The Judge by Steve Martini

Author:Steve Martini
Language: eng, zho
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2011-07-27T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

SATURDAY MORNING AND SARAH IS CLEANING HER room. She is the master of the stall. My daughter, at eight years of age, can take an hour to make her bed in the morning and another to brush her teeth. She can daydream about a dozen things at once, hold her own in aimless conversation with unseen beings, and recite verse with no meter or rhyme. Put her in the shower with a bar of soap and she will drain the local reservoir.

Sarah’s mother, Nikki, who died two years ago, possessed artistic skills that seem to have passed to Sarah. She can draw human forms, men and women which shame my stick figures. But numbers elude her, and she has her own system for spelling that substitutes the consonants of any word interchangeably. I have talked to the teachers at her school and they tell me to be patient. Each child, they say, progresses at his or her own speed. For Sarah, except for the tasks she enjoys, this seems to be glacial.

“What’s she doing up there?” Lenore’s laughing, amused by the stomping sounds of little feet on the floor overhead.

Lenore arrived last evening, only to be corralled by Sarah, and the three of us ended up playing board games until Sarah went to bed. Then Lenore and I turned to the wine and some soft music.

“She’s supposed to be cleaning up. You want to go up for an inspection?”

“I think I’ll pass,” she says.

Lenore’s two children are off this week with their father, who lives in the southern part of the state and comes up only infrequently for visitation.

For several weeks Sarah has been pleading to ask a little girlfriend from school to the house to play. I have insisted that she wait but not told her the reason.

For a single father with a little girl these are dangerous times. I have a friend, a career prosecutor whose life was savaged by accusations that he fondled a child at his daughter’s slumber party. Despite the fact that his accuser later recanted and that he was acquitted after a three-month trial, he is now bankrupt and wears his own version of the scarlet letter.

It is for this reason that Lenore has agreed to spend the day. She is my alibi against paranoia, my own and that of others.

We sit talking in the kitchen while Sarah supposedly straightens her room. The doorbell rings and I look at my watch.

“A little early for her friend,” I tell Lenore.

“Mom’s probably looking for some free day care,” she says.

I excuse myself for a second and head down the hall for the door; I hear the patter of Sarah’s feet on the stairs.

“I’ll get it,” I tell her.

She makes it a race to the front door and of course gets there ahead of me, only to shrink in the shadow of the man through the screen, who fills the frame as she opens it.

“Is your daddy home?”

“I told you I would get it,” I tell Sarah.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.