Gail Bowen - The Nesting Dolls

Zack grinned. “A happily-ever-after ending,” he said.

“For Leo, yes, but not for me,” Debbie said. “Sapporo is a long way from Regina. I want my son to be happy, but I want him to be happy closer to home.”

When Zack and I came back into the kitchen, Delia was snaking her scarf around her neck. She stopped when she saw Zack. “So what are our chances?”

“Pretty good,” Zack said. “Deb seems convinced that granting you and Noah temporary custody is the right course of action, and when she makes up her mind, she’s a bulldog.”

Delia gave the scarf a final toss. “Okay, I’ll go back to the house and wait for the call.”

“Are you still planning to take the girls to the concert this afternoon?” I asked.

Delia raised her eyebrows. “You don’t think the school will cancel because of the weather?”

“Not a chance,” I said. “Lutherans are a hardy bunch.”

As she calculated her options, Delia was thoughtful. “Noah and I will drive the girls,” she said finally. “We need to be there – especially now.” With that, she headed for home, leaving behind the lingering scent of her signature Chanel No. 5 and many, many questions.

I asked Zack the big one first. “Is all of this really a surprise to you?”

“Believe it or not, it is,” he said. “And ever since Delia dropped the bomb, I’ve been trying to figure why she didn’t tell me at the time. As you’ve pointed out more than once, Delia and I are joined at the hip.”

Zack began clearing the table, handing me the dishes to rinse and stack in the dishwasher.

“And you never suspected anything?” I said.

“No, and Delia was back that Christmas. She stayed with Noah. I remember thinking Ottawa must agree with her. When we were in school, she was always kind of grubby, but that Christmas she looked great – new haircut, nice clothes, and her skin had cleared up.”

“Delia has beautiful skin.”

“She didn’t when we were in school. She ate crap – well, we all ate crap – anyway, she was always kind of spotty, but that Christmas she was a knockout.”

“Hmm.”

“Why the ‘hmm’?”

“That kind of physical change often means a woman’s in a serious relationship.”

“You don’t believe Delia was sleeping around, do you?” Zack said.

“No,” I said. “Neither do you and neither does Debbie Haczkewicz, but Delia made a decision about how she handles this part of her past, and she must have reasons.”

Zack handed me a bowl. “Delia always has reasons. I just wonder why she didn’t tell any of us. She must have felt isolated. Supreme Court clerkships begin in early September and end in September of the next year. Abby was born on September 29. Being pregnant, giving birth, and establishing a stellar legal reputation – that’s a lot to handle on your own.”

“Delia pulled it off,” I said. “She deserves credit.”

“She does. And to be honest, I don’t know how much help any of the guys in the Winners’ Circle would have been if Delia had told us she was pregnant. All we knew about pregnancies was to avoid them at all costs. Blake was the only one who was geographically close to Delia. He was in Toronto, but Kevin was in Calgary, Chris was in Vancouver, and I was here, slaving away for Fred L. Harney.”

I wiped the countertop. “I always meant to ask you about that. How come you didn’t article with one of the five-star firms? You graduated at the top of your class. You must have had offers.”

“You bet I did.” Zack poured the soap into the dishwasher and turned the dial. “Paraplegics are highly desirable. A lot of big firms like to have a cripple they can wheel out to show how enlightened they are. But I didn’t have a year to waste being poster boy for the so-called differently abled. I knew how to research points of law, and I knew how to prepare memoranda of law, what I didn’t know was how to actually practise law. When Fred Harney called, I knew I’d just discovered my yellow brick road.

“Fred was heavily into the sauce when I articled for him. But even drunk he was one hell of a lawyer. I learned more sitting with him in court than I learned in three years in law school. That year he was blacking out a lot, and my job was to go to court with him and remember what happened.”

“People didn’t notice he was drunk?”

Zack shook his head. “Nah. Fred was a pro. Never slurred; never stumbled; never lost his train of thought. Flawless performance. Couldn’t ask for better representation, except for those huge gaps in his memory. That’s where I came in. When court adjourned, we’d go back to the office, and when he sobered up, I’d tell him what the Crown said and what he’d said. And here’s the wild part. Fred would critique the performances – both the Crown prosecutor’s and his own. It might not have been a five-star law firm, but I was getting a master class in the law. Sometimes, when I’m facing a jury, I can still hear him. ‘Don’t stint on the smouldering rage,’ he’d say. ‘Convince the jury that only the utmost effort of will is keeping you from erupting at the vast injustice that has brought your client to this sorry pass.’ ”

Zack raised his hand, palm out. “Enough tripping down memory lane,” he said. “Time for us to get to work. You have papers to grade, and I am not prepared for court tomorrow morning.”

Willie and Pantera led the way to the office Zack and I share and took their places beside us as we settled in. I picked up an essay; Zack opened his laptop, found what he was looking for, and sighed. “This is worse than I thought. Ms. Shreve, if you’ve ever had a hankering to see your husband step on his joint, be in Courtroom B tomorrow morning.”

I circled a misspelling of Afghanistan on the student’s title page and kept on marking. “Smoulder with rage,” I said. “If the jury’s waiting for you to erupt, maybe they won’t notice that you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

It was the kind of morning I like best. We turned on the gas fireplace and moved methodically through the piles of work in front of us. When Debbie Haczkewicz called, Zack gave me the high sign. A judge had agreed to hear Delia and Noah’s petition at noon. The news was good, but as Zack headed off to change, the glance we exchanged was tinged with regret. Once again, external events were intruding on our small and pleasant world.

After Zack left to meet with the Wainbergs, I put a pan of bacon in the oven, and the dogs and I hiked across the yard to let Taylor know that toasted BLTs were on the way.

Taylor’s studio was a space for a serious artist and she spent hours there. On gloomy days, when I saw its lights and knew that Taylor was making the art that she loved and that she was safe, I realized that while nominally the studio had been a gift for Taylor, it had also been a gift for me.

I never entered her studio without knocking. Often she would invite me in and we’d talk about what she was doing, but if she was working on a piece she wasn’t ready to show, she’d grab her jacket, jam her feet into her boots, and slip out the door. On those days, when her mind was still focused on the images she’d left in her studio, our walk back to the house would be silent. That blustery morning, the dogs swam through the snow, barking and chasing one another, exuberant with the sheer joy of being off leash, but Taylor was preoccupied.

While she was cleaning up before lunch, I made our sandwiches and placed a plastic zip-lock bag beside her plate. Every Christmas, when my oldest children were young, I bought them each an ornament to hold a photograph of themselves as they were that year. The tradition I’d started with Mieka, Angus, and Peter I continued with Taylor and the granddaughters, and every December Taylor took great pleasure in arranging these miniatures of her changing self. That day, she shook out the contents of the bag listlessly and picked up the ornament that held the most current picture – her first from high school. “I’ve been monitoring a couple of forums about Sally Love on the Internet,” she said.