“For what it’s worth,” Liddy says quietly, “I always thought you’d make a great mother.”
Angela loops her arm through mine and drags me down the hallway.
“Ignore them both,” she says. “You know the difference between a porcupine and Wade Preston driving in his car? The prick’s on the outside.”
But this time, I can’t even crack a smile.
I do not remember my mother going on many dates when I was growing up, but one sticks out in my mind. A man had come to the door bathed in more perfume than my own mother had on and took her out to dinner. I fell asleep on the couch watchingThe Love BoatandFantasy Islandand woke up sometime duringSaturday Night Liveto find her in her stocking feet, with mascara smudged under her eyes and her hair tumbling out of its updo. “Was he nice?” I remember asking, and my mother just snorted.
“Never trust a man who wears a pinkie ring,” she said.
I didn’t understand, back then. But now I agree: the only jewelry a guy should wear is a wedding band or a Super Bowl ring. Anything else is a clue that it isn’t going to work out: a high school ring says he never grew up; a cocktail ring says he’s gay and doesn’t know it yet. A pinkie ring says he’s too polished for his own good; a Truman Capote wannabe concerned more with how he looks than with how you do.
Wade Preston wears a pinkie ring.
“You certainly have had your fair share of health complications, Ms. Baxter,” he says. “One might say it’s almost Job-like.”
“Objection,” Angela says. “One mightnotsay that.”
“Sustained. Counsel will refrain from personal commentary,” Judge O’Neill says.
“Many have been life-threatening, isn’t that true?”
“Yes,” I say.
“So there’s a chance that, if this court awards you the pre-born children, you might not even be around to see them grow up, right?”
“Right now, I am completely cancer-free. My chance of recurrence is less than two percent.” I smile at him. “I’m healthy as a horse, Mr. Preston.”
“You do understand that, if the court somehow awards you and your lesbian lover these pre-born children, there’s no guarantee a pregnancy will occur?”
“I understand that better than anyone,” I say. “But I also understand that this is my last chance to have a biological child.”
“You now live with Vanessa Shaw in her home, is that correct?”
“Yes. We’re married.”
“Not in the state of Rhode Island,” Wade Preston says.
I fix my gaze on him. “All I know is that the state of Massachusetts gave me a marriage certificate.”
“How long have you been together?”
“About five months.”
He raises his brows. “That’s not very long.”
“I guess I knew something good as soon as I saw it.” I shrug. “And I wanted to be with her forever.”
“You felt the same way when you married Max Baxter, didn’t you?”
First blood. “I wasn’t the one who wanted a divorce. Max left me.”
“Just like Vanessa could leave you?”
“I don’t think that will happen,” I say.
“But you don’t know, do you?”
