Daughter's Keeper by Ayelet Waldman

Author:Ayelet Waldman
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2013-09-15T16:00:00+00:00

part two

Izaya had been out of the office the two times Olivia had been by the Federal Building to check in with pretrial services, and she had had to cancel an appointment with him once because it conflicted with a prenatal checkup. He had mailed her the discovery—a thick file of audiotapes, photographs, agents’ statements, records and logs of surveillance, transcripts of the informant’s prior testimony, and some documents of which she could make neither head nor tail, and which it made her head hurt even to peruse. It was only once she had heard her voice on tape and seen the hazy photographs snapped of her as she waited in the car for Jorge, that Olivia had finally understood that the case wouldn’t simply go away, no matter how much she wanted it to. Leafing through the pages of discovery, she’d realized that she had to gird herself for battle.

She and Izaya had spoken on the phone a few times, but their conversations after the one where she had told him she was pregnant, and he’d grown so inexplicably angry, were stiff and awkward. Mostly they communicated via email. She felt more comfortable with him over the ether. He was, somehow, more easygoing, natural even, and she felt free to be as well. His notes were brief, and usually imparted some specific bit of information like that they’d been granted a continuance or had a new date for their motions hearing or trial, but they had a casual, almost breezy quality. Her replies were similar in tone and generally limited to questions about the case or specific aspects of the law that she didn’t understand, but she occasionally confided her fears and anxieties to him when they grew too numerous and overwhelming for her to ­contemplate alone. He replied right away and was invariably reassuring and kind.

This email intimacy made her feel close to Izaya, but they had not actually seen each other in weeks.

Olivia walked into Izaya’s office wearing one of the dresses Elaine had given her. The gathered empire waist accented her belly and she looked like what she was—almost five months pregnant. Izaya stared at her stomach.

“Wow,” he said. “You really are pregnant.”

“I guess I kind of popped,” Olivia said. She could feel herself blushing.

“Jeez, maybe if I use you as a visual aid, Amanda Steele would consider dismissing the indictment.”

“Are you serious?”

“Sorry. I wish I were. So, how are you feeling?” Izaya asked.

“Physically?”

“That, too.”

“Physically, I feel kind of great.” It was true. The morning sickness had disappeared suddenly one day, as if someone had flicked a switch. The crushing exhaustion had departed at more or less the same time. She no longer felt the need for at least two naps a day, satisfying herself with one long one in the early afternoon. Her appetite had, if anything, increased, and she was indulging a series of cravings of the sort you heard about only on television sitcoms. Olivia was convinced that she always hungered after salt and vinegar potato chips mixed with chocolate chip mint ice cream, even when she wasn’t pregnant.

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