Starter House(72)

Everett Craddock reserved their room, and Ella Dane worked her way through the crowd of children. “Another thing,” Lacey said abruptly, as if she had been arguing with her mother, “we need clothes.”

“You don’t want to go back to the house, do you? Bibbits is scared of it.”

This was the first rational message Bibbits had sent all day, and Lacey wasn’t about to argue. “We’ll pick up a couple things in the hotel,” she said. Something new, something Drew had never seen or touched. There was a gift shop. They wouldn’t have maternity clothes, but she could at least grab a new T-shirt and replace the rest of her clothes tomorrow at the mall on the way out of town.

They drove back to the Skyview. While Ella Dane replenished Bibbits’s ice, Lacey sailed into the Skyview Shoppe, where her credit card was refused. She laughed. “Wrong card,” she said, “sorry,” and handed over two of her precious twenties. Thirty-two dollars for two T-shirts, and Eric had canceled the cards. How could he—how dared he, after she’d supported him and taken out loans for his education. He had income and she didn’t, but six months ago it was the opposite, and she’d never thrown it in his face, not even once. Not even when he complained about how they were burning through their savings, when it was all money she’d earned. She kept the stiff, public smile stapled to her mouth all the way out of the shop and across the lobby.

Her phone rang in the elevator, and it was Eric. Too late. Canceling the cards, after all they’d been through. That was just mean. She turned the phone off without answering.





Chapter Thirty-two

THE LAWYERS SPOKE too fast and there were too many of them. And where was the green line on the floor? Lex had followed the green line to this room, which was Family Court, even though the judge was too young and wasn’t wearing a black robe. How could you tell who the judge was when everybody was dressed the same? The judge wore a plain blue tie. Plainer than any of the lawyers’ ties. Lex’s lawyer, the young one, wore a brown tie with tiny gold squares in it, and sometimes the squares were floating and sometimes they were falling. Lex kept his eyes on the plain blue tie, but he was worried about the green line. Without it, he would never be able to find his way out.

“I have to go,” he said.

The lawyer pulled at his gold-squared tie. He had a tiepin with a square yellow stone in it. It wasn’t lined up with the gold squares in the tie. Lex had to look away. When he looked up, he couldn’t find the judge. Where was the plain blue tie? Where was the green line that would take him back to the big glass door?

“I have to go,” he said again.

Jeanne’s lawyer, that scary woman, was staring at him. He pushed his chair back and lunged for the courtroom door. It was a plain gray door, plain as the judge’s tie.

Bangs and shouts. The young lawyer grabbed Lex’s elbow and yanked him downward and sideways, back into his chair. “Mr. Hall, you have to stay here.”

“Where’s Theo?” They had to give Theo to him now. That was what the hearing was for. Lex’s lawyer would explain everything, and then the judge would give Theo to Lex, and Lex would take her home. All these words, the story, the evidence, that was what had to happen, the only thing that mattered. Plain blue tie. There it was. He looked straight at the judge’s tie—always look straight at the judge and keep your face up, the old man said, long ago, when Lex used to get in trouble.

“She’s at home with her grandmother,” the lawyer said.

That was wrong, because Theo’s grandmother was dead. “There’s no grandmother,” Lex said loudly. He stood up again. “She died a long time ago! Where’s Theo?” They had her in a room, maybe in a closet or some small place, the kind of place where a little kid would hide when there were too many words and the words were too loud. “She’s dead,” he said to the Family Court. Maybe Theo was nearby and she could hear him. “Theo!”

“Counselor,” the judge said angrily to the young lawyer, and Lex recognized that voice; all judges had that voice. “Control your client.”

“She’s with your wife’s mother,” the lawyer said. “It’s almost over; you’ve just got to sit down for a minute.”

Theo was with Big Jeanne? “No,” Lex said. “That’s not right.” Nobody would listen; they never did. “You can’t do that,” he said, and two of the courtroom cops dragged him outside and made him sit in a cold metal chair in the hallway, and they wouldn’t even let him go to the bathroom.