“Claire only needs the puppet when there are strangers, Judge Knott.” She glanced at my table and saw that it was set for only one person. “You’re lunching alone?”
“Yes.”
“Would it be an awful imposition if I joined you?” Her husky voice was urgent.
Curious, I gestured toward the opposite chair. “Please do.”
When the waiter returned, I ordered black bean soup and half a club sandwich; Mrs. Llewellyn opted for the crab-stuffed tomato plate.
The breeze off Taylors Creek was warm and barely ballooned the pink canvas umbrella above us, but she drew a wisp of red silk from her pocket and tied it so her hair wouldn’t blow. As we waited to be served, she spoke of the charms of Beaufort, the beauty of the Carolina coast, the friendliness of the people, the four-star comforts of the Ritchie House and the pleasures of a rare vacation. Then she asked me to call her Catherine and kept tagging so many Judge Knotts onto every sentence that I finally surrendered just as our food arrived.
“Please. Call me Deborah.”
“Deborah.” She turned my name in her mind and smiled appreciatively. “How very apt. Did your parents expect you to be a judge from birth?”
“Hardly.” Not with a father who had only grudgingly agreed to help pay for law school and who had been quite negative about my decision to run for district judge.
She had been covertly studying me ever since we sat down, yet it was as if she didn’t see my cuts and scratches because she was looking even deeper. “Deborah, may we speak frankly?”
That smokey voice, that prim Boston accent—I bet she did okay in the courtroom.
“I’ve wondered a lot about you these past few years. I hope you won’t resent that?”
I stiffened. “Resent that you wondered, or resent what you’re going to ask?”
She reached into her tote bag and drew out a lumpy envelope. “I believe these are yours?”
Inside were a dozen or more crystal beads. They flashed and sparkled against the stiff yellow paper like the prismed promises of the Crystal Coast.
“They were on the Rainmaker yesterday morning. Lev wasn’t sure if you’d want them back.”
Her indulgent smile invited me to share female solidarity over male obtuseness. I dug up a smile of my own and pasted it on my lips.
“Thanks.”
The tines of her fork toyed with the crabmeat. “I’m not trying to pry, Deborah. It’s just that I’m very fond of Lev.
He’s like the brother I never had and I don’t want to see him hurt.”
“You don’t have to worry about that from me,” I assured her.
“No? You were together how long? A year? A year and a half?”
“Something like that.”
“Did you know you were the first?”
“That he’d lived with? Yes.”
“And the last.”
I almost dropped my soup spoon. “You’re kidding!”
She shook her head. “Oh, I’m not saying there haven’t been women. A couple of times there I even thought... but they always turn out to be unsuitable and he just can’t seem to commit again to a long-term relationship.”
I was appalled. Then flattered. Then baffled. If we were all that wonderful together, how come we were apart.
Apparently, Catherine Llewellyn wondered, too.
Determinedly, I changed the subject. “Lev tells me y’all have a divorce practice.”
She was willing to wait. “Divorce and marital, yes. There are four partners and two associates: two men, four women.”
“You seem to be doing all right. Lev told me that the Rainmaker was part of a fee.”
“Ah, that was fun. The wife was a medical secretary, who put him through med school, struggled beside him through the early years and then, once the practice was generating big bucks, he bought the boat he had yearned for all his life—custom fitted to his specifications.”
“His dream boat?” I murmured.
“Precisely. Right down to a sexy little first mate to swab the deck in a bikini. When the split came, we could have vacuumed his ass-sets, but she was willing to be equitable about it so long as she got the boat. Which she signed over to us almost immediately in lieu of fees since most of the settlement was in real property.”
I was amused by the zest she seemed to take in that element of revenge. “Do you always represent the wife?”
“Not always. And sometimes we go in as amicus curiae on behalf of the children involved. In a way, child advocacy is part of the reason we’ve come to Beaufort.”
“Another amicus case?”
“Not exactly.” She snapped a piece of melba toast in half and put a dab of crab salad on it. “Perhaps I should fill in some personal background because that’s where it began.” She hesitated, choosing her words as carefully as she chose a speck of tomato to add to the salad.
“Claire’s crazy about Lev, of course.”
“Oh?” I said neutrally.
“He’s like an uncle both to my son and to Claire.”
Having only a couple of elderly aunts himself, Lev always did envy my large, and at times smothering, family. But Uncle Levvie?
“As you’ve seen, my sister’s much younger than I. My father died, and Claire was by our mother’s second husband. He was a wonderful father, but not much of a husband, so when Claire was four, there was a bitter divorce and custody fight, which Mother won. The man our mother next married—” Catherine Llewellyn’s husky voice stumbled. “I’ll blame myself till the day I die even though I was already married myself and studying law and there’s no way I could have known. Claire blamed herself, you see, for her own father’s disappearance in her life; and she thought she deserved it when that—that—slime—”
She took a deep breath. “By the time Jonathan and I realized, the damage was done. We took her to live with us, but my bright and bubbly, innocent little sister had withdrawn into borderline schizophrenia. When Lev came into our lives, he was gentle and perceptive. She had an old hand puppet—a kitten—and Lev talked to the kitten, not to her. The first time the kitten answered him, I wept. He brought a half-dozen more puppets the next time he came and Claire seized on the blonde-haired doll like a lifeline back to reality. I know Tuesday may have seemed ridiculous to you, but if you could only know what a giant step it represented for Claire.”
“Then I really am sorry I had to rule against her.”
“Actually, Lev thinks it might be better in the long run. Reinforces the idea that she must begin to speak for herself.”
It was a sad story, but I didn’t see how it related to their being in Beaufort.
“Since we began the practice, we’ve seen the trauma that divorce can wreak on children’s lives. Wealth cannot automatically insulate a child from the guilt and angst when a family breaks apart. Indeed, wealth often exacerbates the situation.”
She seemed to hear her words and smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. I get didactic on the subject. Anyhow, to put it simply, we have some funds and we hope to create a center for kids who’re involved in messy divorces and custody fights, a safe and interesting place where they can talk out their fears with children who’re in a similar situation, and get the counseling and decompression that they need to survive while their parents—and, yes, their parents’ attorneys—battle it out.
“North Carolina gives very good tax incentives to locate here and Beaufort itself meets a lot of our criteria. The climate’s moderate, the water’s clean. The library’s adequate, the marine museum has good programs for youth, there’s a hospital in Morehead. Overall, Beaufort’s small enough, safe enough, and still cheap enough that we think we can create something quite special if we can find some commercial waterfront property within walking or bicycling distance of downtown.”