least, that was how the issues had been decided in the past.
As she sat at the library conference table straining her eyes on the fine print of opinions, she thought to herself that she had never seen the word “love” in any of the thousands of pages of California laws. “What’s love got to do with it,” she hummed to herself as she read.
Love was yin, traditionally the province of women, female, subjective. Law was yang, male, objective. She felt uncomfortable about Lindy’s position. Show me the hard evidence, the lawyer in her said. Promises of marriage, sex, talk of love, midlife crises, affairs-the legal system had washed its hands of these. She didn’t want to be associated with such sloppy emotional matters herself. A woman lawyer had to take special care to be more objective than anybody else.
Yet these matters were now inextricably intertwined with a huge amount of money, and the legal system was being used to keep the money in the hands of Mike Markov. It wasn’t right. Her anger worked on her, as it always did, seeking a productive outlet. But what could she do all by herself in a fight against these big boys?
She found herself thumbing through the Civil Code, skimming mindlessly through the sections on marriage. They wouldn’t be applicable to unmarried people, but what were Lindy and Mike if not married? Lindy was much more than a girlfriend.
Frustrated, Nina thought, we need more laws to cover this, and caught herself just in time. Her entire wall was covered with the Annotated Codes of the State of California, with so many new ones passed each year that no one could keep up.
All right, make an old law fit, she thought. She went through the statutes again. This time her eye caught on a humble little statute that would probably be repealed as obsolete the first time some modern lawmaker noticed it: Civil Code section 1590 said,
Nina repeated that to herself. She thought of dowries, of handsome men in high collars, of jilted fiances.
Suppose Paul gave me a wildly expensive diamond engagement ring, she thought, but I refused to marry him after all. The ring would have to go back, or at least, the jury could give it back to him if he took me to court.
Say she gave him something. I will give you my fortune if you marry me, she said to herself, trying to paraphrase the code into words she easily understood. She still didn’t quite get it. She tried again. I promise you something, and in return you marry, or promise to marry, me. Yes. That’s what the code said in plain language.
She thought again about her interview with Lindy, about what Lindy had said.
Looking down at her legal pad, which had more doodles than notes, she saw that she had drawn a pair of wedding bells with a ribbon on top. Musical notes made a circle around them.
Certainly bells had begun to ring in her brain.
She planted a big kiss on the homely phrase before copying it down.
At five o’clock she slammed closed her last book of the day, then drove to her brother Matt’s to pick up her son. Matt and his wife, Andrea, lived with their two children in a neighborhood known as Tahoe Paradise, only a few blocks from where Nina and her son now lived. Matt ran a parasailing business in the summer and a tow truck business in the winter. Andrea worked at the local women’s shelter, a way station through which a steady and burgeoning stream of battered women and their kids flowed.
Tucked into a clearing in the woods in a small wooden house with a stone fireplace that smoked for most of the year, they lived the way people had lived a hundred years ago at Tahoe, the only visible nod to suburbia being the struggling lawn that was now, with all the rain they had been having, a silky-looking iridescent green patch.
She pulled the Bronco up to the house, removed her shoes, and marched across the damp grass. Might as well enjoy it. Winter was just around the corner.
Andrea opened the door before she could knock. “Nina! We expected you for lunch,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I just got busy. Is Bob still here?”
“He and Troy are up in Troy’s room working on the computer.”
Nina reached out to squeeze Andrea’s arm. “How’s everyone doing? Have they been at it since they got home from school?”
“Pretty much.”
“Did Bob do any homework?”
“I doubt it.”
“Uh-oh. It’s going to be a long night.”
“They work awfully hard. He needed to do something besides the usual grind.”
“I wish he’d gone outside to play. It’s so beautiful this time of year,” Nina said, breathing in the pine air, feeling the kiss of a breeze.
“Like mother, like son,” said Andrea, leading her into the house. “Put ’em in a dark room with a computer and they’re as happy as Bill Gates.”
“We’re not going to hit you up for dinner. I’ve got to get him home.” Nina went upstairs to get Bob.
Other than the difference in size, Troy and Bob looked identical from the rear in their California boy uniforms, Van’s two-toned suede sneakers, emblemed T-shirts, baggy plaid shorts, hair a modified monk style. Troy, a year younger, turned around to say hi when she came in. Bob continued to stare hypnotically at the screen in front of him.
“Hey, Mom. Come and look.”
From the time he could talk, Bob had demanded that she witness and convey her blessing upon his every act. She wondered if this was unique to male children. Bob’s cousin Brianna, who was younger, seemed more self-contained than either of the boys. Nina applauded the improved Web page, then bribed and threatened him out the front door. “Where’s Matt?” she asked Andrea as they stood in the doorway and Bob ran down the path to the car.
“Packing up the last of the parasails, and if I know him, paying a final tribute to summer’s end with a little ride around Emerald Bay. Hey, isn’t that where you went on the
“Yes, it is.” Nina gave her a brief rundown of the party and its grand finale without naming its participants.
“Did you see the little island in the middle, Fannette?”
“Yes.”
“I heard the most interesting gossip about that place last week from a woman whose grandfather created some of the handmade wrought iron light fixtures at Vikingsholm.”
“That’s the Scandinavian-looking mansion on the bay across from the island.”
“Right. Built by Lora Knight, who also built the teahouse on the island.”
“What gossip?”
“Before the teahouse was built, a sailor built a tomb in the rocks.”
“Who for?”
“Himself.”
“Is he buried there?”
“Nope. Drowned in the lake. His body was never recovered. You know Lake Tahoe,” she said. “It’s too cold for bodies to float.”
“So what happened to the tomb?”
“She said tourists used to visit it, but that by the time the teahouse was built, nobody knew where it was or what had happened to it.”
“You’re trying to spook me.”
“It’s the solemn truth.”
“Well, one fine day, let’s get Matt to load up the boat and check that place out. Can you go on the island?”
“There’s no dock anymore. You have to swim from a boat, or kayak there. Besides, his boat is chronically ailing.”
“First chance I get, I’m going.”
“You’re not going anywhere. I recognize that gleam in your eyes. Something wicked has come your way.” Andrea was looking at her appraisingly. “You always look happiest when you’ve got some horrible problem at work.”
“True,” Nina said. “Horrible problems are my beat.”
Andrea laughed in a girlish treble that went with the curly red hair and the blue jeans and the flannel shirt.
“Andrea, have you ever met Lindy Markov?” Nina asked.
“Of course. She’s involved in some charities and nonprofits around town. She gives fund-raisers at her house. Everybody comes, partly because of their curiosity about her home, which she’s happy to satisfy in the service of her pet causes.”
“Have you been there?”
“Yep. Cost me two hundred bucks, too. A worthy cause, but money we couldn’t afford.” Andrea made a face. “Oh, Lord, how Matt moaned. A dent in that untouchable college fund for the kids. He practically cried. But sometimes there are more immediate problems that need attending.”
“Andrea, you’re such a good soul.”
“No. I found help when I was desperate.” Andrea had weathered a rough relationship with her first husband, the father of her two children, and a shelter like the one she now managed had helped her get free. “This is just another token dime to the dollar.”
“Where do the Markovs live? What’s the house like?”
“Near Emerald Bay on Cascade Road, on one of the most magnificent estates on the lake, bar none. They must have acres of lakefront property. Mrs. Markov has been generous with the shelter. Wish we had more like her. She propped up a lot of women who needed help.”
“I wish I hadn’t asked. You make her sound like a saint.”
“She’s no saint. Just generous.”
Nina heard the horn on the Bronco. “I have to go.”
“Wait. Is Mrs. Markov in some kind of trouble? Anything to do with that scene on the boat you witnessed?”
“You know I couldn’t talk about it if she was.”
“Well, I just want to say, please let me know if there’s anything I can to do to help her. She’s one in a million.”
Bob honked the horn of the Bronco again and Nina trotted out to the car and caught sight of him in the driver’s seat. His head nearly scraped the ceiling. In three years he would be driving. The thought was appalling.
“Mom, Christmas is coming,” he said as they approached the corner of Kulow.
So it was. She hadn’t given it much thought, but like most kids, Bob had.
“There’s this program I want for the computer. Troy and I can use it on our website to make things three dimensional.”
“That sounds nice,” she said, swinging the Bronco into their driveway. “You be sure to ask Santa for it.” Bob knew the truth about Santa but liked keeping on with the fairy tale, protective of their few family traditions.
