Accused

TWO

Scott entered the small cottage through the back door that led into the kitchen and was greeted by the smell of eggs, chorizo, and coffee. Consuela had already arrived and was cooking breakfast.

"Morning, Consuela."

" Buenos dias, Senor Fenney."

Consuela was thirty, round, and Catholic. She wore three crucifixes and kept prayer candles lit on the windowsill. Her husband, Esteban Garcia, dropped her and the baby off each morning on the way to his construction job in Dallas. Little Maria sat in a high chair and smeared mushy food on her face. Scott leaned down to her.

"And how are you this morning, Senorita Maria de la Rosa-Garcia?"

She spit up something green.

"She no like brecol," Consuela said.

"Don't believe I'd like broccoli for breakfast either."

The fifteen-month-old child smiled at Scott as if she understood what he had said. He scrunched up his face and rubbed noses with her-she liked that-and said, "You don't want that yucky broccoli, do you? Tell your madre you want huevos rancheros and chorizo so you can grow big and strong and get a futbol scholarship."

Her parents were Mexican nationals but she was an American citizen-born in the USA. She raised her arms to him.

"Oh, Uncle Scotty can't play now, honey. I've got to go to work."

He gave the child a kiss on her forehead and a little hug and came away with slimy green broccoli on his cheek. It smelled awful-or maybe it was him. He swiped a sweaty sleeve across his cheek then grabbed a bottled water out of the refrigerator and walked down the hall to his daughters' bedroom. He knocked on the door.

"Come on, girls, I can't be late today. Closing arguments."

The door opened, and his eleven-year-old daughters emerged from a small bedroom cluttered with posters of the Jonas Brothers and a smiling Michael Jordan on the walls, books stacked on shelves and scattered about the floor, clothes hanging over chairs as if one of them-guess who? — could not decide what to wear that day, and a small television with rabbit ears. They had pushed their twin beds together in one corner so they could read together at night. They shared clothes, they brushed each other's hair, they were like sisters-and now the law said they were.

Barbara Boo Fenney was wearing jean shorts, a black T-shirt with white print that read "Obama Ba-Rocks My World," green retro sneakers without socks, and her red hair pulled back in a ponytail. She looked more like her mother every day, albeit less expensively dressed. Pajamae Jones-Fenney wore a color-coordinated short outfit, matching socks folded down neatly, and black-and-white saddle Oxfords. Her skin was tan and flawless, her hair brown and fluffy and cut in a bob. She too looked more like her mother every day. One girl was the product of his failed marriage, the other of his law practice. Two years before, he had defended Pajamae's mother against a murder charge and won, only to see her die of a heroin overdose two months later. Pajamae had no one except Boo and her mother's lawyer, so he had adopted her.

"Morning, girls."

"Whereas, Mr. Fenney," Pajamae said.

"What's your pulse?" Boo said.

"I didn't check my pulse."

"Do you feel faint or dizzy? Are you experiencing chest pain?"

"No, Boo. I feel fine."

"A. Scott, I still think you should be on a statin."

"I think you should change that T-shirt. The school won't like it."

"I told her, Mr. Fenney. I said, 'Girl, you can't be wearing a T-shirt reminding these rich white folks there's a black man in the White House.' "

The conservative Republicans in town-which is to say, the entire Town of Highland Park-had not gone for Obama. They had hoped that George W. would salve their electoral wounds by coming home to Highland Park, but he had retired to his old stomping grounds in North Dallas instead. Even Dick Cheney had forsaken his former home town for Jackson Hole, Wyoming. But Bush did give the Parkies a consolation prize: the $300 million George W. Bush Presidential Library would be located on the Southern Methodist University campus in Highland Park.

Boo shrugged. "What are they gonna do, suspend me again, on the last day of school?"

She had been suspended earlier in the year for fighting. With a boy. He had called Pajamae "Aunt Jemima" on the playground, so Boo had punched him in the nose and made him cry. She had a heck of a right cross for a girl. Scott had threatened to take the school district to court-and more effectively, the story of a white boy bullying the only black student in school to the newspaper and local television-so the school had dropped the suspension after one day. Now, whenever the principal threatened Boo with disciplinary action for defending her sister against bullies, her standard response was, "Call my lawyer."

"Consuela has breakfast ready."

The girls went one way down the hall and Scott the other. He entered the "master suite" of the two-bedroom, fifteen-hundred-square-foot cottage. The master closet in his former residence dwarfed the small bedroom and adjoining bath. Scott undressed in the bathroom, stepped into the cramped shower, and stood under the hot water. The mansion and material possessions that had once given his life value were gone. His ambitious years, that period in a man's life when human nature and testosterone drive him to prove his net worth to the world-when the score is kept in dollars and cents-were over. For most men, the ambitious years extend well into their fifties, even their sixties, and come to an end only with a heart attack or a positive prostate exam, when a man confronts his mortality. But it wasn't the prospect of his own death that had brought his ambitious years to a premature end for A. Scott Fenney, at age thirty-six; it was the death of a U.S. senator's son.

He got out of the shower, shaved, and dressed in a $2,000 custom-made suit; the suits and Consuela were all that remained of his past life. She was part of the family, and the suits still fit. And he was still a lawyer.

Scott returned to the kitchen where the girls were eating breakfast tacos and playing with Maria.

"Last day of school, girls." Scott sat and ate his taco and studied his adopted daughter's face. "Pajamae, are you wearing makeup?"

"Blush, Mr. Fenney, like Beyonce. You like it?"

"What's a Beyonce? And please call me 'Dad.' It's been a year and a half."

"Don't seem right, Mr. Fenney."

"Why not?"

" 'Cause you're Boo's daddy."

"I'm your daddy, too, and don't you ever forget it." He drank coffee and said, "So what do you girls want to do this summer?"

"The other kids are going to Colorado, Hawaii, the south of France …"

"We can't afford that, Boo."

"What can we afford?"

"Well, we could camp out in a state park."

"That'd be fun. We could never go camping with Mother. She hated to sweat."

"Boo, she's still your mother."

"I don't have a mother."

Her anger seeped out from time to time. Or was it a sense of shame? Everyone in Highland Park knew her mother had run off with the golf pro.

Scott turned back to Pajamae. She seemed glum, too.

"Pajamae, smile-you're about to graduate from fifth grade."

"She doesn't smile because the other kids make fun of her," Boo said.

"Because of her color?"

"Because of her teeth."

"Her teeth? "

"My teeth are all crooked, Mr. Fenney. It's embarrassing."

She needed braces. Ten thousand dollars worth of dental work. Scott paid $30,000 in annual health insurance premiums for the three of them plus Consuela and Maria, but the plan did not include dental.

"Mr. Fenney, when I'm playing pro basketball, how am I gonna do endorsements with crooked teeth? You see Michael Jordan's teeth? Look like a string of pearls."

"Honey, I'll find a way to pay for braces, okay? Before next school year."

"You promise, Mr. Fenney?"

He nodded. "I promise."

She started to smile but caught herself.

Braces for Pajamae. Another financial promise he wasn't sure he could keep, like the mortgage and office overhead-unless he won the case that day and the city didn't appeal the verdict and…

Boo stood and tossed her napkin on the table.

"Let's get this fifth grade over with."

Ten minutes later, Scott was driving the Volkswagen Jetta to the elementary school past the mansions of the most important people in Dallas-or at least the richest. The streets of Highland Park were no longer vacant. Mothers were taking their offspring to school, and fathers were taking themselves downtown. From the back seat, he heard Pajamae's voice, sounding spooky.

"Boo… I see white people."

They fell over each other laughing hysterically. They had seen The Sixth Sense — the edited version on network TV-and were always coming up with new variations on the "I see dead people" line.

Of course, Pajamae did see white people. Only white people. Exactly one black family lived in Highland Park… and one black girl named Pajamae Jones-Fenney. The Town of Highland Park was a two-square-mile enclave entirely surrounded by the City of Dallas-the bright white hole in the middle of the multicolored Dallas donut. Few people of color could afford to live in Highland Park-the median home price was $1 million-and those who could, like the pro athletes who played football for the Cowboys, basketball for the Mavericks, and baseball for the Rangers, weren't so keen on being protected by a police force whose standard operating procedure for traffic stops was "If they're black or brown, they'd better have tools in the back."

"A. Scott," Boo said from the back seat, "since we can't go to the south of France this summer, can we at least get cable?"

"No."

"Can we have a cell phone? We can get a family plan."

"No."

"Can we have a Facebook account?"

"No."

"Can we get our ears pierced?"

"No-and why would you want holes in your ears anyway?"

"I don't, Mr. Fenney," Pajamae said.

"A. Scott, we're the only kids we know without cable, iPhones, pierced ears, a Facebook, or who haven't seen Juno."

"Because it's rated PG-thirteen and you're not thirteen."

"It's PG-thirteen for mature thematic material and sexual content and language, but they only say the F-word once. We hear it more than that at recess."

"Kids say the F-word?"

"Hel- lo. Come on, A. Scott, we're practically teenagers."

"Two years, Boo. It'll come soon enough. Enjoy being eleven. When you're older, you'll miss it."

"Do you miss being eleven?"

"I miss being nine."

"Why nine?"

"I lost my dad when I was ten."

"We lost our mothers when we were nine."

So they had. The girls were quiet for a few blocks then Boo said, "So can we at least have cable? Just for the summer. Please. "

"Boo-"

"A. Scott, it's hard on us-at school, living in Highland Park…"

"Because you don't have cable?"

"Because we don't fit in."

"Why not?"

Pajamae joined the fray. "Because I'm the only black kid in town."

"And we're the only kids without a mother. We're different, A. Scott. Walking around the Village, everyone looks funny at us."

"And cable will make life easier for you?"

"Yes."

Scott had steadfastly refused their pleas for cable. But he now felt his resolve weakening: he couldn't give them a mother; he could at least give them the Discovery Channel. He was just on the verge of saying yes when he caught the girls grinning mischievously in the rearview. They were gaming him. Again.

"No."

"But we can't watch Sex and the City reruns like the other kids."

"Fifth-graders watch Sex and the City? "

"Oops. Forget Sex and the City. Think Discovery Channel."

"I was… and no."

She frowned as if pouting, but Boo Fenney wasn't the pouting type.

"She was wrong," she said.

"Who?"

"That lady on TV, she said girls should view conflict situations in personal relationships as opportunities to get what we want."

"Really?"

"Unh-huh. But she was wrong-it didn't work."

"Not with me."

"I didn't think it would, but I thought I'd give it a shot." Boo sighed. "Fudge."

"Boo, don't say fudge. Everyone knows what you're really saying."

"I like fudge," Pajamae said. "With pecans."

They arrived at the elementary school. Scott felt like the class loser at a high school reunion when he steered the little Jetta into the drop-off lane behind a long line of late-model Mercedes-Benzes, BMWs, Lexuses, Range Rovers, and just in front, a Ferrari… a shiny red Ferrari… a 360 Modena just like the one he used to drive… he looked closely at the car… that was the one he used to drive. He caught the driver's face in the side mirror.

Sid Greenberg.

When he was a partner at Ford Stevens, Scott had hired Sid out of Harvard Law School and taught him everything he knew about practicing law, but Sid now sat in Scott's sixty-second-floor corner office, represented Scott's rich real-estate client, and drove Scott's $200,000 Italian sports car. The ungrateful bastard. Scott could still smell the Connolly leather interior and feel the four-hundred-horsepower engine rumbling behind him. The Ferrari's passenger door swung open, and Sid's young son got out- Hey, that's cheating, letting your kid out before the official drop-off point! — so Sid could avoid waiting in line like everyone else. Scott shook his head. Typical lawyer. But when Sid turned his head to check for oncoming cars before pulling out, he had a big grin on his face, as if laughing at Scott driving a Jetta.

You laugh, Sid, but I'm saving a lot of money on gas.

Sid Greenberg had made the same choice Scott had made at his age. Two years ago, Sid had decided to check his conscience at the door each day and now he was driving a Ferrari. Two years ago, Scott had rediscovered his conscience and now he was driving a Jetta. Funny how that worked for lawyers.

"A. Scott, you need sex."

He eyed Boo in the rearview. " What? "

"You look stressed. Just then, you were frowning. Sex relieves stress."

"Where'd you hear that?"

"From Meredith."

"Who's Meredith?"

"On the Today Show, this morning."

"You girls need to watch PBS in the morning."

" Sesame Street? I don't think so. Anyway, Meredith said stress is a leading cause of heart attacks in men. So if you have sex you won't have stress and thus you won't have a heart attack… like Sarah's dad."

Bill Barnes, a lawyer Scott knew, had died of a sudden heart attack earlier in the school year. Little Sarah Barnes would grow up without a father. The girls had always fretted over their only parent's health-every blemish on Scott's face could be skin cancer, every headache a stroke, every memory lapse a sign of early onset Alzheimer's-their worries exacerbated by the relentless barrage of drug commercials on network television. Each new commercial brought a new medical worry for the girls. But since Sarah's dad, a heart attack had been their constant worry. They had recommended he take Lipitor to lower his bad cholesterol, Trilipix to raise his good cholesterol, Plavix to prevent his platelets from forming blood clots, and Crestor to prevent plaque from building up in his arteries. Sex, though, marked a new and more agreeable course of therapy. Unfortunately, it required more than a doctor's prescription.

"Don't worry, Boo, I'm not going to have a heart attack. I run every day, I still weigh one-eighty-five, my cholesterol's low-"

"Besides, it's embarrassing."

"What is?"

"You're tall, blond, handsome, you don't have tattoos-you're the hunk of Highland Park and you don't have a girlfriend. The other kids think we have a loser for a father."

"I don't think it's because I don't have a girlfriend."

"Suzie's stepmom, she looks like a supermodel, and her dad's not exactly the cutest puppy in the pet store. He's bald."

"He's a billionaire."

"Oh. Well, that explains it."

"Mr. Fenney, you need a woman."

"Like Ms. Dawson," Boo said.

Up ahead, Ms. Dawson, the fourth-grade teacher, was working carpool. Her jet black hair glistened in the morning sun. She couldn't be older than twenty-eight, maybe twenty-nine. Scott had thought of asking her out, but it hadn't even been two full years since Rebecca had left him. Still, Ms. Dawson was very attractive in her form-fitting blouse that accentuated her narrow waist and her snug slacks that-

"Ms. Dawson would probably have sex with you."

"You really think so?" He caught himself. "I mean, Boo. "

The girls giggled. They knew all about sex now. Fifth-grade health class. Which was a blessing; Scott didn't have to have the talk with them, just as his father had never had the talk with him. His mother had said to his father at dinner one night, "Butch, it's time you had a father-son talk with Scotty. You know, about sex." Butch Fenney had turned to his son and said, "Don't have sex. Pass the potatoes." But sex was more complicated these days and more dangerous. Sex can kill and eleven-year-old girls were having babies, so kids had to know the truth. Explaining the facts of life to girls was a mother's job; but they had no mother so the job had fallen to their father. Just when Scott had bucked himself up to do it-he had even bought a book-the girls had come home armed with all the facts. Thank God. A major single-father hurdle had been cleared.

"Ms. Dawson has nice cheeks," Boo said.

"Very nice."

"The ones on her face."

"Oh."

"She's got a crush on you, A. Scott."

"Really?"

"Big time, Mr. Fenney. During lunch, she'll mosey on over and say, 'Hi Boo, hi Pajamae,' you know, like she's just visiting. Then she'll get around to asking, 'So how's your father doing these days?' And I'll say, 'Oh, 'bout the same as yesterday, Ms. Dawson.' Then she'll blush like white girls do and say, 'Well, tell him hi.' She's got the hots for you, Mr. Fenney."

"She does?"

"A. Scott, we're at that age-we need a mother. Ask her out. Please."

"Oh, I don't know…"

Pajamae let out an exasperated sigh. "Man up, Mr. Fenney, and ask that woman out!"

Scott eased the Jetta up to the drop-off point. Ms. Dawson opened the back door for the girls then leaned down. She said, "Hi, Boo, hi, Pajamae," but she looked at Scott. The girls leaned forward and kissed Scott on opposite cheeks and whispered in his ears-

"Ask her!"

"Now!"

— then climbed out of the car and ran up the walkway to the entrance. Before she shut the door, Ms. Dawson stuck her head in and said, "Scott, if I invited you over for dinner this summer, would you come?"

He wanted to say yes, but he said, "No."

Her face sank.

"Ms. Dawson-"

"It's Kim, Scott. It's been Kim for two years."

"Kim. I'm sorry. I've got to work through some things first… my ex-wife…"

"How long will she own you, Scott?"

"I don't know."

She shut the door on him. Scott sighed and exited the school drive, cut over to Lovers Lane, and hit the Dallas North Tollway heading south toward downtown. He tried to put thoughts of Kim Dawson and Rebecca Fenney out of his mind and focus on a subject matter he knew more about than women: the law.

But he could not know that before the day was out his ex-wife would again assert ownership over his life.