Maurice rolled around the contents of her clear make-up bag, ignoring the tampons. “Tell your husband his Flex is a joke.”
Leigh guessed this had to do with fantasy football. Just like she guessed that Walter did not give one shit about the game that had taken every moment of his free time before last night. “I’ll pass that along.”
Maurice finally cleared her, and Leigh grabbed her things off the belt. Even though she was masked, the smile stayed on her face as she walked into the lobby. She went into lawyer mode, nodding at colleagues, biting her tongue at the idiots who’d let their masks slip below their noses because real men could only get Covid through their mouths.
She didn’t want to wait for the elevator. She carried the box up two flights. At the door, she took a moment, trying to reforge herself into steel. Maurice bringing up Walter had led her thoughts toward Maddy, and thinking about Maddy threatened to open a giant, gaping hole in her heart.
Leigh had texted her daughter this morning, the usual cheery rise and shine along with the detail that she would be in court all day. Maddy had sent back an oblivious thumbs up along with a heart. Leigh would have to talk to her daughter eventually, but she was afraid if she heard Maddy’s voice, she would lose it. Which made Leigh just as much of a coward as Ruby Heyer.
She heard voices coming up the stairs. Leigh used her hip to open the door. Jacob Gaddy waved to her from the end of the hall. The associate had managed to snag one of the rarely available attorney/client conference rooms.
“Well done on the room.” Leigh let him take the box. “I need these catalogued and ready for Monday.”
“Got it,” Jacob said. “The client’s not here yet, but Dante Carmichael was looking for you.”
“Did he say what he wanted?”
“I mean—” Jacob shrugged, as if it was obvious. “Deal ’Em Down Dante, right?”
“Let him find me.” Leigh walked into the empty room. Four chairs, one table, no windows, flickering overhead lights. “Where’s—”
“Liz?” Jacob asked. “She’s downstairs trying to snag the jury questionnaires.”
“Don’t let anyone interrupt me if I’m with the client.” Leigh’s personal phone started to ring. She reached into her purse.
Jacob said, “I’ll keep an eye out for Andrew.”
Leigh didn’t respond because Jacob had already shut the door. Her mask came off. She looked at her phone. Her stomach threatened to churn, but Leigh willed it to calm. She answered on the fourth ring. “What is it, Walter? I’m about to go into court.”
He was silent for a moment, probably because he’d never met Leigh the frigid bitch before. “What are you going to do?”
She chose to be obtuse. “I’m going to try to select a jury that will find my client not guilty.”
“And then?”
“And then I’m going to see what he wants me to do next.”
Another hesitation. “That’s your plan, just let him keep pushing you around?”
She would’ve laughed if she wasn’t terrified that showing one emotion would break open the others. “What else can I do, Walter? I told you he has a fail-safe. If you’ve got a brilliant alternative then, please, tell me what you want me to do.”
There was no response, only the sound of Walter’s breathing through the phone. She thought about him in the RV last night, the sudden fury, the deep and mortal wound. Leigh closed her eyes, tried to still her pounding heart. She imagined herself standing alone on a small wooden boat, gliding away from the shore where Walter and Maddy stood waving goodbye as Leigh floated toward the rushing waters of a waterfall.
That was how her life was supposed to end up. Leigh was never meant to move to Chicago, or meet Walter, or accept the gift of Maddy. She was meant to be trapped in Lake Point, drop-kicked into the gutter along with everybody else.
Walter said, “I want you here tomorrow night at six. We’re going to talk to Maddy and explain that she’s going to go on a trip with Mom. She can do school virtually from the road. I can’t have her around while this guy is out there. I can’t—I won’t—let anything bad happen to her.”
Leigh was not as caught out as Walter. She had heard him use his current tone exactly once, four years ago. She’d been lying on the bathroom floor, still drunk from the previous night’s binge. He was explaining to Leigh that she had thirty days to get sober or he was going to take Maddy away from her. The only difference between that ultimatum and this one was that the first had been given out of love. Now, he was doing it out of hate.