The God Patent (44 page)

He stood before the judge, his head just slightly lower than hers. In a confident, businesslike tone, he said, “What can I do to help Katarina?”

“Mr. McNear, I think I understand your situation in regard to the Ariadnes.” She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and looked at her notes. “The child’s mother told me that she
will continue to take care of Katarina, but as soon as the child has grown up, she is moving back in with the child’s father.” She looked at the arrest report. “But it says here that the father is deceased.”

Ryan nodded. He felt like the judge had discovered a horrible secret. His tongue ran along his teeth, he leaned close to her and said, “The father died a few years ago. Jane’s still recovering.”

She scowled and turned back to her notes. “Katarina told me that you are more like her father than her father ever had been, even when he was alive—those were her exact words.”

She pulled her glasses down her nose so that nothing was between her eyes and Ryan’s. “Do you understand how much that little girl needs you?”

“She said that?” Ryan stole a glance behind him. Katarina was at the podium either prying something off of the wood veneer or trying to dislodge the light. She looked up, saw him, and resumed her fake smile.

“Those were her words.”

“She loved her father.”

“I’m sure she did, Mr. McNear, but he’s gone now.”

“Katarina is a smart kid, your honor. She’s learned her lesson.”

“Her mother doesn’t seem capable of taking responsibility for the child. The court can order her to seek counseling but can’t force her to pursue it.”

“She could really use the help.”

“Is there anyone else? A family member? An aunt or uncle, a grandparent?”

“I don’t know of any.”

“Mr. McNear, I don’t want to incarcerate Katarina. My only other choice is foster care.” The judge looked over Ryan’s
shoulder toward the podium. Ryan wanted to steal a glance too but thought better of it. Instead, he focused whatever telepathic abilities he had into Katarina’s head, pleading with her to give the impression of a well-behaved child.

She turned back to Ryan. Looking over her glasses, she seemed to be examining him.

“Surely you have a third option,” Ryan said. “Katarina has never been in trouble before.”

“Do I have your word that you will take responsibility for her as long as her mother is incapacitated?”

“You do.”

“If she appears before me again, I will put her in foster care.” She lifted her gavel. “Mr. McNear, do you realize how dangerous the world is to her right now?”

Ryan nodded.

“Return to the podium.”

Ryan walked back and stood next to Katarina.

The judge said, “Miss Ariadne, I am suspending your sentence until you’re eighteen. If you commit no further offenses, the record of this crime will be sealed on your eighteenth birthday. However, if you are charged for another crime and appear in this court again, you will either be incarcerated in the county juvenile detention center or be assigned foster care. Do you understand?”

“What?” Katarina said. “You mean I can go?”

The judged nodded and tapped her gavel on its pad.

Ryan and Katarina walked up the steps, and Jane went around back to her bike. The house looked different to Ryan than it had that first day. The 150-year-old Victorian in basic black with bright-red features and lime-green trim, the two spires,
and immaculate garden had looked like the Munsters’ comical, macabre mansion. Now it looked warm. The black wasn’t intimidating, the red seemed to fit the mood of the owner, and the green expressed the hope of its occupants with that red. Complicated and bright, this was where Katarina grew up, Dodge connived, and Ryan climbed out of his hole as Jane sunk deeper into hers.

Ryan opened the door for Katarina. “The judge told me what you said.”

“Oh.”

“About me being like your father and stuff.”

“Well, who knows what my mother told her.” Katarina laughed. “Like you said, do what it takes to stay out of jail.”

Ryan unlocked his apartment door and went in. Katarina followed. She went in the kitchenette and put a pot on the stove, pulled a box of macaroni and cheese from the cupboard, and then brought Ryan a bottle of beer.

“Whoa!” Ryan said, opening the bottle. “What is this?”

“I believe it’s water, grain, and brewer’s yeast—the ingredients are on the label. I bet you could even read them.” Then, stirring the macaroni, she asked in a soft voice, as though it were of no consequence, “Are you moving back to Texas?”

Ryan didn’t catch her tone. “Well, I’ll have to go back and forth. My new lawyer said it’ll take a few months of legal mess to fix things, and I have to install the new software in Foster’s lab—but wow.” He leaned back and sighed. “This summer you will finally meet Sean McNear. I owe an awful lot to him, you know, and it’ll take a while. But I don’t want to live there.”

“So is this Sean McNear I’ve heard so much about going to live here?” Katarina said. “Will I have a new neighbor? Do I have to be nice to him?”

“Just try not to scare him too much, okay?”

“Is he as goofy looking as you are?” And then, before Ryan could answer, she added, “Oh, that’s right, you wouldn’t know, not having seen him in over four years?”

“Yeah, I don’t know, do I? People used to say that he looked like me. His mother is gorgeous. I couldn’t have polluted her gene pool that much. But seriously, I’m going to be traveling a lot for the next couple of months. There’s nothing I can do about it, and the judge said that I have to take care of you, so you better not get in any trouble while I’m gone.”

“I could come with you.”

“What about school?”

“You don’t want me to go with you.”

“It’s not like I want to go there. Besides, what would you do in Texas?”

“If Emmy hadn’t dumped you, you’d stick around.” Now she sounded surly.

“What? That has nothing to do with anything.”

“Never mind.”

“I’ll bring you with me when school’s out this summer. Just be careful while I’m gone. Stay away from Alex and those idiots, okay?”

“I don’t hang with those losers anymore.” She handed him a big bowl of mac ’n’ cheese. “I don’t need them. I don’t need anyone. And I don’t want to go to Texas.”

R
yan felt like a grizzled version of who he’d been the last time he landed at DFW airport. Reviewing what he planned to say to his attorney, he wandered into the parking lot. He looked up, half expecting to see the blue BMW that he’d had in a different life, laughed at himself, and went back to wait for the rental-car bus.

Cynthia Robins reminded Ryan of a schoolteacher. She wore a suit with a calf-length skirt and one-inch heels. Her graying brown hair was wound up in a bun, and she wore wire-rimmed bifocals with a chain that went around her neck. Cynthia Robins Law Office was on the thirtieth floor of a Fort Worth building a block from Sunset Square. Her oak desk was half the size of Dodge’s and cluttered with pictures of parents and their children, single parents with one or more kids, and their pets. A floor-to-ceiling window looked over the prairie, and, just visible through the haze, you could see the Dallas skyline. She made him tea and told him that she had read the documents related to the restraining order. Ryan described what had happened with Tammi in as much detail as he could bear. She was looking at her notes when he finished and, barely glancing up, said, “When was the last time you took methamphetamine?”

Ryan understood the significance. Every recovering addict knows that date. “Halloween, two thousand three—it was warm
that morning, the sky was clear, but a wind blew down from the north and dropped the temperature into the twenties by the afternoon. I broke my pipes and locked my apartment door—chain-smoked cigarettes for a week.” It was a fond memory, the greatest victory of his life. “And when I walked out of that apartment, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever use meth again, but I was absolutely certain that I’d never quit again.”

Ms. Robins leaned back in her chair and took a sheet from the printer on the table behind her. Setting it in front of her, she put on reading glasses. “Tomorrow you will meet with the Department of Child Protective Services to set up weekly counseling and drug testing. The initial fee is seven hundred dollars, counseling is six hundred dollars per month, and drug testing is four hundred dollars per month.” She looked over her glasses at Ryan and added, “You have a right to perform the counseling near your residence, which will be Hardale, Texas. This is your first lesson in disappearing into county bureaucracy: you have a right to Hardale, but if you request Hardale, it would mean extra work for someone. This would make you stick out. You must disappear. You will petition for counseling and testing in San Antonio, where resources already exist. It will take at least a month for the county to process your request. This means that your first six weeks of counseling and drug testing will be in Fort Worth. You won’t complain, you won’t be late, and you will accept the first scheduling options you are presented. Do you understand?”

“Make it easy for them?”

“Yes, become a name on a sheet of paper and nothing else—do not bring gifts of any kind to your counselors, do not befriend the nurses who take your urine, do not crack jokes, do not speak unless you are spoken to, and agree to every request.” She pulled her glasses back up and looked at the page before her as she
spoke. “The county will charge you a two hundred dollars per month surcharge for allowing you to be counseled and tested in San Antonio.” She set the page down again, as though expecting Ryan to comment.

Ryan didn’t say anything.

She finally broke a smile. “Very good. I think you’re getting it.”

“Thank you, ma’am. May I have another?”

“Understand this: you are a county revenue stream. You pay, the county collects; the easier it is for them to take your money, the more latitude I will have to work the system in your favor.” She frowned. “Wednesday morning, you and I have an appointment at the federal courthouse in Dallas with the Office of Child Support Enforcement.” She glanced at a legal pad to her right and told him that his current overdue child support was $188,732. She looked over her glasses again.

Ryan wrote the number down. It was consistent with a quick estimate.

She said, “The system will not entertain the prospect of you working below your income capacity. I have spoken with the OCSE officer assigned to this case. It will be easiest for him if we, first, do not appeal the amount and, second, offer to pay the standard fifty-thousand-dollar fine in addition to prime plus five percent compounded annual interest on the outstanding debt.”

“Fifty, plus compounded interest?” Ryan ran the numbers through his head. “That’s almost an additional hundred thousand. I’ll never be able to—”

“You will find a way. You see, by presenting the officer with an offer that is explicitly that which he is authorized to grant, we will make his day easier. Ryan, it will be worth every cent.”

“Wait a second.” Ryan stood and walked to the window. “I thought your job was to get those fines reduced.”

She stood, took his empty cup of tea, and left the office.

Ryan stared across the prairie south of town. He could see the strip mall where he’d worked at Oil Xchangers and, not too far from there, the apartment complex where he’d lived with Tammi. He let loose a big sigh, his shoulders slumping by the time he fully exhaled. It wasn’t supposed to be easy.

Ms. Robins came back in the office. “Ryan, please sit down.”

He slid back into the seat and saw that she had poured him another cup of tea. A purple tag hung from it, Darjeeling.

“I don’t enjoy making you suffer, but it’s the best way to prepare you to deal with the system.”

He sipped the tea. She’d put in a slice of lemon and the perfect amount of sugar.

“Ryan,” she said, looking at the legal pad again, “Sean is turning sixteen this summer. You and he have already lost so much time.” Her eyes softened and she spoke gently, “I can recommend an attorney who will fight for your money. I want to fight for your son.”