Sidebarred (The Legal Briefs 3.5)

Raymond shoots again, and I catch the ball after it falls through the net. “You know you can talk to me, right?”

“Yeah, I know,” he answers automatically.

“About anything. Nothing you say would ever change what I think of you. Understand?”

During my years as a pissed-off, defensive little punk, the Judge probably said those same words to me a dozen times. My mother—probably a hundred. But I never got it.

Now I do.

Because there really is nothing any of these kids could ever say or do—no outrage too great, no mistake too stupid—that would make me stop loving them with every fiber of my being.

Raymond answers cautiously, his blue eyes squinting behind his round, black-wire frames. “You’re being really weird, Jake.”

“I saw the search history on your computer, Raymond.”

I pass the ball to him quickly. He catches it with two hands and stares at me.

“You did?”

“Yeah.” I lift my chin toward the bench. “Sit down.”

Raymond sits down on the bench, the ball in his lap, watching me as I take up the rest of the bench beside him. “You looked on my computer?”

I nod. “Feel free to be indignant about that later, but right now, I want to talk about the things you’re looking up—why you’re so anxious, not sleeping.” I lean over, bracing my elbows on my spread knees. “What’s going on with you, buddy?”

His throat ripples as he swallows. Then he looks away and his voice is hushed, like he’s afraid to say the words too loudly. “Did you know, the number one cause of death for pregnant women is murder?”

I do know that. Just one of the fun fucking facts criminal defense attorneys get to know. A woman is never more vulnerable—in every conceivable way—than when she’s carrying a child.

Raymond doesn’t wait for me to answer. “But one thousand ninety-five women died last year—in childbirth. Healthy women. And that’s not counting the thousands who died from pregnancy-related complications.”

“Raymond—”

“Diabetes, hypertension, blood clots—all kinds of things can go wrong.”

“Raymond—”

“Placenta abruption, infection, hemorrhaging—a human being can bleed out in under one hundred and twenty seconds. Sometimes—”

“Raymond, stop.” My voice snaps the air, like the crack of a whip.

He blinks at me, his pale lips going still. I put my hand on his shoulder and squeeze. “None of those things are going to happen to your aunt.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’m not going to let them happen.”

He shakes his head slowly. “You can’t protect her from it.”

“Yes, I fucking can.”

Raymond shoots to his feet. “No, you can’t! If you want to lie to the other kids so they’re not scared, go ahead—but don’t lie to me. I know better. And so do you.”

He breathes hard, looking at me like he can read my thoughts, see my deepest fears. I scrub my hand down my face, glance to the spot beside me, and say, “Sit.”

After he’s settled back on the bench, I force confidence into my voice. Because optimism isn’t one of my better traits. But I have to say something.

“There are dangers in pregnancy—yes—but obsessing over statistics and every freak possibility isn’t going to help anything. You have to think positively.”

He stares down at the blacktop between his feet, and his voice falls even softer. Monotone.

“The night my parents got into the accident, we were with a babysitter. She was in college, I think—one of my dad’s interns. She didn’t tell us they were . . . gone. Only that they’d been in a car accident, that Aunt Chelsea was on her way. She said we should think good thoughts, and pray.” He looks up at me with shiny eyes, drowning with remembered grief. “So I did. I prayed really hard, Jake.” His voice breaks, choking on the words. “It didn’t help.”

Raymond turns away as his face crumples. Because he’s thirteen years old—and boys aren’t supposed to cry. But I wrap my arm around him, pull him tight against me.

Because as far as I’m concerned, he can cry all he fucking wants.

His shoulders shudder and his face presses against my shirt. I rest my lips on his dark hair—which smells like grass and still-childish sweat. And my heart breaks for him, because there’s nothing I can say. No words to make this better. It’s just something he has to feel. Go through.

All I can do is hold on to him.

When the worst of it seems to pass, when his shaking turns to sniffling, I crouch down in front of him, my hands on his bony knees. “Raymond, sometimes, in life, brutal, unfair things happen to us. You don’t need me to tell you that. But there’s a lot of good, too. Unexpected, beautiful good. And if you spend all your time worrying about the bad stuff, you might miss out on enjoying all the amazing things. I don’t want that for you—your parents wouldn’t want that for you, either.”

He wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “Are you scared? For Aunt Chelsea?”

I tilt my head. “Well, I am now. Thanks for that.”

He snorts—a wet, clogged sound—because he knows I’m teasing.

But, then, I realize I’m not.

“Yeah. Sometimes I get scared.”

“What do you do when that happens?”

I blow out a breath. “I focus on the things I can change, on the things I can do to make a difference. I mean, you have to know that your aunt is young and she has the best doctors—so the odds that this will happen without a single problem are really good.”

He nods. “Yeah, I know that.”

I squeeze his leg. “Then here’s what we’re going to do—you and me together. We’ll take care of her, make sure she rests and eats right, and we’ll think about how nuts and awesome it’s going to be to have a baby in the house again.”

That prompts a small smile.

“And when you get scared, when those dark worries creep up on you, you don’t look at your computer in the middle of the night. You bring those worries to me, okay? Because you’re not alone, Raymond. We’ll talk about it and figure things out together. Can you do that for me?”

Raymond takes his glasses off, dries them on his T-shirt, then slides them back on.

“Yeah, Jake, I can do that.”

&n

bsp; “Thanks, buddy.”

I give his head another hug as I stand—smacking him on the back.

“Let’s head inside for dinner.”

Raymond peers out into the backyard. “I’m gonna stay out here for a few minutes if that’s okay?”

“Sure. Totally okay.”

I walk back toward the house but only make it a few steps before Raymond calls my name. When I turn around, he says, “You know, Jake, my dad was a really great dad.”

I smile. “I know. I can tell by how you guys are turning out.”

Raymond thinks for a moment, choosing his words. “You’re pretty great at the dad stuff, too.”

Kids are incredible—their insight, their capacity to adapt and accept, grow and love. They’re powerful, too. We’d all be in some seriously deep shit if they ever realized just how much power they have over us. Because the warm, tingling, insanely proud, totally devoted feeling that spreads through me—it’s indescribable. And Raymond did that. He gave me that.

I clear my throat. “Thanks, Raymond. That . . . means a lot.”

He nods. And then goes back to playing basketball.

And I head into the house to kiss my wife again, and help take care of the other minions.

****

Later that night, after homework is done, the dishes are clean, and the kids are all tucked in their beds, I sit alone at the kitchen table with a bottle of scotch and a half-empty glass in front of me. Chelsea walks in, her hair pinned up from her bath, dressed in cotton, pastel-pink pajamas. Her steps slow when she sees me. And I feel her eyes drift to the bottle, then back to me.

She knows me, inside and out—knows I’m not a drinker. Unless there’s a reason. So she pulls out a chair and quietly sits down. The crystal-blue eyes that own my dreams, hold me in their grasp.

“What’s going on, Jake?”

I sip the scotch, then watch the amber liquid bob when I set the glass back down on the table. My voice comes out hushed but certain. “I would pick you.”

“What do you mean?”

Finally, I look up at her, and I know my face is clouded with guilt. “In that scenario that always plays out on TV shows, when the doctors tell the father he has to choose between the life of the baby or the life of the mother . . . I would pick you.”

Her head tilts to the side and her voice is so soft. “I would want you to pick the baby.”

“I know. I know that.” I stare into her eyes. “But I would still pick you.”