Sawyer’s cell phone started blaring the Notre Dame fight song the second she stepped through her front door.
“Hi, Dad,” she said into the phone. “I just walked in the door.”
“The school nurse called me. How are you feeling?”
Sawyer shimmied out of her jacket, dumped her backpack on the floor. “Better now.”
Her dad was silent for a beat and Sawyer imagined him on the other end, reclined in his black leather chair, fingers steepled as he wrestled with his thoughts. Sawyer sighed.
“What is it?”
“You know, Sawyer, you only saw Dr. Johnson that one time after Kevin’s death—”
Sawyer felt a red-hot coil of anger low in her belly. “But I saw him every week of you and mom’s divorce. And every week of your trial separation.”
“I know, hon, but this is different. He really helped you, right? Maybe you should consider…” He let his words trail off, and Sawyer cradled her cell phone against her shoulder, arms crossed in front of her chest.
“Maybe you should consider that I didn’t sleep well last night.” She pulled aside the front curtain, her eyes sweeping the bare street, the ominous-looking bones of the half-built houses surrounding her. “It’s impossible to sleep out here. It’s so damn quiet.”
“Language, Sawyer.”
Sawyer rolled her eyes and let the curtain drop back over the plateglass window. “It’s darn quiet, Dad.”
“Your mother and I just think it would be a good idea for you to check in with the doctor.”
“You talked to Mom about this? When did you talk to her?”
“We worry about you, Sawyer.”
“So, if I see Dr. Johnson and let him know that it’s too—” she paused, sucked in a sharp breath “—darn quiet around here and that I got a headache today from lack of sleep, you and Mom will drop this?”
She heard her father draw in a steady breath. “We just want to do what’s best for you. You’ve been through a terrible tragedy.”
Sawyer mouthed the words “terrible tragedy” as her father said them and rubbed her eyes. “Fine. I’ll make an appointment later. I just want to take a bath and go to bed right now, okay?”
“That sounds good. Tara and I have a birthing class so we’re going to be home late. We could always postpone, though, if you want us to be home with you.”
“You can’t postpone a birthing class. You’re kind of on a time crunch with that one. I’ll be fine, Dad. Like I said, bath and bed just sounds really good to me right now.”
“Okay, honey. I’ll call you again before we head out. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Sawyer clicked her phone shut and tossed it onto the couch, sinking down next to it. She rested her head on the stiff, new pillows Tara had picked out—some weird hemp weave stuffed with something hypoallergenic and renewable—and spied a mammoth spray of baby-pink roses on the kitchen counter.
Baby girl pink roses.
She groaned, snatched up her backpack and coat, and plodded to her bedroom. Sawyer had the water running in her attached bathroom (a plying perk of the new house), when she opened her laptop and dialed up her mom.
“Hi, Mom.”
The face that smiled back at Sawyer from her thirteen-inch screen mirrored her own: deep brown eyes, high cheekbones, a determined nose, but her mother’s face had a tiredness that tugged at Sawyer’s heart. Angela Dodd’s hair had always been a few shades darker than Sawyer’s, something that gave her a hard, no-nonsense edge in the courtroom; now Sawyer noticed the fringe of gray around the temples. It softened her.
“Sweetheart! I only have a minute to talk—I’m between clients—but I’m glad you called.”
Sawyer glanced at the clock on her screen. “Isn’t it almost time to knock off?”
Her mother smiled apologetically. “There is no quitting time around here. We’ve got a huge trial coming up.” Angela leaned toward the screen, studying her daughter. “You look good. Healthy. How are you?”
Sawyer cocked her head, rubbing small circles on her temples with her index fingers. “Seriously, Mom, please don’t fall into shrink mode.”
Her mother’s eyebrows went up, and Sawyer watched her pick up a carton of Chinese takeout and dig into it with a pair of chopsticks. “Shrink mode?”
“You know.” Sawyer dropped her voice into a high-pitched, saccharine-sweet tone that dripped with insincerity. “How are you doing? How does that make you feel?”
“Can’t a mother worry about her daughter?”