LIGHT SHONE THROUGH the frosted glass of Julia’s office door, laying a bright path down the dark hallway that led to the warren of offices housing the public defenders.
“Damn.” She was sure she’d turned it off before she went to court. She’d hear about it from Deb, the meddlesome office manager who made it her business to ensure the office was pinching every possible penny.
Julia counted herself fortunate to finally have an office to herself after Claudette’s departure to the far-better-paying position of county attorney. She didn’t want to risk her newfound luxury by running afoul of Deb—a futile effort, she realized seconds later when she opened the door.
A young woman stood inside, a tape dispenser in one hand, a stapler in the other. Two open file boxes sat atop Claudette’s desk, and Julia’s own desk contained a stack of files that hadn’t been there before. A long wool herringbone coat hung beside Julia’s puffy parka on the coatrack.
“Who the hell are you?”
Julia knew she should apologize for her rudeness. But it didn’t appear to have rattled the interloper.
“Marie St. Clair. I’m your new intern.”
She was taller than Julia—but then, everyone was—with a broad, pale face, wispy pale hair, and pale eyes that bulged froglike, all of it giving her the appearance of someone who existed below ground, in a place devoid of sunlight. Her expression suggested she rarely smiled.
Julia had planned to transfer her own things into Claudette’s desk, slightly larger than hers and in marginally better condition, and then move her old desk out entirely, making the space appear less like a repurposed closet and more like an actual office. She’d never gotten around to it and apparently had missed her chance.
“I didn’t ask for an intern. And what are you doing here now, anyway? Aren’t internships a summertime thing?”
“I asked if I could start early. I’m doing well enough in my classes that they said I could work a few hours a week during the semester.”
Marie placed the stapler and tape dispenser on the desk, aligning them precisely with a stack of Post-it notes and an in/out box. “Sounds like we—”
We?
“—are going to have a homicide trial on our hands.”
“Not likely.” Julia sat at her desk and logged on to her computer in an attempt to look purposeful. The office windows, grimy from years of inattention, let in precious little light, and even that was fast fading. She’d come back to the office planning only to grab her coat and go home, eager to close the door on this day, but didn’t want to cede the office, her office, to Marie, who was hovering beside her with an expectant expression on her face and a question on her lips.
“What do you mean?”
“He didn’t do it.”
“They all say that.”
Ah, the arrogance and certainty of law school. Lawyers got a bad rap on both counts, but nothing beat baby lawyers for being the smartest people in the room.
Julia nudged the files littering her desk. They were her own, both old and pending cases. “What are these doing here?”
Marie looked toward the file cabinet. “Deb told me to clear out a couple of drawers for myself, so I did.”
Julia had always thought the references to blood boiling mere colorful hyperbole. Now hers surged hot through her veins. She wondered whom she hated more at the moment, Marie or Deb.
Marie lingered oblivious, rearranging the already perfectly aligned items on her desk. “Have you ever tried a homicide before?”
“No.”
A mix of disappointment and irritation chased the eagerness from Marie’s face. “They’ll probably assign someone with more experience, then.”
Julia logged off with a loud clack of keys and grabbed her coat from the rack. Marie could spend all damn night lining up her office supplies for all she cared.
“They’re not going to need to assign anyone. Ray Belmar didn’t kill that man.”
She closed the door behind her, then opened it again.
“Get your shit out of my file cabinet. Leave the stuff on my desk where it is. And if you ever touch my files again, I’ll ship you back to law school before you can say habeas corpus.”
A blast of warm air, redolent of tomato and garlic and simmering meats, greeted Julia when she pushed open the door of Dom Parrish’s house.
Her spirits soared. “Sunday gravy? But it’s Monday.”
Parrish appeared in the kitchen doorway, a wooden spoon in one hand, his other cupped beneath it to catch drips. He held the spoon to her lips. “Taste.”
“Mmm. Perfect. I’d rather have this than a glass of wine—and I really need a glass of wine.”
“In there.” He pointed to the living room, where two chairs had been pulled close to the fireplace, two glasses of wine on a table between them. “Dinner can wait.”
She unwound her scarf, kicked off her shoes, draped her coat over the back of one of the chairs, and stood before the fire, hands outstretched.
“What’s the occasion?”
“For starters, Calvin and Elena demanded tacos yesterday. Remember? And today’s a teacher in-service day. No school for the kids and early out for us. I knew you had Ray today—hence, Sunday gravy. Cures all ills, even better than chicken soup.”
Dom was the first and only man Julia had dated since Michael’s death. Their relationship had proceeded slowly, cautiously, its tentative pace imposed in part by the combined realities of Dom’s teenage daughter, Julia’s young son, and the fact that Julia still lived with her mother-in-law. Sex involved the sort of scheduling maneuvers worthy of air traffic controllers. They’d fallen into a pattern of two weeknight dinners at his house, timed to his daughter’s evening volunteer shifts at a local refugee center, and weekend outings of varying success with one or both kids.
She’d persuaded him to try cross-country skiing, the low-rent alternative to the glitzy ski resort on the outskirts of town, and Dom—whose last name, Parrish, was the anglicized version of Parisi, the name bestowed on him by an indifferent clerk at Ellis Island—in turn had introduced her to the Italian tradition of Sunday gravy: the meaty, long-simmered sauce that warmed them through upon their return from their excursions.
They lifted glasses, clinked, and sank into the chairs.
“How’d it go with Ray today? Was he up to his usual shenanigans?” In the months they’d been together, Dom had heard more about Ray than any of Julia’s other clients.
Julia’s sip turned into a gulp. She rolled the stem of the glass between her fingers.
“Pretty much.” She set her wine aside and recounted the story of the sock, spreading her hands far apart in imitation of Ray’s theatrics, eliciting a spit take from Dom.
“Even the judge laughed. It was all fun and games until they arrested him for homicide.”
She was thankful Dom hadn’t taken another sip of wine.
“What? Did somebody at the parade have a heart attack at the sight of that sock flopping around? You’re kidding, right?”
“Afraid not.”
A log collapsed into the fire, sending up a starburst of sparks. A few bounced through the screen and landed on the rug. Julia ground her toe against them, heedless of the damage to her striped wool sock.
“I’d no sooner finished getting Ray out from under the insane bail Claudette wanted than they arrested him. They say he killed that guy they found down by the river. I just can’t believe it.”
“From everything you’ve told me about him, that doesn’t sound like Ray.”
“It’s not. And then they stuck me with this obnoxious intern …”
Julia was off and running, indulging in one of the forgotten pleasures of being in a relationship—namely, shoveling the day’s unpleasantness onto someone else’s shoulders.
Dom, as usual, did the right thing, making sympathetic noises and refilling her glass, until he finally took it from her and wrapped her hands in his.
“You know what? You’re far too tense to give that gravy the attention it rightly deserves. Dinner can wait.”
He didn’t need to say more. Julia practically ran ahead of him to the bedroom, where everything that came next banished all thoughts of Ray Belmar from her head.
Maybe it was the wine. Or maybe it was her need to block out the shock and frustration of Ray’s arrest, followed by the insult of the unwanted intern.
Julia took the lead, pushing Dom onto his back, her movements fast, almost rough, her moans drowning out the sounds of the key in the front door, the footsteps down the hall.
“Yes!” she yelled, just as the bedroom door flew open and a shocked voice intruded upon her consciousness.
“Dad?”