Hank saton the beachwith Smitty, watching the sunset. Annabelle was asleep in Smitty’s lap. Lydia and Theodore were fishing off the rocks nearby. The genie? Hell, he would bait their lines and fly out over the surf and drop the lines in the water. From Theodore’s squeals, Hank knew they’d caught enough fish for a big meal even after Smitty burned the first few batches.
She was sitting with her legs drawn up, drawing absently in the wet sand. He just watched her, something that seemed to take up a lot of his time lately.
The breeze was light and warm, and it ruffled the hair that had fallen around her face. Her face was as close to perfection as he could imagine. Watching her, with the baby asleep in her lap, did something to him. She looked down at Annabelle and stroked her head lightly while she slept.
Hank walked over and stood above them.
“If you could be anywhere,” she said, “where would you be?”
He sat down. “Why?”
She shrugged. “I was just thinking.”
He laughed. “Yeah, I figured you were.”
She smiled. “I know. You think I think too much.” She blinked, then shook her head and laughed. “I think you think I think too much.”
They both laughed.
Still smiling, she said, “Sounds like too much thinking all the way around, doesn’t it?”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to think. He just wanted to sit here. He just wanted to be.
She looked at him. “No answer?”
He shook his head. “I expect you know where you want to be.”
She shrugged again. “I don’t know. I had always thought I’d want to be exactly where I was. I was happy in San Francisco. Content. I had a home and my family—my dad and my uncles. I had my work.”
“So tell me, Smitty, how does a woman become a lawyer?”
She looked at him. “The same way we’ll eventually get the right to vote. By making men understand that we are their equals. By hard work and by teaching pigheaded men that they can be wrong.”
He laughed. “You must be one helluvan attorney, sweetheart.”
“My dad says I am. He was a brilliant lawyer before he went on to the bench. He’s a California Supreme Court judge.”
Hank groaned.
She laughed. “You’d like him. He loved to match his mind against others and win. He taught me his skills. When I was growing up, we’d sit down to supper and he would start a discussion and throw out a point. We’d argue, and he made me defend my view against his questions. Just when he had me cornered, he’d laugh and say, “Now switch sides, my girl.”
Hank whistled.
“Then I would defend the very point I had been trying to shoot down just minutes before. He taught me to think. And he loves me very much.”
“You miss him?”
She looked at Hank. “I worry about him. I’m all he really has. I wonder what he’s been told. He must think I’m dead. I’m not certain what that will do to him.”
“Maybe he hopes.”
She nodded.
“You still haven’t told me about how a woman becomes an attorney.”
She scowled at him. “Women can be anything they want.”
“Not ball players.”
