The Choice (38 page)

When she arrived at the school, a sheriff's car from Tryon was parked in front of the building. Sandy didn't know whether to sit in her car until the deputy left or go inside and face what awaited her. Deciding not to delay the inevitable, she slung her tote bag over her shoulder and marched toward the building.

“Good morning, Sandy. You look nice,” a male voice to her left said.

It was John Bestwick, who jogged a couple of steps until he was beside her.

“Does the outfit have anything to do with the meeting you had in Dr. Vale's office the other day?”

“It might. I want to be prepared for anything.”

The basketball coach held the door open for her.

“Don't forget what I wrote the other day about your heart,” he said. “Stay sweet even if the people around you turn sour.”

“Thanks,” Sandy said gratefully.

She glanced toward the school office. There was no sign of a deputy, Dr. Vale, or Carol Ramsey. The principal was probably on the campus, but it was still early for Carol to be at school.

Not having homeroom responsibilities gave Sandy a few extra minutes each morning. Usually she stopped by the faculty lounge for a fresh cup of coffee. Sandy opened the door to a room full of silence. There was the usual collection of educators with coffee cups in their hands, and the sheriff's deputy. The deputy's back was to Sandy, who could see the principal reading a sheet of paper. She started to back out of the room, but the principal looked up and saw her. She froze like a student caught roaming the halls without a pass.

“Ms. Lincoln, go to my office,” the principal ordered. “I'll see you there.”

Everyone in the faculty lounge stared at Sandy as she turned around. She could only imagine the hubbub that would erupt as soon as Dr. Vale left the room. She walked slowly down the hall. In a few seconds, she heard a door close behind her and glanced over her shoulder. It was the deputy sheriff. He casually took out his cell phone and started tapping the screen. To him this was nothing more than an easy moonlighting opportunity.

Sandy reached the administrative offices and went inside. The school secretary wasn't in yet. Sandy was too nervous to sit so she paced back and forth. In a few moments, Dr. Vale appeared. He walked past her into his office without speaking. She followed. The principal tossed the letter onto his desk.

“Ms. Lincoln, please sit down.”

Sandy sat in the same chair she'd used at the previous meeting. Dr. Vale stood beside his desk and leaned against it.

“I'll be brief,” the administrator said. “Did you take Maria Alverez to meet with the lawyer who sent this letter?”

“Yes. She was concerned—”

Dr. Vale held up his hand. “This is not a formal inquiry. I'll send the letter to the school board's attorney and refer your involvement in this matter to the personnel committee. You can return to your classroom.”

Sandy was already in trouble and wasn't going to leave the office without making sure the counselor was on notice to cancel the trip to Atlanta.

“Will you give Ms. Ramsey a copy?”

“Yes,” Dr. Vale replied curtly.

“Thank you.”

Sandy left. When she reached the hallway she took a breath. She wasn't sure how long it had been since her last one. One of the doors at the main entrance opened, and Carol came in. She saw Sandy, and a smug expression crept across her face. Sandy looked at her with pity. This wasn't about beating Carol; it was about helping Maria do the right thing.

“Good morning, Sandy,” Carol said as she passed by.

“Hey, Carol.”

Sandy doubted Carol would be as stoic as Dr. Vale when she read the letter. Students passed by her classroom door on their way to homeroom. Sandy called Jeremy's office. No one answered, so she left a message.

“Please let me know if there's anything else I should do,” Sandy said as she ended the call. “Thanks again for your help.”

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. During first and second periods, Sandy frequently looked out the window at Carol's car. It didn't move. By the time second period was over, she knew there was no way Carol and Maria could make it to Atlanta in time for an 11:00 a.m. appointment at the women's clinic. In between each class, Sandy expected Maria to show up, but the Hispanic girl never appeared. Even though Maria had been spared a trip to the abortion clinic in Atlanta, a cloud hung over Sandy's head.

At cheerleading practice, the satisfaction Sandy usually experienced working with the girls was absent.

“Ms. Lincoln, are you feeling okay?” Candace asked toward the end of practice.

“Yes, just distracted by a personal matter. Thanks for asking.”

At eight-thirty that evening, her cell phone beeped. It was from an unknown caller.

“Hello,” Sandy said.

“Ms. Lincoln, it's Maria.”

“Are you okay?” Sandy asked quickly.

“I went to Atlanta with Ms. Ramsey.”

“Atlanta?” Sandy asked in shock. “Why? The reason the lawyer wrote the letter to Ms. Ramsey and Dr. Vale was to stop the trip.”

“That's not what Ms. Ramsey told me. She said the appointment had been scheduled with the doctor, and it would be wrong not to go.”

“When did you leave school? I saw Ms. Ramsey's car in the parking lot all day.”

“A woman named Ms. Sullivan drove us.”

Maria was so easily influenced by any authority figure.

“What happened at the doctor's office?”

Maria spoke in Spanish. “A woman talked to me about keeping the baby, letting someone else raise it, or having it taken out of my body while it is not a real baby. A nurse showed me a movie about girls who had done each one of those things and how they felt about it. The movie was in Spanish. Then the doctor talked to me. He spoke Spanish too. He said having the baby taken out of my body would hurt less now than if I waited until it's bigger.”

Maria stopped. Sandy's heart sank. The most likely reason why Maria was so late getting back to Rutland would be the recovery time following an abortion.

“Did you let him take out—” she started.

“No,” Maria replied. “He wanted to, but I told him my mother was dead, and I needed to talk to you.”

“Thank God.” Sandy sighed with relief. “Was Ms. Ramsey there when you said that to the doctor?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing. She stayed to talk to the doctor after a nurse took me into another room where she examined me to see how I was doing. The nurse said I was very healthy.”

“That's good. Why were you so late getting home?”

“After I saw the doctor, we went to another place. It was a big office building. I sat in a chair and waited for Ms. Ramsey and Ms. Sullivan for over two hours.”

“Why did you go there?”

“I don't know. But I sat and sat. When we left there were many, many cars on the road. I did not know there were that many cars in the whole world.”

“Rush-hour traffic doubles the time to get back to Rutland.”

“Ms. Ramsey and Ms. Sullivan talked a lot on the phone. I was in the backseat and couldn't understand because they turned on the radio and spoke very fast.” Maria paused. “I want you to be with me. Rosalita has to take care of her children.”

“Be with you? What do you mean?”

“If I decide to let the doctor take out the baby.”

Sandy was shocked by the request. Whether Dr. Vale liked it or not, Sandy was going to tell Maria what she thought.

“Maria, I don't believe you should let the doctor take out the baby. Even though it's very tiny right now, it has everything necessary to grow up into a person who can live in this world. All it needs is a safe place to be for the next seven months. Remember what we talked about with Mr. Lane?”

“But the people at the doctor's office explained to me that it's different because I did not want to be with Emilio. He made me be with him in that way and now I have this big problem.”

“That's true,” Sandy said, then stopped. “Maria, I'd rather talk about this with you when we can look in each other's eyes. Does that make sense to you?”

“I think so.”

“Did Ms. Ramsey say anything to you about going back to Atlanta?”

“Yes, but I don't know when.”

“Okay. Please come to my classroom when you have a few minutes tomorrow, and we'll set a time to get together. Will you do that?”

“Yes.”

Dusty Abernathy's office in Atlanta was located north of the city near the intersection of I-75 and I-285. Clients suffering from liver damage caused by Dexadopamine didn't want to fight their way into the center of the city to meet with a lawyer. The building had three disabled-parking spots close to the entrance, with wide doors inside the office to facilitate wheelchair access. The wisdom of Fred Lyons's decision to open a satellite branch in the Southeast had been validated by an increasing number of new clients and resulting income. The money that ended up in Dusty's bank account didn't remove the sting of paying significant spousal support to Farina, but it made the pain more bearable.

Dusty lived in a rented townhome overlooking the Chattahoochee River about ten minutes from the office. The cost of the townhome was a third of the rent for a comparable place in Los Angeles. There were scores of restaurants close by, and Dusty had joined a golf club where he'd lowered his handicap three shots. After growing up near San Francisco and attending college and law school in Chicago, Dusty found Atlanta a manageable, medium-sized city.

However, running a solo law office was a culture shock. Dusty regularly talked with the lawyers at Jenkins and Lyons, but a conference call wasn't the same as multiple contacts with fellow attorneys throughout the workday. The eerie quiet made him uneasy, and he missed the frenetic, noisy, argumentative environment of L.A.

Dusty hired a secretary and paralegal the week after being admitted to the Georgia bar. The secretary lasted a month. The Southern accent Dusty found charming during the interview hid a serious lack of basic grammar skills that needed more remedial work than he was willing to provide. His new paralegal, Valerie Sanders, was a great find. Valerie had good administrative skills, but her most valuable asset was the ability to establish great rapport with clients. Sick people who found a listening ear when they called the office made fewer demands on Dusty, leaving him free to focus on moving their cases through the legal system to a lucrative conclusion. After Dusty terminated the first secretary, Valerie contacted a woman she knew from a former firm who jumped at the opportunity to earn an extra $10,000 per year, even though she knew the job wasn't permanent. Cynthia Campbell was a fast word processor familiar with the peculiar quirks of Georgia litigation practice.

It was a clear, crisp morning. Dusty got out of his expensive sports car and looked up as a military cargo jet from nearby Dobbins Air Reserve Base flew over. The first time he saw a C-5 Galaxy overhead, he did a double take at the size of the massive airfreighter that crept slowly across the sky. Inside the office, he hung his sport coat on a hook behind the door and listened to the messages on his voice mail.

“Hey, brother,” his sister, Lydia, said. “George and I are going to be coming through Atlanta from D.C. in a couple of weeks and thought we might spend the night with you on our way to the Gulf. Don't worry; we're going to board Buddy. Give me a call or send me an e-mail.”

Lydia was eighteen months younger than Dusty. Her delivery had been tough on Dusty's mother, and after she was born, their parents decided not to have any more children. The siblings bore little resemblance to each other. Lydia was fair-haired, with her father's Roman nose and brown eyes, and her mother's small frame. Dusty had none of those characteristics. When new acquaintances commented on the lack of common family traits for the siblings, their parents laughed and chalked it up to a large German and English gene pool.

Lydia's husband, George, was a bureaucrat with the U.S. Department of Commerce, and in Dusty's opinion, a government leech. However, Dusty would put up with George for a day to see his sister. Buddy was the couple's Jack Russell terrier. Any shoe left on the floor in a house visited by the dog was treated as a surrogate rat and fair game for vigorous chewing. Dusty sent a short e-mail to his sister asking for more specific information about the visit.

There were three messages from existing clients and an inquiry about Dexadopamine from a potential new one. Dusty wrote down the man's name and number and put a star beside it. It was too early to call, but at 8:30 a.m. sharp he would try to reach the prospective client. Injured people who wanted to hire a lawyer often went down a list calling multiple attorneys and leaving messages for them all. The first lawyer to return the call had a good shot at getting the case. A call back before 9:00 a.m. showed the injured person that Dusty came to work early. The fifth message in his voice mail was from Shania Dawkins.