Page 16 of Nobody's Fool

I head to the subway station. My app says the train is one minute away, so I hurry down the stairs. By the time I’m home it’s nearly one in the morning. The house is silent. Molly left one of those plug-in nightlights on for me. I tiptoe down into the nursery and peek in on Henry. My son—man, just those two words:my son—sleeps peacefully. I watch him for a minute, maybe two. My chest grows tight. My eyes water. If you’re a parent, you know the feeling, that heady mix of wonder and fear.

Molly is asleep in the dark in our tiny bedroom. I get ready for bed with as much stealth as I can muster and slip under the covers. I immediately feel the heat from her body. I like that. I scoot closer to her because I sleep better when part of me is touching her skin. Molly stirs. She wiggles into the spoon, and I melt into her.

All the dumb things I’ve done in my life, all the mistakes and oversteps, and yet I ended up with this spectacular woman as my wife. I am never not awed by this.

Molly is my warmth and my center and yes, she makes me talk in clichés and greeting-card jingoism and country-song lyrics. But that is the thing with my wife. She makes my life better, yes, but she makes every room she enters better. Her love is effortless. It is just who she is. The fact that she chose me is what I want to be the defining moment of my life. It is also a rationale, an excuse, a get-out-of-jail-free card—how can I possibly be bad when this woman chose me to be her life partner?

I expect sleep tonight to elude me. It does not. I conk out immediately and sleep like the dead. When my phone rings at seven in the morning, I startle awake. The spot in the bed next to me is empty.

My phone was put on quasi-silent—that setting where the phone will only make noise when people on a certain list call. I have six people on this list, including Molly, my dad, my brother, Marty—and this morning’s caller, Arthur from White Shoe Law. Hardly a surprise.

“What do you want first,” Arthur says without preamble, “the news more important to me or the news more important to you?”

“You choose.”

“Let’s make it about me to start, shall we?”

I’m pretty sure I know what he’s going to say. “Go ahead.”

“At eleven this morning, Peyton Booth—and more importantly, our client his lovely albeit vengeful wife Courtney—will be ensconced in our fanciest conference room on the forty-seventh floor for their divorce negotiations. You know this.”

Yep, no surprise. “I do.”

“And yesterday you took photographs that will untangle the Booth prenup.”

“I did.”

“So why don’t I have them?”

I switch hands holding the phone. “You will.”

“Why the holdup?”

“I’m developing them.”

“Developing them?” Arthur repeats. “What is this, 1987? Are you going to bring us video on a Betamax?”

“Betamax,” I say. “That’s funny.”

“No, not really.”

“Most people might have gone with DVD or VCR. But Betamax is far funnier.”

“Kierce.”

“No worries, Arthur. I’ll bring them today. I promise.”

“I don’t like this.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think you would,” I say, and then I try to move this along. “So what’s the news more important to me?”

“You’re not going to like it.”

I also don’t like the way his tone has suddenly shifted. Molly appears in the doorway. She smiles at me and lifts a cup of coffee in my direction as if to ask whether I want one. I assume this is a rhetorical question because I always want one.

“What is it, Arthur?”

“Do you remember how upset you were when Judith and Caroline Burkett were released on bail?”

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