “What did you have in mind instead?”
“I want waffles.” He was referring to hers, and she had purposely never made them again, since the morning Jack died. She just couldn’t. And the children understood. Although they were a family favorite, none of the children had ever asked her to make them. But this time, Peter had forgotten. “And bacon,” he added. “I hate oatmeal.”
“I know you do. Maybe they’ll start feeding you real food today. I’ll talk to Dr. Webster.”
“I think he likes you.” Peter smiled at his mother.
“I like him too. He saved your life. That’s a good way to impress me.”
“I mean, he likes you. I saw him watching you yesterday.”
“I think you’re hallucinating, but you’re cute anyway, even if you won’t eat your breakfast.”
“What if he asks you out, would you go?” Peter asked the question with a grin.
