Beth took up her overnight case and started for the door. "I think mother needs a court order to keep him out of the house."
"Be supportive, Beth, not inflammatory."
"She needs someone to light a fire under her." "Do you hate your father that much?"
"I don't hate him."
' "Then why are you so eager to get him out of the house?"
"He needs to be taught a lesson. He's had everything his way for so long. It's fine and dandy for him to be delightfully pleasant when he's pulling all the strings. Let someone else pull the strings and he starts throwing things the way he did Saturday. That was an awakening, let me tell you."
"That he has a temper?"
"I'll say."
"Maybe it's a healthy outlet. After all, he was oh jecting to his wife's kicking him out of the house. Maybe he really wants to be there with her."
"He just wants his way."
"Maybe," Faith conceded, then smiled and squeezed the younger woman's shoulder.
"Have a safe flight back to Baltimore. And remember, stay cool. Your parents are going to have to work this out themselves."
"Will you call my mother?"
"As soon as you're on your way."
But she'd barely seen Beth to the elevator and returned to her office when Laura called her.
"Is Bern still there? I know she was going to meet you. Has she left?"
"Just a minute ago. Is there a problem?"
"She forgot her gray outfit, the two-piece wool she wore in on Friday.
She was too warm in it then, but the weather's getting colder and she'll want it. " She sighed.
"It's no wonder she forgot it. She was in such a stir while she was here."
"Has she always had trouble getting along with her father?"
"Always. I've been the buffer for years. She feels that he's been unduly stingy with her."
"With money?"
"Money, time, himself. He said it would be too easy to spoil her, and he didn't want that. God forbid he should make things easy for her.
When she graduated from college, she wanted to work for him, but he told her she had to work somewhere else.
"Earn her stripes' was the expression he used. What kind of father would make his daughter do that?"
"Many have."
"It was very selfish of him. But I suppose that's nothing new," Laura concluded sadly.
Faith heard the sadness. She didn't hear any sort of panic.
"Beth was concerned for your physical safety. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine. Bruce is being difficult, of course. He insists on staying here. When I tell him to leave, he gets furious."
"Do you feel that you're in danger?"
"I don't know what he's going to do next. I've never seen him like this."
"Has he threatened you in any way? Forced you in any physical sense?" "No. But one of us has to leave this house, and it isn't going to be me. He can leave."
"It sounds as if he won't. We can try for a restraining order, but it may be premature." While Faith was the first one to want to protect a client from physical harm, she sensed that the threat in this case was more speculative than real. Bruce had no history of violence. The court would see that.
"I'd recommend that you take advantage of his presence and talk with him."
"Talk? What for? I can't trust what he says. Not anymore. Besides, it's a waste of time. I want a divorce."
"I understand that, Mrs. Leindecker, but"
"I want a divorce. Are you going to represent me?"
"Let's discuss that on Tuesday."
"This is Sunday. My feelings won't change in two days." "Where emotions are concerned, a lot can happen in two days." "Not in my case. I want a divorce, and the sooner we get started, the sooner that man will see what he's done."
Divorce for the purpose of revenge was one of the things Faith least liked. It was childish, blind and often ugly. It also tended to overshadow any pluses that might have existed in a marriage. Gut instinct told her that this marriage had pluses aplenty. What she needed was time to see if those pluses could possibly reassert themselves.
"Tuesday, Laura. We'll talk again on Tuesday."
It took another minute, but she finally convinced Laura to hold off any action until then. Hanging up the phone at last, she quickly gathered her things together and left the office. She wasn't as easily able to leave behind thoughts of the case. It bothered her. Clearly, emotions were flying high in the Leindecker home. But a divorce based solely on emotional factors was the most painful for all involved, including the lawyers. Granted, any divorce stirred emotions. At some point, though, practicality and reason had to come into play. It could happen in court. Or before. Faith far preferred the latter.
Letting herself into her apartment, she had a sudden urge to phone Sawyer. She had a good excuse. Her client had called her in fear; Faith was sharing that fear with the lawyer who might, with a call to his client, be able to help.
But Sawyer wasn't home. He'd called her from the Cape--she didn't even know where on the Cape. And he'd called from a pay phone, which meant that the dilapidated something he'd bought didn't have one of its own.
Just for the hell of it, she tried his number in Boston. After ten rings without an answer, she hung up. She told herself that that was okay, that she really didn't have to speak with him, that Laura Leindecker was perfectly safe. But an hour later, she tried again, and then again an hour after that. It was ten o'clock before she finally reached him.
rli. Sawyer, it's me. "
She was the last person he'd expected to hear from, still he recognized her voice at once.
"Faith?"
"Uh-huh. I've been trying you. You must have just come home."
"There was an accident on the Sagamore Bridge that backed traffic up for miles. I thought it was late enough in the season for the crowds to be gone, but I sat in the middle of a jam for three hours."
She knew how frustrating that could be and would have felt sorry for him if she weren't so envious that he'd been at the Cape in the first place.
"Tell me again what you were doing down there."
"I bought a place this summer. It's in East Dennis, an old broken-down thing. But it's on a lake, and it has potential. The land is gorgeous.
I figured I could fix up the place myself. I'm an experienced man when it comes to repairs. "
The way he drawled it made her smile. "The house in Cambridge?"
"Yeah. Then it was physical therapy more than anything. I suppose it's still that. The physical exercise is different from what I do at work all week. But it's also mentally therapeutic. Gets out the cobwebs,
if you know what I mean. " He wasn't sure she did. He wasn't sure she'd been thinking of him as much as he'd been thinking of her. They'd agreed to go back to business as usual. But he was having trouble doing that. Maybe the fact that she'd called him meant she was having trouble with it, too.
"Tell me about this place," she said.
"How much land do you have?"
"Three acres."
"So you don't see your neighbors?"
"Nope. All I see is trees. And water. And rabbits and raccoons and geese. It's such a total change from everything I have up here--including the house. I mean, we're talking old and worn and crumbly."
"Sounds like you might want to tear it down and start over from scratch."
That thought had occurred to him.
"The problem is I'm already committed. The deeper in I get, the more I find that needs to be done, but the more I've done, the less I want to ditch the whole thing." He paused. "Am I making any sense?"
"Lots of it," she said.
"You've committed yourself to a course of action. You've come too far to turn back."
"Oh, I'm not sure too far," he drawled.
"I'm still debating."
"But you keep going back, and you keep doing work, and you keep getting deeper involved."
"Like I say, it's therapeutic."
"Which means that if you finally decide to ditch the project, you'll still have gotten something out of it."
"That's one way of looking at it. You're good at rationalizing.
Faith. "
"Sometimes," she said. She was thinking of what they'd done with each other on Friday night. She couldn't rationalize it away so easily.
Nor, much as she tried, could she forget it for long. But that was beside the point.
"I have to ask your opinion on something. Sawyer."
"Shoot." "Bruce Leindecker. Do you know him well?"
"Well enough," he answered more cautiously.
"We've been passing acquaintances for several years."
"Do you think he's prone to violence?"
Sawyer didn't think so, but he wasn't about to say anything until he knew what had happened. Bruce was his client; there were certain privileges to respect.
"Why do you ask?" "I had conversations today with both his wife and his daughter.
Apparently there was an ugly scene yesterday. Things were thrown around the room a little. "
"By my client?" he asked, then saw no harm in rebutting it.
"That surprises me. To my knowledge, he's never been a violent man." "Are you sure?"
"I said 'to my knowledge." Maybe the guy's been beating up women on the sly, but nothing's ever come out about it, and with a visible guy like Bruce, you'd think it would. "
"Nothing ever came out about the affair he was having."
"One woman. One affair. It had been going on for two or three months.
No more. "
That was the first Faith had heard of Bruce's side of the story, and while it was interesting, it wasn't surprising. Bruce's story was just that--Bruce's story. And it was Sawyer's job to relate it as told.
"So he says."
"I believe him. And I do believe that he wouldn't hurt a woman. Unless those two are driving him mad."
"Sawyer..."
"They may be."
That wasn't Faith's immediate worry.
"Bern was concerned for her mother's safety. I take it you don't think she has cause?"
"No, I don't."
"You sound sure."
"I feel sure."
"I'm glad one of us does. I'd feel horrible if I decided to let it go and then my client was batted around. But you say you know your client fairly well. I'm trusting you on this, Sawyer."
"I'm glad you can still trust me on something."
She was a minute in responding.
"What do you mean?"
"After Friday night. I'm glad you still trust me a little."
"Of course, I trust you. I've always trusted you. Trust was never an issue."
But Sawyer saw it differently. "You trusted me to take care of you, and I didn't."
"Take care of me?" "Protect you. I was thinking about this most of the day, and it's really bothering me. If you'd been with someone you trusted less on Friday night, you wouldn't have had half as much to drink. But you trusted me not to take advantage of you, so you may have been more lax than usual. Not only did I let us get carried away enough to make love, but I didn't think a thing about birth control. So now you're sitting there worrying that you're pregnant, because you have a successful career, and we all know that successful careers and babies don't mix."
Faith was astonished.
"You spent most of today thinking about this?"
"While I was hammering away on the roof."
"I don't believe it. Sawyer." She took a breath.
"Sawyer, do you know what year this is?"
"Of course I do."
"Then you'll know that these aren't the forties, or fifties, or even the seventies. Women have come a long way. Now, I know you don't like to think so-- I know that. Sawyer, because much as I love you, you're a throwback to the heyday of male chauvinism. But really, we're not the pretty, dumb, helpless little things we used to be."
"I never said that. Faith" -- "But you imply it. I thought we agreed that on some level we both knew what we were doing Friday night. You were the one who said that first, and you're right. So I take at least half of the responsibility. And as far as a baby goes, I'm not sitting here worrying, because just as you said, there isn't a thing I can do until I know one way or the other, and even if I am pregnant, I have options! Honestly, Sawyer, these aren't the Dark Ages. I won't be sentenced to wear a scarlet letter on my breast. And I won't have to give up my practice. For your information, babies and careers are mixing better and better all the time." She stopped talking, but before he could say a word, she had another thought. This one riled her.
"Ahhh. You're worried you'll have to marry me if I'm pregnant."
"That's not" -- "Save your breath, bud," she argued, suddenly and inexplicably furious.
"I wasn't born yesterday, and that goes for experiencing marriage as well as understanding the male mind. I've been married once and it didn't work out. I'm not in a rush to go near it again, and I don't care if there is a baby involved. So you can sleep free of worry. No matter what happens, you won't be trapped." She slammed the receiver down hard.