Custody Read online

  “Kelly.” Her voice was a low rasp.

  Kelly had been proofing an article she’d written for the Massachusetts Law Journal. Sun filled the room, glancing off the chrome on all the machines and the bars of the bed, and the air-conditioning hummed, so it seemed they were in the private cabin of a small, steadily traveling boat.

  Kelly dropped her papers. “I’m here, Mom.”

  Ingrid’s pale blue eyes shone with a light that had been missing over the past weeks. For a moment she seemed free of pain and also of the drug-induced fog that had dimmed her gaze.

  Kelly took her mother’s hand in both of hers. Ingrid’s skin was dry, papery, hollow-feeling, like a petal past its prime—weightless.

  “I love you, Kelly,” her mother said.

  Kelly’s eyes, as pale a blue as her mother’s, had filled with tears. “I love you, too, Mommy,” she whispered.

  Ingrid had smiled. “I know, darling. I’ve always known. Every single day.”

  How Kelly had longed then to let it all pour out, to tell her mother everything—about all the decisions she’d made and the sacrifices she’d undertaken during those confusing, amazing, mysterious years when by law she became an adult, yet in her heart was little more than a child, when more than ever she had needed her mother’s guidance, but had been prevented from seeking it by her own anger and pride. Kelly wanted her mother to know her as she was now, tempered and forged by the kiln of experience. She wanted her mother to laugh and cry with her, to praise her, to mourn for her—she wanted her mother to say, “I understand. And what you did was right.”

  But her mother’s eyelids had fluttered, and she’d made a tiny coughing noise deep in her throat that alarmed Kelly, who’d risen from her chair, wondering whether she should ring for a nurse. But Ingrid had taken a shuddering breath and said, “Darling, I must sleep.”

  That was the last real exchange between the two women. Ingrid had not known that Kelly had applied for a judicial position. She had not been alive when the grand news came to Kelly that she had won the appointment. She had not been alive when Kelly took her oath of office. She had not been alive to rejoice or advise.

  Kelly still had much to say. She still needed to be with her mother. Somehow she felt she really was with her mother in this cemetery where only life and death and love mattered, far away from the laws of man. So she came here every Sunday.

  And every Sunday the man came, too.

  Today she’d been sitting by the stone for almost an hour when she saw him arrive, clad, in concession to the heat, only in khakis, a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a tie. Today he looked less like a warrior and more like someone who had once played college football. He strode up Lilac Path, a level below Kelly’s mother’s grave, and right within her line of view—she didn’t have to go out of her way to see him. She couldn’t help seeing him.

  Still, when he knelt at the foot of the grave, Kelly, out of respect and the wish to give him privacy, rose and quietly moved away. She would walk. She always walked around the cemetery after visiting her mother.

  The MacLeod plot lay along Lilac Path, just before the land dropped down to Chrysanthemum Path. Kelly took the higher road to avoid interrupting the man in his devotions, and strolled along Cherry Avenue. She paused for a moment by the modest granite slab marking e. e. cummings’s grave. Cummings had written: “if most people were born twice, they’d improbably call it dying.”

  Wandering past stone and marble monuments, mausoleums with stained glass and wrought-iron portals, past statues of winged angels and fallen soldiers, Kelly wondered, not idly, whether or not cummings was right. Might her mother be alive somewhere, on another plane of existence about which mortals could only dream?

  If so, then Kelly’s father and his parents were alive there as well, in which case Kelly doubted very much that that particular corner of heaven was all sweetness and light.

  “How could you!” Kelly’s grandparents would demand. “We trusted you. You betrayed us, and you betrayed your daughter as well.”

  Maybe that would happen. Could happen. Maybe not. Everything Kelly had read or heard on the matter made it seem that once humans left this earthly realm they left behind the woes and worries that had plagued their lives.

  Which meant that if there would ever be justice, it had to happen here and now in the world we know. Kelly believed fiercely that one individual could make a difference, that what people do in their lives could tip some kind of invisible scale toward good or evil. She was determined to do what she could to weigh in on the side of good.

  Preoccupied by the vague and immaterial thoughts she allowed herself on Sunday mornings, Kelly wandered beneath a bent, witchlike tree, its branches already bearing the hard green knots that would, one day, be apples. The lane curved, forked, and led down to Lake Hibiscus. The sun gleamed on the still surface of the water. Blinking, she reached into her pocket for her sunglasses, overlooked a fallen branch on the path, tripped, and tumbled down, falling flat.

  She wasn’t hurt, but she felt like an idiot. She sat up, brushing leaves from her hands.

  “Are you all right?”

  The man came along a path toward her.

  For the first time she saw his face directly. He was handsome in a brawny, healthy way, and Kelly felt herself blush. She’d gone down fast, breaking the fall with her hands, but still skinning one of her knees.

  “I’m fine. What a dope. I must have been a funny sight.” Several locks of her hair had come loose and hung in her eyes. She yanked off the barrette so that all her hair tumbled down around her shoulders, an incorrigible mass that went wild in humidity. She captured it all in her hands and fastened it up on the back of her head.

  He grinned. “More startling than funny. I thought an angle had toppled off her pedestal.” He offered his hand to help her up.

  Reluctantly, because she always felt too tall with most men, she placed her hand in his. With ease he pulled her up, his grip firm. He was strong.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re quite welcome.”

  She took her hand back, but their gazes held. His eyes were blue, patriot blue. His face was rugged, but not tense with the nerves of a warrior: he looked intelligent and tired and very slightly overweight, and kind. Flushing, she bent to brush imaginary grass from her dress then looked up at him again. She couldn’t stop looking at him.

  She said, “I’ve seen you here before.”

  He nodded. “My mother.”

  “My mother, too.”

  His mother, not his wife. So he was undoubtedly married; how could he not be married with that fine openhearted face, like a blond Ernest Hemingway, broad and tanned and generous and masculine, and eyes as clear as goodness.

  She cleared her throat. “Recently?”

  “Three months.”

  “Ah. Two months.”

  They looked down through the trees at the lake. The still water reflected the lush dappling of shadow and sun.

  “It’s silly, perhaps,” Kelly confessed, “but I’ve gotten into the habit of coming here to talk things over with my mother.”

  “Not silly. I do the same with mine.” He paused. “Although if I’m honest, I often find it a relief that she can’t talk back.”

  Kelly laughed. “I know what you mean.”

  “Shall we walk?”

  “Sure.” She fell into step next to him. He was taller than she was, which was unusual. Their strides matched easily. He was older than she’d thought: at least forty, though she couldn’t be sure. Something weighed on him. Grief, perhaps. She sensed him studying her face. “I like walking here. Somehow, I can think here. It’s so peaceful, so quiet.”

  “And it doesn’t matter who you are.”

  She glanced up at him. “Exactly.”

  His voice was low and steady. “Well, what better place to reflect upon our lives than here? Wealth doesn’t matter here or prestige. We’re faced with fundamental truths here. We have to look at life more honestly.”


  They rounded a bend thick with ancient willows, the thousands of delicate leaves on their bowed branches cascading like a green waterfall.

  “And you feel you need to do that?” she asked. “Look at life more clearly?”

  Bending, he picked up a pebble and held it in his hand, turning it with long, dexterous fingers, as if it were a talisman. He sighed. He looked at Kelly, out at the lake, down at the small gray rock.

  “Well. As a matter of fact, yes. Yes, I have come to a time in my life when I must do a lot of serious thinking. I’ve thought of seeing a therapist about certain problems—” He smiled at her—he had very straight, white teeth. “Normal problems, I mean. I wouldn’t want you to think you’re out here alone with a psychopath.”

  “I don’t think that.”

  “Good. But I don’t believe I need a therapist. I just need to slow down and reflect.”

  “Are you at a transitional point in your life?” Kelly asked.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Are you a therapist?”

  She laughed. “No. I’m—”

  He held up his hand. “Don’t tell me who you are or what you do, and I won’t tell you.”

  “Oh, dear. You are a psychopath.” Kelly couldn’t understand it, but she was happy. It was so easy to talk with this man. It was as if they’d been having conversations all their lives.

  “Only my wife thinks so.”

  “Ah. You’re married.”

  “Separated. In the process of getting divorced. It’s a damnably confusing and painful process.” He tossed the pebble into the water. It splashed. Concentric rings rippled outward like visual echoes in the clear water. “One that makes me relish all the jokes about lawyers.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “And you?”

  She hesitated; then she held out her left hand. “I’m engaged.”

  “Beautiful ring.”

  “That’s true.”

  “When’s the wedding?”

  They came to Ascending Spirit, the rather contemporary white marble woman sculpted by Thomas Gould. “This is one of my favorites,” she said.

  “Mine, too.” Then he waited.

  Now Kelly was the one to sigh. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to marry Jason.”

  “Yet you’re engaged to him.”

  She bit her lip, twisting the engagement ring on her hand. When it faced inward, it dug into her palm when her hand was closed, and sometimes she liked the feeling, the little bite of pain.

  “When my mother was dying, she wanted so terribly to know that I would be safe, which to her meant being married. She needed to know that someone would love me and take care of me. She liked Jason. Well, I like Jason. It made her happy to know we were planning to marry.”

  “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

  “Oh, Jason wouldn’t be hell. He’s a very nice man.”

  “My wife is a very nice woman. But I can assure you that marriage to someone you don’t really love is a mistake.”

  “Do you have children?”

  “A daughter. Whom we both love. Who will be happier when we’re divorced, of that I’m sure.”

  They began to walk again, ascending a small hill in silence until they reached the summit and saw the lush green tops of trees along the Jamaicaway and the traffic, just bright dots blurring along.

  “Perspective,” the man said. “That’s another thing I like about being here, the way it distances me from the pressing problems of my life. Provides space.”

  Kelly nodded in agreement. “Jason thinks it’s odd that I come here. He’s more efficient than I. And competitive.”

  “With you?”

  “With everyone. I think his right eye competes with his left to see farther. He’s even ambidextrous.”

  The man laughed. It was a rich, deep sound, the laugh of someone with a zest for life. “Competition, aggression. They aren’t necessarily bad. They can indicate a kind of optimism.”

  “Yes, I suppose.” Kelly considered this as they fell into step, walking back down the hill. “Still, the more Jason pushes at me to name a date, the more resistance I feel. This isn’t some kind of contest, I keep telling him. He won’t win if he forces me to marry him when I’m uncertain. We’ll both lose.”

  “Do you love him?”

  Kelly stumbled. The man put his hand on her arm to steady her. She looked at his hand—broad and firm, with clean, blunt nails—and then up into his blue eyes. “Have we met before?”

  “I don’t think so. I wish we had.”

  A blush rose from her chest up her neck. The connection between them was so intense, she had to look away.

  After a long moment, they began to walk again, past mausoleums with intricate iron doors, brass doors, marble friezes.

  “I’m always surprised that more people don’t come here,” she said, testing the steadiness of her voice. “Some of the most beautiful artwork in the world is here.”

  He nodded in response.

  “Jason hasn’t offered to visit the cemetery with me. Well, he came to the funeral, of course. But now—Every week? he asked. Isn’t that a little morbid? It helps me clear my mind, I tell him. It helps me remember what really matters. I think Jason sees his life as a kind of track event, with hurdles he’s eager to cross as soon as possible. He’s already achieved sufficient status professionally. Now he wants the other stuff: marriage, a great house, a vacation home, some children. He’s itching for a reason to buy a Mercedes four-wheel drive.” Kelly shook her head. “I apologize for going on like this. I can’t imagine what’s gotten into me.”

  “I like listening to you,” the man said. Laugh lines around his mouth and eyes engraved pale streaks in the tan of his face. “It makes me realize how most of my conversations are just small talk.”

  They continued along a path planted with high, leafy rhododendrons. A squirrel dashed across the lane, stopping to fix them with an indignant stare.

  “Hi,” Kelly said to the squirrel.

  It flicked its tail and raced off into the bushes.

  “Tell me some good things about Jason.”

  “All right. Let’s see. He’s very smart. And basically kind. My mother liked him.”

  “Your father?”

  “My father’s dead. My ‘stepfather’—” Kelly paused. The spell snapped. She looked at her watch. “Damn. I’ve got to go. I’ve got an appointment.”

  They had arrived at the lane leading to the chapel, office, and parking lot. They stood on Snowflake Path, in the middle of July.

  The man held out his hand. “It was nice talking with you.”

  Kelly placed her hand in his, meaning to shake it as she would shake the hand of any other acquaintance. Instead they both looked at their hands, palm to palm, and he seemed as bemused as she was by the flush of lust that bloomed there like an orchid with an open throat.

  “Well,” she said, after a moment, when she could get her breath.

  “I’ll be here next week,” the man told her.

  “Good. It will be your turn to talk.”

  “All right.” He still held her hand.

  “Shall we exchange names?”

  “I don’t think so. I rather like the anonymity.”

  “Me, too. If you call this anonymity. I mean, I don’t even know your name, but I feel as if I know you. Certainly I’m telling you things I don’t tell anyone.”

  He looked solemn. “Perhaps this is something we both need.”

  With a little laugh, she pulled her hand away. “Normally I’m a very rational person. A responsible citizen, with a discerning mind—” She smiled. “I’ve even been considered judicious.”

  “I’m sure that’s true. But sometimes—” He gazed up at the Bell Tower. “Sometimes we devote so much to the perfection of our professional, public selves, that we forget to honor our messy, greedy, irrational, private selves. We—we lose our souls.”

  She studied his profile. His nose was long and high, a patrician nos
e marred by a slight bump that made his face, from this angle, resemble George Washington’s. “That’s very serious.”

  “It is.” Suddenly, turning and pinning her with the bright blue beam of his eyes, he said in a rush, “I’ve tried very hard to be a good person. To do the right thing. These days I feel beset by devils. From within myself as well as from without. I mean the divorce. I once loved my wife. I still admire her. I don’t want to hurt her.”

  He ran his hands through his thick hair. When he was done, his hair stood out every which way, an oddly endearing sight. All at once he seemed young, a confused but eager boy.

  “She’s a public person, my wife. In a way, the burden of her celebrity’s imposed on me. There’s no one I can talk to about her, or about our daughter, or any of it. But you—” He stared at Kelly. “You’re a good person, I can tell. And for some inexplicable reason, I feel I can talk to you.” Reaching out, he took Kelly’s hands in both of his own. He could not, it seemed, keep himself from touching her any more than she could stop herself from wanting that touch. “Let’s make a pact. When we meet one another here, let’s tell one another only the truth. And whatever we say to one another will remain just between the two of us.”

  Kelly couldn’t speak.

  “Oh, dear. Now you think I’m a psychopath again.”

  “No.” She cleared her throat. “Not at all. I’ll make that pact with you.”

  “Good. Then I’ll see you next week.”

  “Good.”

  They stood another moment looking at one another, holding hands, and then he said, “If you didn’t have that appointment, I’d suggest we go somewhere for coffee. To continue the conversation.”

  “I’d like that. But I do have this appointment.”

  “Well, then.”

  “Yes.” She nodded toward the chapel. “My car’s down there.”

  He nodded in the opposite direction. “My car’s over there.”

  “Good-bye, then. See you next Sunday.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  Still they stood.

  “One of us has to move, you know,” she told him.