And Liddy had said,Well, what does Max think? He ought to have a say in this, too.
I flatten my hands on the table. “About this trial . . . I probably should have brought this up before. But I can’t afford one lawyer, much less two of you.”
Pastor Clive puts his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t you worry about that, son. The church is taking care of it. After all, this is going to bring us a lot of attention.”
Wade leans back, a smile unraveling across his face. “Attention,” he says, “is what I do best.”
ZOE
Ilike Emma. And Ella. And Hannah.
“Does every baby name have to be a palindrome?” Vanessa asks.
“No,” I tell her, as we sprawl across the living room floor, surrounded by every single baby name book stocked by the local bookstore.
“Florals?” Vanessa says. “Rose? Lily? Or Daisy. I’ve always liked Daisy.”
“Amanda Lynn?” I wait to see if she’ll get the joke.
Vanessa smirks. “Well, it’s better than Tuba or Banjo . . .”
“How about girl names that are also boy names?” I say. “Like Stevie. Or Alex.”
“It would save us half the work here,” Vanessa admits.
I have been pregnant three times and have avoided doing just this: hoping. It’s a lot easier to not be disappointed when you have no expectations. And yet this time I almost can’t help myself. There was something about the way I left things with Max that makes me believe this might actually happen.
After all, he didn’t say no right away, which is what I expected.
Which means he’s still thinking.
And that has to be good, right?
“Joey,” Vanessa suggests. “That’s kind of cute.”
“If you’re a kangaroo . . .” I roll over onto my back and look up at the ceiling. “Clouds.”
“No way. I’m not doing the hippie thing. No Clouds or Rain or Meadow. I mean, imagine the poor kid when she’s ninety and in a nursing home.”
“I wasn’t talking about a name,” I say. “I was thinking about the nursery. I’ve always thought it would be peaceful to fall asleep staring up at clouds painted on your ceiling.”
“That’s cool. You think Michelangelo is listed in the yellow pages?”
The doorbell rings as I toss a pillow at her. “You expecting anyone?” I ask.
Vanessa shakes her head. “Are you?”
A man is standing on the porch, smiling. He’s wearing a red baseball cap and a Red Sox sweatshirt and doesn’t strike me as a serial killer, so I open the door. “Are you Zoe Baxter?” he asks.
“Yes . . .”
He pulls a sheaf of blue papers out of his back pocket. “These papers are for you,” he says. “You’ve been served.”
I open the folded document and words leap off the page at me:
Pray this Honorable Court . . .
. . . award him full possession and custody of his pre-born children . . .
