Cate laughed and delivered good news of her own. “Chief, you should know that they’re not doing the Judges@Court series. They’re not interested in judges anymore. Househusbands are the new judges.” She’d heard it from Micah, who was quitting show biz and was going to law school, which was basically the same thing.
“Even better!” Sherman grinned, and Meriden raised his hand to speak, his smile genuine, if begrudging.
“And, Cate, may I publicly add my gratitude for saving my life, especially when we all know you hate my guts.” Everyone burst into new laughter, and so did Cate, who noticed for the first time that several bottles of merlot sat uncorked on Sherman’s polished conference table, behind rows of filled plastic glasses and a silver-foil tray of cheese and pepperoni slices, speared with multicolored toothpicks.
“Speech, Cate!” the other judges called out, clapping. “Speech!” Judge Sasso formed his hand-megaphone and bellowed, “And keep it short!” Judge Gloria Sullivan shouted at him, laughing, “Bill! Hush!”
“Thank you, okay.” Cate flashed on the dinner they’d held for her last summer, to welcome her to the bench for the first time. “I am deeply sorry for all the embarrassment I caused the Court. I apologize to each of you, and thank you for welcoming me back to a job I love. You all said a lot of nice things about me just now, and there’s one thing you need to know-I don’t deserve a word of it, but I’m going to try.”
“Brava!” “Way to go!” they shouted, giving her a fresh round of applause.
“And now a toast!” Chief Judge Sherman picked up a glass from the table, walked over, and handed it to Cate, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “Do I need to ask you for a signed release, my dear?”
“Not if you withdraw that misconduct complaint,” she answered, and they both laughed as everyone milled around the conference table, picked up glasses of wine, and raised them.
“To Cate!” Chief Judge Sherman called out, hoisting his glass.
“To Cate!” they all repeated, except for Sam, the forgotten law clerk. He stood proudly, basking in the new spotlight that he’d earned merely by not trying to kill his boss, and he called out:
“To Judge Catherine Fante, of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania!”
Judge Catherine Fante. Cate had never heard words so sweet, or seen a sight that made her happier. She raised her glass and couldn’t speak for a moment. Her eyes brimmed over, and for once, she didn’t try to hide her feelings.
Look, Mom, she thought, unaccountably. Look.
CHAPTER 52
The August sun burned hazy and low, dipping by this time of the afternoon behind a leafy maple tree. Cate and Gina sat on the elevated wood deck in gym shorts and tank tops, side by side in plastic beach chairs, soaking their feet in the warm water of an inflatable baby pool. Warren sat in the shady side of the pool, watching the dappled light on the water’s surface, turning from baby to boy before their very eyes.
“Happy birthday!” Cate said happily, hoisting a jelly glass of Miller, golden in the sunlight.
“Thank you, girlfriend.” Gina grinned, raising her glass, and they clinked in the middle, making a sloshy, satisfyingly low-rent clunk.
“I’m younger than you now.” Cate took a sip of cold beer, tart and perfect on her tongue.
“By twenty minutes.”
“Older is older.”
“How can it be my birthday? I feel younger, and happier.”
“It’s the sex.”
“No, it’s the beer,” Gina said, and they both laughed, while she drained her glass. Cate wiggled her toes in the pool water, which was cloudy with Waterbabies sunblock, hiding Mickey Mouse’s black eyes and Gina’s red toenails.
“Open your present, kid.”
“Yo, I’m woozy.” Gina frowned. Her hair was back in its paintbrush ponytail, because she’d cut it too short again. “I forget, did I eat lunch?”
“No. You were doing You and Me with the baby. You didn’t even have your birthday cake.”
“I will later.” Gina set down her empty glass and picked the wrapped gift from her lap, shaking it with vigor. “A present! Yo, did I tell you Justin got us a treadmill?”
“Yo, three times.” Cate smiled. “You’re so in love.”
“You, too.”
“True.” Cate thought of Nesbitt. “We both have great men. Wonder how long it will last?”
Gina checked her watch. “Ten minutes.”
“Five, according to my shrink.” They both laughed again, and Cate said, “Open your gift.”
“Happy birthday to me!” Gina tore off the flowery wrapping paper, threw it on the grass, then tore off the box lid and threw it on the deck, and unfolded the white tissue paper. She looked inside the box and yelped. “I love it!”
Suddenly there was a splash, and Cate looked up as Warren tried to stand in the pool, reaching out for the deck’s wooden railing.
“Warren, no! You’ll fall!” Gina shouted, leaping up from her chair, dumping the sweater off her lap and onto the deck, and splashing through the pool to Warren. She scooped him up, and he burst instantly into tears.
“Gina, relax,” Cate said, surprised. “He wasn’t going to fall.”
“How do you know?” Gina turned and snapped, tears in her eyes. She cradled Warren’s head against her shoulder as he cried full-bore. “It’s all right, it’s all right, baby. I have you, it’s all right.” She rocked him until he finally stopped sobbing, then wiped his pink cheeks with her fingertips. Warren blinked, his eyelashes clumped, and he pointed to the pool with a chubby index finger. “You want to go down, Warren?” Gina asked softly, then set him back down in the water, and he sat peacefully, looking at the leaf shadows on the water’s surface, as he had before. Gina returned to her chair, shaken, her T-shirt wet from the baby.
For a minute, Cate didn’t know what to say.
“Sorry, I guess…sorry I yelled at you,” Gina stammered, leaning over to the deck and picking up the new sweater, now wet from the splashing. “It’ll dry.”
“Sure, no problem.”
“It’s okay. I guess I drank too much.” Gina folded the sweater and put it back into the gift box. Then she moved her bangs from her damp forehead, her eyes still wet.
“Are you okay?” Cate set down her glass and leaned over. “Geen?”
“It’s nothing.” Gina’s eyes glistened. Her lower lip trembled. She seemed to be losing control.
“He’s okay now. He wasn’t anywhere near the railing, which is five feet high anyway. What were you worried about?”
“The deck was wet.”
“He couldn’t have slipped off.”
Gina wiped her eyes. “I never told you,” she said, after a moment.
“What?”
“I thought it would compromise you.”
“What would?”
“You’re a judge.”
Cate didn’t get it. “Tell me what? You can tell me anything. I’m your best friend.”
“I know I didn’t do anything illegal, or criminal, that much I remember from law school. I just feel terrible about it, still. It’s awful. Morally, it was wrong. It is wrong. I think of it all the time. I even pray about it.”
“What?” Cate asked, bewildered.
“That night, the night you went to that motel. The night you called me. The night you almost got raped. When you didn’t get home right away. Remember? I was there waiting for you.”
“Okay.”
“You called me and told me you were at a pink motel on Ellsworth Avenue, by the airport. Then you got the flat tire and were late. But I didn’t know that.”
“Right. Because I couldn’t reach you. Because you left your cell.”
Gina nodded, biting her lower lip not to cry. “Well, something happened.”