Cookie Cutter (22 page)

“That surprises you? After what happened last night I’d be surprised if she didn’t up and move far, far away.”

“That won’t solve her problems, trust me.”

“You sure about that?”

I open my mouth to answer her when the door creaks open. Iris stands there, almost completely hidden by the door. She’s got no make-up left on and bags under her eyes and even with her hair tied up like it’s a caged animal trying to escape, she still looks beautiful.

“Hi,” she says in this small voice. Smaller than the one I remember her having when I first met her.

“Hey.” I run a hand through my wet hair to try and resemble normalcy.

Iris’s eyes shift to the woman next to me, now. “Hi Alex.”

“Everything alright there, Iris?”

“Define alright.”

“Point taken.” Alex sets a hand on my shoulder and whispers as though Iris won’t hear her. “Listen, I’m gonna go, I have a . . . date. So . . .”

She backs away slowly. Not that I can blame her. “A date, huh?”

She shrugs. “What can I say?”

She turns and skips with her crowbar in her hands and I gotta hand it to her, she is not one to get swept up in a bunch of emotional turmoil. Hers or anyone elses.

When I turn back to Iris, she’s smiling too, kind of, as she watches our neighbor head off. She finds my eyes again and twists her mouth a little.

“I guess we have a few things to talk about, huh?”

“Understatement.”

I stand there like I’ve made some huge proclamation only now that I have her full attention, I seem to have lost my train of thought. I continue to stand there like a statue made of self-righteousness.

“Did you want to come in or were you just trying to make your presence known with all the banging and yelling and doorbell ringing?”

That does the trick. I can at least move my feet, now.

“I would love to come in, but what I’m really curious about is, why are you here?”

She leaves the door open as she turns to retreat inside her home and I step inside.

“I live here.” She shuffles back down the hallway.

“No I mean, why aren’t you at work?”

I close the door behind me as Iris pulls the blanket around her tighter.

“I’m sick.”

I laugh. “Iris, you’re not sick.”

“I’m not?” She stops and turns.

“No, you’re just . . .” She reminds me of someone.
Me.
So instead of trying to give her advice, I tell her a story. “Did I ever tell you I was engaged once?”

Her eyes grow big. “Um, no.”

I motion for her to sit on the long comfortable sofa in the back living room that sits across from the kitchen.

“Well I was. And I was also a lawyer.”

“That part I know.”

She plumps down and grabs a pillow, then hugs it tight. I scratch at the back of my neck and take a seat next to her. I guess there’s not time like the present to get everything out in the open.

“Right.”

“So did you really get disbarred?”

I nod once. “I did.”

“Were you involved in something illegal?”

“You could say that.”

“Dangerously illegal?”

“No.” I laugh.

“Do you want to expand on that?”

“I think at this point, I need to. Don’t I?”

She crosses her legs like she’s getting ready to hear an exciting story with happy endings. I hate to tell her, this story has a ways to go to be considered a happy one.

“I guess I should start by telling you, I’m the eldest of two boys belonging to the great Kenneth Blackwood, licensed attorney to California and nine other states in the continental US.”

“You have a brother?”

It strikes me as funny that she’s not impressed with the name I just threw out there, which admittedly is a relief, but more with the fact that I have a sibling.

I nod.

“From the time I can first remember, we were raised to be lawyers. When we were little, we debated everything from school work to homework, study habits to chores around the house and when we were old enough, my father put my brother and me in a magnet program that specifically taught us everything we needed to know about the law so that when we graduated, we’d have a head start in college.”

“You mean like ROTC, only for lawyers.”

Never had it compared that way before, but . . .

“Right. Well, I told you about Habitat for Humanity?”

She nods and bites her lip like she knows what’s coming.

“My passion for building things started when I was young but I was so engrossed in making dad proud and happy that I went with the status quo, you know? Stayed the path. But that year was different for me. When I got home from that trip, I tried to tell him that I didn’t want to be a lawyer anymore.”

“I’m guessing he didn’t listen,” Iris says, with all her intuitiveness and beauty.

“No. He did not.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, well, Dad never did hear anything he didn’t want to hear, so . . .”

An awkward silence falls between us. I can’t tell what Iris is thinking. And maybe I don’t want to know, so I continue on with my story.

“The other thing you should know is, we grew up with a strong sense of being guilted into just about everything our parents wanted us to do.”

“You should try being a part of the PTA sometime,” she snorts.

I momentarily forget what I’m saying.

“Sorry, go on,” she urges.

I shake my head and regroup.

“Anyway, his plan was always to keep Blackwood and Associates in the family. I was at the height of that plan. He wanted me to be the best, always. Then eventually, I’d take over some day and consequently, train my brother.”

“It’s not difficult to guess that’s not how things went down.”

“Nope. Although I gave it a good run for a while there. And honestly, the money was so much better— I didn’t have any problems getting enough money down to Spencer every month.  When he started college I practically insisted he go to U of M.”

Iris’s eyes are full of sympathy. At this point, I don’t know if it’s directed toward me, or Spence.

“I still don’t understand the disbarment. You don’t get disbarred for having a conflict with your father,” she says.

“No, Iris, you don’t. But you do get disbarred for throwing your case.”

Her mouth falls open and her eyes bulge. “What?”

“I’d gotten this rape accusation case from my dad. It was the first case that was my very own and he wanted to see how I would do – you know, show him a ‘what I’m made of’ kinda thing.

The only body language I get from Iris is telling me to go on, so . . . I go on.

“I had a bad feeling about it from the go, though. A gut feeling I guess, plus my dad had handled a case for this guy quite a few years prior and I already didn’t like him.”

Hated him, actually.

“I practically begged Dad not to give it to me, but he insisted. He said it was an important case. But, all the while I’m interviewing him and studying his discussions with the police, I’m looking for something to prove him guilty. But I didn’t find it.”

“So he was
innocent?”

I shake my head. “He was such a douche that guy – and smug! Jesus, I wanted to smack the cockiness right out of him on a daily basis.”

I’m taken back to one particular meeting with him in my office at B&A when he practically dared me to prove he did it and I grow angry all over again.

“Carter, what happened? How did you---”

“It was a weird day from the word go. I woke up with this unsettled feeling. I tried to go about my normal daily routing, you know? I showere. I shaved. I dressed. I prepared for another day in court. And then, while I was making my breakfast, staring down at my over easy eggs, sprinkling pepper on them, it hit me: cell towers.”

“Cell towers.”

“Yeah, cell towers. Everyone checks the phone calls and texts and he was smart there. He didn’t use his phone. I’d gotten a copy of his cell tower pings at the same time I’d gotten his phone records but I never checked them. I figured if there wasn’t anything in his sent and received records, there probably wasn’t anything there either. But there was, Iris.”

“What?”

“The guy had lied to me. It was plain as day. Right there in front of my face, he said he hadn’t been on her side of town in quite a while. Even went as far as to say it had been a good six months since he visited anyone in that area.”

“But he had?”

“Yeah, and it wasn’t a piece of evidence he was going to be able to hide or get his daddy to pay someone to get rid of either.”

“What’d you do?”

“I figured if the prosecution hadn’t brought it up yet they probably hadn’t checked the cell pings either. So I uh . . . sent them a highlighted copy.”

Iris’s mouth gapes. “You did not.”

“Yeah.”

“This is straight out of one of those suspense movies”

“Yeah, only unfortunately, I no longer play the role of lawyer.”

In California anyway.

“And the case?”

“My father assigned another lawyer to it but it was too late. There was a mis-trial and after that he went with a different law firm.”

“Holy shit.”

“My Dad was so mad.” I remember his calling me into that conference room like it just happened an hour ago.

Why would you do this to me, Carter? Why?

I didn’t do it to you, Dad.

After all the money I spent putting you through college . . . law school . . .

I tried to talk to you.

“Carter?” Iris looks worried.

“Sorry.”

“When was the last time you spoke to him?”

“That day.” Oh, what fun that was.

“Jesus.”

“Tell me about it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know to be honest, Iris.  He’s pretty stubborn.”

“Well, from what I’ve seen, so are you.”

I huff out some air. She’s got me there.

“I bet you’re wondering what this all has to do with the way you feel today.”

“Actually I’d forgotten all about it until you just said that.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“This brings me to my fiancé, who I met in college. We had a lot in common. I gave her my mother’s wedding ring the day we graduated. It almost seems like that’s when I started leaning more toward building things and not so much, the defending criminals thing.”

Huh.

“I left the firm the same afternoon my Dad and I duked it out and he pretty much told me if I didn’t get my act together, he didn’t want to talk to me again.”

Iris’s face falls. I know the look of pity when I see it but she doesn’t need to feel sorry for me. Not these days. I know where I belong now and it’s not at Blackwood and Associates. Or in my Dad’s life, apparently.

“By the time I got home that night, Cheryl had already heard the news. She was not only packed and ready to go, but she’d already managed to get her things moved out, including the sectional sofa we bought together.”

You don’t mind, right? I mean you hated it anyway.

“That’s . . . really shitty.” Iris looks disgusted.

I know how she feels. “My world crumbled that day, Iris – or I thought it did. I didn’t get up for two weeks, under the realization that I’d single handedly not only disappointed my father, but ruined another important relationship in my life in one fell swoop.”

“What changed?” She waits patiently and I smile.

“A phone call.”

“From your father?” She looks expectant, but I shake my head.

“From Spence.”

She nods slowly. She gets it.

“That was all I needed to put things into perspective again. It’s also when I realized, I never really loved Cheryl, not like you’re supposed to. If I had, I might have stayed.”

“If
she
had loved you the way she was supposed to, she wouldn’t have asked you to,” Iris says.

Smart woman.

“But your Dad and you . . .”

I breathe in. I can feel the sides of my mouth drawing downward. “Still working on it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

The story is over. My old story that is. My new one, however . . .

“I have no idea how this is gonna work out between us, Iris. For right now though, I don’t really care. I don’t want to. I want to feel what I felt the other night again. I want to be around you as much as I can and I want to---”

“Carter,” she says, cutting me off.

I manage to get my gaze to stop racing around the room, looking for the right words and when I finally lay them on her, she smiles. “Me too.”