Chapter 27: Every Size

I didn't hang up.

"They give you four minutes," Serena said. "They time you."

"What do you want?"

"Come see me. Thursday's visiting. Please, Luce. There's nobody else to ask."

Then the line went dead.

Damiano drove me on Thursday and waited in the car, because I asked him to.

The visiting room was a row of stools in front of thick glass, with phones.

A grandmother sat on the next stool with a toddler pressing his hand flat to the glass.

Serena came in on the other side in a tan jumpsuit, with her hair scraped back and no makeup.

She picked up her phone. I picked up mine.

"You came," she said.

"You asked."

"Daddy's lawyers quit. He can't pay them. The one they gave me is twelve years old and can't say my name. I need a real lawyer."

"Then call one."

She leaned in until her breath fogged the glass.

"You've always got money, Luce. You had eighty-six thousand dollars at nineteen, for a boy you couldn't get any other way."

The grandmother beside me turned her head.

"Buy me a lawyer," Serena said. "You're good at buying people. It's the only thing you were ever good at."

I'd sat on a bench once and believed that about myself.

I'd believed it for seven years.

"No," I said.

"No?"

"I don't buy people anymore. Not boyfriends. Not lawyers. Not you."

The pretty went out of her face all at once.

"You think he loves you?" she said. "You paid for him once. Wait till he works out what that cost him."

The grandmother put her hand over the toddler's ear.

I leaned close to the glass.

"He drew the girl in that photo for five years," I said. "Six sketchbooks. He never drew you once."

Her mouth opened.

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