Page 50 of Every Step She Takes
I don’t care how legal or ethical it is. All that matters is that I got a heads-up before I walked through the front door. Score one for paranoia.
Speaking of paranoia, I take off my boots so I don’t clip-clop down the steps. On the fifth floor, a man walks through the stairwell door. His gaze goes to the boots in my hand, only to nod and smile as if he trusts in the logic of unknowable female fashion choices.
He climbs to another floor, and I don’t encounter anyone else. At the bottom, I yank on my boots and fly through the stairwell door.
I can’t ask Mom to find me another lawyer. She’s a school teacher in Albany. Her contact list is filled with church-lady friends and book-club friends and golf-game friends, plus a few discreet male friends that I’m not supposed to know about, because God forbid I find out my mother is dating a mere quarter-century after my dad died. Unless one of Mom’s hook-ups is an NYC defense attorney, she’s not the person to find me a lawyer.
I need to handle this myself. Yes, part of me wants to hide until my mommy sorts it out, but I’m not that girl anymore.
Take control of the narrative.
Go to the police. Not the ones upstairs. That would seem as if I tripped over them and went “Whoops, uh, so… I’m turning myself in.” This must be a clear act of initiative. Find a police station. Walk in and announce who I am. Say that I wanted to find a lawyer first, but the one I contacted seemed shady –there’s your TV-ready soundbite, Daniel Thompson– so I decided to do this on my own.
I’m heading for the side exit while searching my phone for a police precinct. The bathroom door opens. A young woman steps out. I see her pretty face, her perfectly coiffed hair, her equally perfect makeup… and the little microphone clipped to her lapel.
A reporter.
Chapter Twenty
Albany, 2005
Our house was under siege. It had been three days, and yet, every morning, I looked out my window expecting to see a vacant street. Surely they wouldn’t keep this up for long. Surely there were bigger stories than mine.
Not right now.
I stood in my childhood bedroom, clutching Chopin, the ragged stuffed lamb my father bought for me. I squeezed him as I cracked open the side of the blind and inched just enough to see–
“There!” someone shouted, and a camera flashed, and I dropped the blind, scuttling backward so fast I stumbled over my open suitcase.
“Lucy?” Mom called.
Footsteps tapped down the hall, and I righted myself before she appeared in the semi-dark doorway. She was up and dressed, looking every inch the capable school teacher, hair done, light makeup already in place. The cordless phone was in place, too, at her ear, where it’d been for three days as she made endless calls, trying to fix this problem for me.
“Tripped,” I said, nodding at the suitcase. “I really need to empty that.”
“I’ll do it. You just…” She struggled before blurting, “Practice. Why don’t you get in some music time?”
My brows shot up as I forced a smile. “Did you just tell me to practice? The world really is coming to an end.”
Mom always prided herself on not being one ofthoseparents, endlessly pestering their musically gifted child to practice. Of course, as she’d also point out, she’d never had to nag me. I practiced on my own. Or I did until last Saturday night, when my world shattered, and music was suddenly the last thing on my mind.
“I’ll practice,” I said.
Her face lit up. “And I’ll make breakfast. Right after I get off this dratted phone.” She headed back into the hall. “They have to do something about those people. It must be illegal. I don’t understand the problem.”
The problem was that the media were on public property, careful not to set foot on our lawn or drive. The police couldn’t do anything… and I got the feeling they didn’t want to.
I didn’t tell Mom that. She needed to do something, and if the endless calls kept her from feeling helpless, I would not interfere.
We will fix this, Lucy.
I will fix it.
It’s silly, ridiculous. You’re a child, and that man – That man–
It was a kiss. A kiss. People are dying of cancer. People are dying of starvation. People are dying in wars. And this is the story they’re reporting? Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.
The worst part was that Mom didn’t know the half of it. All she saw was what was in the papers, on the radio and TV news. I’d only gotten her hooked up on email this year. The world of the Internet was a mystery to her. I could tell her that the story “broke” online, but she didn’t really understand. I certainly wasn’t going to tell her what else I found online. The bulletin boards. The community forums. The comments.
