A Good Mother by Lara Bazelon (different ereaders txt) 📗

Luz is weeping now openly, her hands at her sides. “I was afraid, I thought—I thought if I could scare him, get him away from me, but then—”

“Then what?” Will is trying to get his breath under control, but finds that he is still panting. He lies on the ground.

“There was so much blood. And I could hear Cristina, she was still crying. I thought I should call for help, so I ran back in her room to get the phone but it was broken from when he threw it and when I came back into the hallway there was even more blood.” Luz does not act this part out. Instead, she stands still, her eyes squeezed shut. “Mi culpa,” she whispers.

This is not in the script. Will shoots Luz a warning look, but her eyes are still closed. “Mi culpa mi culpa mi culpa.” She is rocking back and forth, her eyes squeezed shut, her arms hugging her chest. Tears streaming down her face.

“What did you do?”

She opens her eyes and takes a long shuddering breath. “I sat down next to him. He was on his side and I saw his cell phone in his back pocket. I used it to call the desk—”

“The recorded call we heard?” From his prone position, Will has to project his voice to make sure the jury can hear him.

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

“I held him.” Luz sinks down to the carpet beside Will, raising his head and putting it in her lap. Her hands are warm running over his scalp, itself slick with sweat. “I said, ‘Baby, baby. Please don’t die. Please don’t die, baby.’”

Will lies against her, finally allowing his body to relax and be still. Luz’s hair is a tangle, her sobs echoing off the walls, tears running down her face and onto his body. As his chest finally stops heaving, Will feels Luz convulse. He reaches for her hand and she takes it, bending over him, her voice in his ear.

Mi culpa.

Friday, March 23, 2007

7:13 a.m.

Riverside, California

Luz says goodbye to Father Abelard at his front door and walks slowly to Will’s car, her head down. She is wearing a black dress with short sleeves. It’s not the right look: too short, too dark, too informal. Will knows that Abby would have told Luz to go back inside and put on something else, but given the blow Luz has just had to absorb, Will doesn’t have the heart to say anything. She gets into the passenger seat and puts on her seat belt.

Will reaches for her hand and squeezes it as he backs out of the driveway, but Luz doesn’t return the pressure and he lets go.

“She’s dead.”

“I know,” Will says. “Father Abelard told us. I am so sorry, Luz.” The call had come in at around 5:30 a.m., jolting Will out of the deeper end of a fitful sleep. He had assured Meredith that everything was fine, the judge just wanted them all there early, and to go back to sleep. Then he had slipped out of the bedroom to call Abby, shaved and gotten dressed in the bathroom, and left to get Luz.

Luz is silent, not looking at him, and Will adds, “And I’m sorry we couldn’t get you a few days off. Abby spoke to the clerk this morning to explain the situation, but the judge was—” He pauses, unable to come up with a euphemism. “The judge is an asshole.”

Luz seems not to have heard him. “Cristina and I have no family now,” she says. “There’s no one left.”

“No,” he says, “don’t say that.”

“Why not? It’s true.” She is staring out of the passenger window.

Will wants to say, You have me. But the words are corny beyond belief and in any event, not true. He’s not her family. He’s her lawyer. Her half-crazed, besotted lawyer. But did that necessarily have to be the beginning, the middle, and the hard end of a relationship that had never stayed within those boundaries in the first place? Maybe this was a sign. Maybe it was time for Will, like Charles, to take a wild, scandalous action and embrace an utterly different way of thinking about the world and his place in it. Maybe that break—with convention, expectation, tradition—was the end of the story, in the same way it had been for Charles and Sarah. At least in one of the novel’s three endings.

Deep in thought, Will pulls out of the driveway and heads west toward the freeway.

“She’s right,” Luz says out of nowhere.

It takes him a moment to register what she’d said and even then, it makes no sense. “Who?” he asks. “Who’s right?”

“She said I was going to have to make my own family.”

“Abby said that?”

She nods.

“Meaning what, exactly?”

Slowly, she shakes her head. “Nothing,” she says. “It was just a conversation we had. It doesn’t mean anything.” She turns again to look out the window.

Feeling her attention slipping away, Will says, “I missed you yesterday after court.” It had been the first evening that they hadn’t met to practice Luz’s direct examination in as long as Will can remember. Leaving the office to go home, Will kept thinking he was missing something, had repeatedly checked his pockets for his wallet, his keys, his parking pass, only to realize that what was missing was the time he would normally be spending with Luz. At that point, the endorphins that had been coursing through him since their triumphant performance in court had evaporated. There would be no more practice sessions because the show was over. But maybe it wasn’t after all.

“You did?” she says. “That’s nice.” But her voice is distant, as if she is talking to a well-wisher she barely knows. They drive in silence for a few blocks until they get to the intersection. The light turns green. Straight ahead is the freeway ramp. This is it: the literal fork in the road. Will turns left, heading east again, speeding down the road that leads to Maria