Chapter 16: Sealed

The legal aid lawyer picked up on the first ring.

"They want it sealed for good," she said. "Hearing's Friday at nine. You don't have to come."

"I'm coming," I said. "I'm talking."

On Thursday night, Abe cooked.

"For all of you," he said on the phone. "The kid too. Bring him hungry."

His apartment was the second floor of an old brick fourplex in Capitol Hill, up a set of outside stairs that shook.

Inside it was one big room and a bedroom, clean.

One couch, one armchair, and a kitchen that took up a whole wall.

Copper pots hung from a rack. Knives on a magnet strip. A basil plant on the windowsill.

"Whoa," Gina's son said. "You have a restaurant."

"I have a kitchen," Abe said. "A restaurant has health inspectors."

He made enchiladas stacked flat, the way his grandmother did, with a fried egg on top of each.

He let Gina's son crack the eggs. Two of them went on the floor.

"That one's for the dog," Abe said.

"You don't have a dog."

"Then it's for the floor. The floor's been good this year."

Gina leaned on the counter with a beer and watched him hand the kid a third egg.

"Okay," she said to me, very low. "I like him."

"You said you didn't trust nurses."

"I said I didn't trust nurses who are nice to billing. He's nice to children. It's different."

We ate at his little table, with the kid on a stack of phone books.

Nobody mentioned the hearing until the plates were empty.

Then Abe put his hand flat on the table.

"What do you need tomorrow?"

"Nothing. I need to stand up and say why."

"Do you want us there?"

"In the back. Where I can see you."

Gina's son had fallen asleep against Gina's arm, with sauce on his cheek.

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