Four Wives by Wendy Walker Read Free Book Online Page B

Harvard and a haughty first job in corporate litigation, Marie had hardly been
drawn
to overseeing the unraveling of families. What she had been was smart. She’d honed in on a highly lucrative niche. Now, after six years, she was not only the best female attorney specializing in paternal custody claims’she was the only one in the county.
    It was an odd fit for a strong-minded feminist who had, generally, more contempt for her clients than sympathy. The suburban divorce stories were usually the same’happy marriages crumbling under the weight of kids, financial stress, and a social structure that cast men and women into opposing universes. The husband usually caved in first, seeking solace in other women, falling “in love.” Ironically, he would somehow think that the flaw in the first go-around was with his choice of wife, and jump wholeheartedly into a second marriage, a second family. Still, the ones she took on as clients wanted to be a part of their children’s lives, and this was, to Marie, worthy of her efforts.
    As she had quickly discovered, divorce law could be rigid, presumptive, and arbitrary. And it wielded a great deal of discretion to the local judges’more than some were worthy of. Too often, they used their discretion to pay tribute to the well-defined roles of working dads and stay-at-home moms. Stereotypes provided easy cover to avoid the tough calls. Mom got the kids, but dad usually got financial concessions to afford his new family. None of this was good for the children. It was Marie’s job to effect a different result, and doing that job required bitter contention of legal norms, which sometimes verged on belligerence. This bothered Marie not in the least. Over the years, she had come to believe that she was looking out for the real victims of the system’the children.
    She’d gone over it again and again, rationalizing her work to herself, her friends, the mothers across the table who looked at her with the worst kind of disdain. That it gave her the income she needed to keep the firm afloat, to contribute to the family, and still be home when her girls got off the bus’that she had made a name for herself’all of it weighed in. On most days, she could live with it.
    What, she wondered, could it possibly hold for the young man sitting beside her?
    Then he spoke. “There’s something about the stories of the people, what’s happened to them.”
    Marie raised an eyebrow. “People stories?”
    “Is that OK?” Randy asked, suddenly self-conscious.
    “Sure. Fine. But I have to ask’will you be needing time off in the afternoons to catch your soap?”
    Randy smiled and let out a slight laugh. “If you don’t mind. And a subscription to
The National Enquirer
would be great.”
    Marie made a few mental notes.
Funny. Quick. Sarcastic.
“Well, in any event, I’m lucky to have you. Your resume is very impressive and I could use the help.”
    “Thanks.”
    Marie got up from her desk and headed for the conference room, her sole purpose to remove herself from the office.
    “I’ll let you get started.”
    Randy opened the first book, pencil in hand, determination in his eyes. Marie closed the door between the office and the conference room, then took a seat out of view from the glass partition. She had prepared herself for the approaching months’the Farrell case heating up, golf season trying her patience, the girls home from school, and that ridiculous benefit. She knew what to do with all of that, largely because she had those things figured. Hunting Ridge, the men and women in it, the local judges and lawyers’every social dynamic at play in her insular world. Knowing what was wrong with the things around her kept her sane. She had constructed categories, stereotypes for cookie-cutout suburban dwellers, and Randy Matthews was not fitting into any one of them. Now there was no question she would have to dig until she sorted him out. That she was looking forward to the task more than