Rebecca Fenney screamed.
ONE
Three hours later and three hundred miles to the north, Scott Fenney stood drenched in sweat. The sun had just risen that Friday morning, only the fifth day of June, but the temperature was already pushing ninety. It was going to be a hot summer.
The traffic light changed, and he jogged across Mockingbird Lane. He was running the streets of Highland Park. He ran five miles every morning, before the town came alive, when the roads were still free of foreign automobiles and the air still free of exhaust fumes, when the only sounds were birds chirping in the tall oak trees that shaded the broad avenues and the only sights were other white men waging war against middle age in running shoes. Scott was only thirty-eight, so he could still avoid such a daily confrontation with his future. But he could not avoid a daily confrontation with his past.
He ran past the lot where the small rent house he had grown up in had once stood, home to mother and son, the poor kid on the block. He ran past the Highland Park football stadium where he had been a high school hero under the bright Friday night lights and the SMU stadium where he had become a college legend on a glorious Saturday afternoon in the fall of his twenty-first year. He ran past the law school where he had graduated first in his class then had struck out for downtown Dallas to find his fortune in the law. He ran past the country club where lush green fairways bathed in a soft shower from low sprinklers, an exclusive golf course that would soon welcome the wealthiest white men in Dallas just as it had once welcomed him. He ran past the mansion he had once called home.
He was now the poor lawyer on the block.
It had been two years since that life had become his past. He had not mourned the loss of his partnership at the Ford Stevens law firm or the money that had come with being a successful lawyer or the things that money had bought—the home, the club, the car … okay, he did miss the car; it was a red Ferrari 360 Modena that could do zero to sixty in 4.5 seconds. But he had what money could not buy and what no one could foreclose, repossess, or otherwise take from him by legal process. He had his daughters. So while his morning run reminded him of the past, he did not long for the past. He had gotten over his past.
Except Rebecca.
She had not screamed or cursed or said goodbye. She had just left. She wanted nothing from him and took nothing—not her community property or her clothes or her child. After eleven years of marriage, she had just wanted out. So twenty-two months and eight days ago, she had walked out of their house and marriage and left town with the twenty-six-year-old assistant golf pro at the club. Scott blamed himself. If only he had been more attentive to her needs, more thoughtful toward her, more caring toward her, more … something. Whatever it was that a woman needed from a man. What she had needed from him. He had not given her what she had needed, so she had found it with another man. In another man's bed.
He now slept alone. When he slept. The other hours he lay awake and alone, thinking of her and wondering if he would ever again feel the love of a woman lying next to him, holding him, touching him, wanting him. He wanted to love again, to feel the heat of passion again, to experience that special connection—physical and mental—between a man and a woman, when he and she were one. Those moments were the best moments of a man's life. Those were the moments with Rebecca he recalled now.
He longed to share his life with another woman. But he couldn't, not until he understood why his wife had left him. Until he knew what she had needed and how he had failed her. So if he got a second chance at love, he wouldn't fail again. But for now Scott Fenney had no reason to stay in bed each morning.
So he ran.
TWO
Scott entered the small cottage through the back door that led into the kitchen and was greeted by the smell of eggs,
chorizo
, and coffee. Consuela had already arrived and was cooking breakfast.
"Morning, Consuela."
"
Buenos días
,
Señor
Fenney."
Consuela was thirty, round, and Catholic. She wore three crucifixes and kept prayer candles lit on the windowsill. Her husband, Esteban Garcia, dropped her and the baby off each morning on the way to his construction job in Dallas. Little Maria sat in a high chair and smeared mushy food on her face. Scott leaned down to her.
"And how are you this morning,
Señorita
Maria de la Rosa-Garcia?"
She spit up something green.
"She no like
brécol
," Consuela said.
"Don't believe I'd like broccoli for breakfast either."
The fifteen-month-old child smiled at Scott as if she understood what he had said. He scrunched up his face and rubbed noses with her—she liked that—and said, "You don't want that yucky broccoli, do you? Tell your
madre
you want
huevos rancheros
and
chorizo
so you can grow big and strong and get a
fútbol
scholarship."
Her parents were Mexican nationals but she was an American citizen—born in the USA. She raised her arms to him.
"Oh, Uncle Scotty can't play now, honey. I've got to go to work."
He gave the child a kiss on her forehead and a little hug and came away with slimy green broccoli on his cheek. It smelled awful—or maybe it was him. He swiped a sweaty sleeve across his cheek then grabbed a bottled water out of the refrigerator and walked down the hall to his daughters' bedroom. He knocked on the door.
"Come on, girls, I can't be late today. Closing arguments."
The door opened, and his eleven-year-old daughters emerged from a small bedroom cluttered with posters of the Jonas Brothers and a smiling Michael Jordan on the walls, books stacked on shelves and scattered about the floor, clothes hanging over chairs as if one of them—guess who?—could not decide what to wear that day, and a small television with rabbit ears. They had pushed their twin beds together in one corner so they could read together at night. They shared clothes, they brushed each other's hair, they were like sisters—and now the law said they were.
Barbara Boo Fenney was wearing jean shorts, a black T-shirt with white print that read "Obama Ba-Rocks My World," green retro sneakers without socks, and her red hair pulled back in a ponytail. She looked more like her mother every day, albeit less expensively dressed. Pajamae Jones-Fenney wore a color-coordinated short outfit, matching socks folded down neatly, and black-and-white saddle Oxfords. Her skin was tan and flawless, her hair brown and fluffy and cut in a bob. She too looked more like her mother every day. One girl was the product of his failed marriage, the other of his law practice. Two years before, he had defended Pajamae's mother against a murder charge and won, only to see her die of a heroin overdose two months later. Pajamae had no one except Boo and her mother's lawyer, so he had adopted her.
"Morning, girls."
"Whereas, Mr. Fenney," Pajamae said.
"What's your pulse?" Boo said.
"I didn't check my pulse."
"Do you feel faint or dizzy? Are you experiencing chest pain?"
"No, Boo. I feel fine."
"A. Scott, I still think you should be on a statin."
"I think you should change that T-shirt. The school won't like it."
"I told her, Mr. Fenney. I said, 'Girl, you can't be wearing a T-shirt reminding these rich white folks there's a black man in the White House.' "
The conservative Republicans in town—which is to say, the entire Town of Highland Park—had not gone for Obama. They had hoped that George W. would salve their electoral wounds by coming home to Highland Park, but he had retired to his old stomping grounds in North Dallas instead. Even Dick Cheney had forsaken his former home town for Jackson Hole, Wyoming. But Bush did give the Parkies a consolation prize: the $300 million George W. Bush Presidential Library would be located on the Southern Methodist University campus in Highland Park.
Boo shrugged. "What are they gonna do, suspend me again, on the last day of school?"
She had been suspended earlier in the year for fighting. With a boy. He had called Pajamae "Aunt Jemima" on the playground, so Boo had punched him in the nose and made him cry. She had a heck of a right cross for a girl. Scott had threatened to take the school district to court—and more effectively, the story of a white boy bullying the only black student in school to the newspaper and local television—so the school had dropped the suspension after one day. Now, whenever the principal threatened Boo with disciplinary action for defending her sister against bullies, her standard response was, "Call my lawyer."
"Consuela has breakfast ready."
The girls went one way down the hall and Scott the other. He entered the "master suite" of the two-bedroom, fifteen-hundred-square-foot cottage. The master closet in his former residence dwarfed the small bedroom and adjoining bath. Scott undressed in the bathroom, stepped into the cramped shower, and stood under the hot water. The mansion and material possessions that had once given his life value were gone. His ambitious years, that period in a man's life when human nature and testosterone drive him to prove his net worth to the world—when the score is kept in dollars and cents—were over. For most men, the ambitious years extend well into their fifties, even their sixties, and come to an end only with a heart attack or a positive prostate exam, when a man confronts his mortality. But it wasn't the prospect of his own death that had brought his ambitious years to a premature end for A. Scott Fenney, at age thirty-six; it was the death of a U.S. senator's son.
He got out of the shower, shaved, and dressed in a $2,000 custom-made suit; the suits and Consuela were all that remained of his past life. She was part of the family, and the suits still fit. And he was still a lawyer.
Scott returned to the kitchen where the girls were eating breakfast tacos and playing with Maria.
"Last day of school, girls." Scott sat and ate his taco and studied his adopted daughter's face. "Pajamae, are you wearing makeup?"
"Blush, Mr. Fenney, like Beyoncé. You like it?"
"What's a Beyoncé? And please call me 'Dad.' It's been a year and a half."
"Don't seem right, Mr. Fenney."
"Why not?"
" 'Cause you're Boo's daddy."
"I'm your daddy, too, and don't you ever forget it." He drank coffee and said, "So what do you girls want to do this summer?"
"The other kids are going to Colorado, Hawaii, the south of France …"
"We can't afford that, Boo."
"What can we afford?"
"Well, we could camp out in a state park."
"That'd be fun. We could never go camping with Mother. She hated to sweat."
"Boo, she's still your mother."
"I don't have a mother."
Her anger seeped out from time to time. Or was it a sense of shame? Everyone in Highland Park knew her mother had run off with the golf pro.
Scott turned back to Pajamae. She seemed glum, too.
"Pajamae, smile—you're about to graduate from fifth grade."
"She doesn't smile because the other kids make fun of her," Boo said.
"Because of her color?"
"Because of her teeth."
"Her
teeth?
"
"My teeth are all crooked, Mr. Fenney. It's embarrassing."
She needed braces. Ten thousand dollars worth of dental work. Scott paid $30,000 in annual health insurance premiums for the three of them plus Consuela and Maria, but the plan did not include dental.
"Mr. Fenney, when I'm playing pro basketball, how am I gonna do endorsements with crooked teeth? You see Michael Jordan's teeth? Look like a string of pearls."
"Honey, I'll find a way to pay for braces, okay? Before next school year."
"You promise, Mr. Fenney?"
He nodded. "I promise."
She started to smile but caught herself.
Braces for Pajamae. Another financial promise he wasn't sure he could keep, like the mortgage and office overhead—unless he won the case that day and the city didn't appeal the verdict and …
Boo stood and tossed her napkin on the table.
"Let's get this fifth grade over with."
Ten minutes later, Scott was driving the Volkswagen Jetta to the elementary school past the mansions of the most important people in Dallas—or at least the richest. The streets of Highland Park were no longer vacant. Mothers were taking their offspring to school, and fathers were taking themselves downtown. From the back seat, he heard Pajamae's voice, sounding spooky.
"Boo … I see white people."
They fell over each other laughing hysterically. They had seen
The Sixth Sense
—the edited version on network TV—and were always coming up with new variations on the "I see dead people" line.
Of course, Pajamae did see white people. Only white people. Exactly one black family lived in Highland Park … and one black girl named Pajamae Jones-Fenney. The Town of Highland Park was a two-square-mile enclave entirely surrounded by the City of Dallas—the bright white hole in the middle of the multicolored Dallas donut. Few people of color could afford to live in Highland Park—the median home price was $1 million—and those who could, like the pro athletes who played football for the Cowboys, basketball for the Mavericks, and baseball for the Rangers, weren't so keen on being protected by a police force whose standard operating procedure for traffic stops was "If they're black or brown, they'd better have tools in the back."