Starter House(80)

“It’s visitation. Visit. Stay where the camera can see you.”

Lex looked down hopelessly. Theo was rocking on her fists. She tipped herself forward and landed chin-first on the floor. She burbled quietly for a few seconds, then got herself up on her hands and knees to crawl under a wooden armchair. She sat inside the cage of legs, slapping her hands on the floor and laughing at Lex.

“I see you,” he said. He knelt beside the wooden chair and reached up onto the table for a Duplo block. Blue, rectangle. “Blue,” he said, giving it to her. She chewed on it, made a face, and banged it on a chair leg. He reached for another block. “Red.”

The lawyer moved the camera to the floor. “Good,” he said. “Educational, interactive, all that happy crappy. Keep it up, Mr. Hall.”

Theo tasted the red block. She dropped it and covered her ears. Then she pulled her hands away and looked at Lex with her huge, happy, wet smile and said, “Eep-boo!”

He covered her eyes and then uncovered them. “Peekaboo,” he told her.

She tried covering her mouth. “Eep-boo!”

Playing with Theo turned out to be easier than he thought. She liked peekaboo, and after a while he realized she knew she was supposed to cover her eyes. She was playing a trick by covering her ears or her mouth. When he covered his own ears, she laughed so loudly that the big dog put his magazine down. “I don’t recommend tickling,” he said. “Got to watch out for the touching. That kind of thing don’t look good on video.”

“It’s peekaboo.”

“Good,” the big dog said. Then Theo discovered some of the chairs moved. She spent the rest of the hour clutching the seat of a rolling chair and staggering around the room, while Lex followed, anxiously stooped over her to keep the chair from rolling too fast. He pulled Theo onto his lap and sat at the table, showing her the coloring books and the crayons. She tasted the crayons, ripped a page out of the coloring book, hooted loudly for a few minutes, and fell asleep with her head resting against his shoulder.

The shiny girl came to take her away, and he wouldn’t see her again until next Friday.

“This is good stuff,” the big dog said, playing through some of the video. “She’s a sweet kid. A little chunky, but cute as a peanut pie. All that walking with the chair, that’ll play well in the custody hearing. I’ll have Sammie burn you a copy on disk. That wife of yours. She was raised by hippos, or what?”

“She lost some weight when we were married, but it’s come back.”

“Yes, and it brought friends. She’s a lot younger than you, how’d you meet?”

“She was fourteen. I caught her shoplifting.”

They were walking down the hallway toward the front office. Lex tried to get a look at each office, because he wanted to talk to his own lawyer. He didn’t realize the big dog lawyer had stopped walking until he crashed into the man’s back. “Sorry!” Lex said, with his hands up and open. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it, sorry, sorry.”

“Fourteen-year-old runaway, you catch her shoplifting, and then?”

“I took her home.”

The lawyer shook his head with his eyes closed. “Lord Jesus. Tell me you didn’t.”

“I told her mother where I found her.”

“You took her to her own home. Excellent. And then?”

“She came to work at MacArthur’s after school. First she stocked, and then when she was sixteen she got to be a cashier.”

“How old was she when you got married?”

“Twenty.”

“You had me worried for a minute. Old man, underage girl. Meeting her when she was fourteen; that’s a little scary. But you weren’t her supervisor?”

“I mostly never saw her at work.” Was that his own lawyer’s office, the one around the corner, with the closed door? The big dog was walking again, and Lex followed. “I worked night shift and she had afternoons.”

“Great. Still, a girl that size.” The big dog sighed and blew through his lips. “How do you do it? Roll her in flour and look for the wet spot, I guess. Here we are.” He opened a door and led Lex out into the waiting room.

“Wait.” The lawyer was trying to work Lex toward the door, but Lex set his heels and wouldn’t move. “When do I get to talk to my lawyer?”

“He’s off the case.” His hand was on Lex’s elbow, pulling him across the waiting room, closer to the door. “I’ll be taking care of you till you get new counsel. We won’t abandon you, Mr. Hall. Sammie’ll line something up, and we’ll let you know by Thursday.”