“It’s weird to think that I was born in prison,” Julian said. “I’m sure I’m not processing it right. Or at all. It feels distant. It’s like hearing your great-great-grandfather was a bootlegger or a pirate. It’s fascinating, but really fictional. I mean, I had my own mom and dad, you know?” He shook his head and half turned to me. His eyes had gone very red. “I do get that it’s real life for you.”
Then he did the thing I couldn’t manage. The kid leaned in and hugged me. A real hug, committed. I stiffened up—I couldn’t help it—but he was clearly a dog person, so I didn’t pull away. It went on for several seconds, Julian patting at my back like he was burping me.
I stared over his shoulder at the collection of items from my footlocker. There wasn’t much there. I tried to be still, feeling his heart beating inside him. Awkward as the contact felt, the kid was larger and more alive than my whole childhood. My childhood barely took up half the breakfast bar.
My cell phone started ringing on the charger in the kitchen, and I almost leaped backward, relieved. Julian ducked his head, embarrassed.
“Oh, sorry, I—”
“No, no, it’s fine. But I should get that. It could be Birdwine.”
He sat up straight, nodding, and I went around the bar to answer it, still feeling faintly surprised at the sound. Half a year ago, that jangling ringtone had been a near constant noise, announcing calls from partners, friends, employees, opposing counsel, clients. Not long ago, I was so used to the feel of a Bluetooth in my ear that I sometimes fell asleep in it.
I picked up the phone and looked at the screen. It wasn’t Birdwine. The screen said OAKLEIGH WINKLEY.
How unexpected. I’d programmed her info in back when Nick first signed her, thinking I’d be sitting in on most of her proceedings. Instead, I’d botched it and lost her. Now, not even a week later, she was calling me.
I held my finger up to Julian and said, “I have to take this. It’s a client.” I’d said those words a thousand times, but it had been a while. They felt good and familiar in my mouth. I slid the green bar sideways and said, “Paula Vauss.”
“Oh, good, you’re there,” Oakleigh said. Her kittenish lilt had quite an edge to it today. “It rang five times at least. I was so sure I was going to voicemail.”
“Hello, Oakleigh, what can I do for you?” I said.
“I might be in some trouble? The police want to talk to me. A man just called me, a policeman,” Oakleigh told me, and I recognized the edge then. It wasn’t bitch. Oakleigh was experiencing fear, and she wasn’t used to it. I’d welcome her to the club, except I didn’t want to be in one with Oakleigh. “I could call that other lawyer, my new divorce one, but I don’t think he does things with police. Then I remembered Nick saying you did, like, crime things, like, for charity?” I almost smiled, because that was so like my partner. He’d been impatient and then angry about my string of destitute criminal clients, but not so angry that he wouldn’t spin it to make us look good: Paula’s pro bono exemplifies our firm’s commitment to giving back. Oakleigh was still talking. “He said that’s why you missed my deposition, so I dug your card out of my purse—”
“Why do the police want to talk to you, Oakleigh?” I asked.
“My ex—my almost ex. I mean, my husband. He’s in the hospital, or he was earlier this morning. He thinks I tried to kill him. He told the police I did, anyway.”
I blinked, nonplussed. Julian had perked up at the word police and was looking at me with his eyebrows up and questioning. I took a beat to formulate a careful question.
“Why would your husband think that?” I got the tone right. Calm and nonjudgmental.
Oakleigh made an angry huffing noise and said, “Oh, it’s his own damn fault. He’s been sneaking back into the house and doing things. Doing awful things, and now I’m missing spin class! But most of his clothes were still here, so—look, it’s really kind of complicated. And I don’t know when the police will get here. Can you please come over?”
“The police want to talk to you at home?” I asked.
Julian stood up, eyes very wide now, watching me like I was a movie with a twist. It was cute, so I shook my head at him, wry and wise, like this kind of thing was happening to me every other minute.
“Yes, I told you. They said they’d be by this afternoon, which in retrospect is super unspecific,” Oakleigh said.
I wasn’t alarmed. If Oakleigh had taken a shot at Clark or put bleach in his margarita, the police would not call and set up a polite appointment. They’d show with no warning, to see her fresh reactions. They would haul her ass in and ask stern questions in a box. This sounded to me like a dumb-ass domestic squabble—something any good divorce attorney could handle. On the other hand, getting Oakleigh Winkley back in our firm’s fold would be a coup. It would go a long way toward making things right with my partners, and I wanted that.
“Can you hold? I need to see if I can move my two o’clock,” I told Oakleigh. I hit the phone’s mute button without waiting for an answer.
“You have to go?” Julian said.