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“Even if the only one I really need is you, sweetheart.”
Ninety-One
THE SQUAD CAR ISgone when I get home. I stopped at the hospital in Bridgehampton on my way from court, and I finally won the fight with Jimmy about who needs protection more at this point, him or me.
This was after he informed me that he’d won his own fight with Dr. Raymond Williams and was about to be released.
“Nobody’s coming back for me,” Jimmy said.
“You don’t know that.”
“And you’re not suddenly safe because somebody shot me.” He sighs. “If you don’t want a car out front, at least promise you’ll set the alarm.”
He’d had an electrician put in a new one for me.
“I’ve been doing it every night. Scout’s honor.”
“You would have made a shit Girl Scout.”
“But one hell of a Boy Scout.”
I get home knowing I need a hot bath, and a drink, in no particular order. I told Jacobson that we’re near the end of the trial, for the simple fact that we are. But I know that will mean the beginning of my treatments. Chemo. Or radiation. Or both. Probably both. Something else to be determined.
I can only imagine how romantic all that will be for Dr. Ben Kalinsky.
I know, on a fundamental level, how risky it’s been putting off treatment even for a few weeks. But starting it when I got the diagnosis would have meant someone else finishing the trial. And that was never going to happen, especially if this is the last case I’m ever going to try. Worst-case scenario. Sometimes I think that’s the only scenario there is.
I remember being at Jimmy’s bar with him one night, and the Yankees were on the television because they always seem to be, and a friend of Jimmy’s sitting next to us told Jimmy he was way too obsessed with the Yankees.
“Baseball’s not a matter of life or death,” the guy said.
“You’re right,” Jimmy said that night. “It’s way more serious than that.”
And now I’m the one treating my defense—ourdefense—of a shitheel like Rob Jacobson as a matter of life or death. For both of us.
While I’ve got a life-or-death situation of my own going on.
I never lose,I tell Jimmy all the time.
But what am I winning here in the end, really, whatever happens at the end of the trial?
I take my bath, a glass of vodka with ice and an orange peel placed carefully on a corner of the tub. I feel below my ear. Is the lump back there getting any bigger? Hard to tell. But it’s not getting any smaller, either.
I hope not to have to wear a scarf to court before the trial is over and have people thinking that I’m making a fashion statement, at long last. Dr. Sam has told me that it’s not a given that I’ll lose my hair because of chemo. But then she added that me keeping my hair isn’t the way to bet.
I put on one of my favorite BC T-shirts, and sweatpants, and start to think about whether I want to cook something myself or do Uber Eats, when I hear the faint click of the front doorknob being turned.
I have not yet set my fancy new alarm tonight. I don’t do it until I’ve walked Rip for the last time.
I quietly move into the front hall and take the Glock from the top drawer of the antique table there.
Behind me I can hear a low growl from Rip, who’s still in the kitchen. But no barking from him. I gently close the kitchen door behind me.
I see the front door begin to open.
I stand there in the middle of the front hall, both hands on the gun.
“Don’t shoot,” my sister says as she steps into the house. “I’m unarmed.”
