Sawyer
My competition, Roger Harris, stood at attention outside the judge’s office at the Superior Courthouse, looking impeccable and put-together while I flew in with sweat slipping between my shoulder blades and my tie flying over my shoulder. I’d made it with a minute to spare. Roger glanced at his watch and gave me a smug nod in greeting.
In his office, Judge Miller went over our Hastings curriculum progress, results from latest finals, and read the mock briefings he’d assigned us since the last meeting a month ago.
Judge Jared Miller was a kind man but he never gave compliments or reprimands; his poker face was legendary in and out of the courtroom. He nodded with equal fervor—hardly any—at both Roger’s and my progress.
“Your final assignment before I make my decision,” Judge Miller said, regarding us both. “Write a brief regarding a personal incident in your lives and how you would handle it as prosecutors. That’s it. Until next month.”
I blinked then eased a breath. I’d been expecting something difficult, but this was easy. I knew already what I’d write about and what I’d say.
My mother. I’ll write about my mother.
“Mr. Haas, may I speak to you a moment?”
Roger’s eyes flare in panic before he recovered himself. I returned his smug smile earlier with my own. “Of course, Your Honor.”
Judge Miller sat behind his desk without his black robe looking less like an acclaimed federal judge and more like a grandfather. Framed photos of his family lined his desk and hung on the walls beside degrees and honors from various universities. An 8x10 of what looked to be a granddaughter the same age as Olivia, shared wall space with a certificate of appreciation from the San Francisco Police Officers Union. He’d removed his tie and loosened his collar, then sat back in his seat, regarding me.
“Your finals are in the next two weeks,” he said.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“No real chance you won’t pass with flying colors.”
“I hope not, Your Honor.”
“And you’re registered for the bar in Sacramento next month.”
I nodded. It had cost me a small fortune and I’d had to tutor other law students after Livvie had gone to bed for two weeks but I did it.
“All set.”
He nodded. “I like you, Mr. Haas. I think you’re a brilliant lawyer.”
I fought to keep my face neutral. “Thank you, Your Honor.”
He’s made a decision. He’s going to give it to me. Holy shit, all that work and struggle and long nights.
“On paper,” he said.
My body stiffened. “Thank you.” It almost came out sounding like a question.
“Your brief today was impeccable; not a precedent missed, every argument meticulously researched. It was better than Mr. Harris’s in that regard. But do you know what his briefing had that yours lacked?”
“No, Your Honor.”
“Life.”
I frowned. “I don’t understand…”
“You have a little girl, do you not?”
“Yes. Thirteen months old.”
Judge Miller smiled and inclined his chin at the photo on the wall. “My granddaughter, Abigail, is about that age. She’s a joy.” His smile tightened. “I want to give you the clerkship, Mr. Haas, but if I had to choose today, I would pick Mr. Harris.”
My galloping heart stopped and plummeted to my knees. I straightened my shoulders, determined to take this like a man, but my mouth had gone dry.
“I’m sorry, Your Honor,” I managed. “I don’t understand.”
“As I said your brief was impeccable. Scholarly and purely academic. Which is understandable as you are an academic at this stage.” He leaned his arms on his desk, fingers laced. “In the course of preparing this brief, did you consider Johnson v. McKenzie?”
I scanned my mental catalog and pulled up the case.
“That was…an appeal,” I said, mentally reading. “The defendant’s sentence was reduced due to good behavior and programs completed during prison time. I don’t see how that’s relevant…”
“It’s relevant,” Judge Miller said, “to a brief concerned with the overcrowding of prison populations. You argued, strongly I might add, for the strict use of mandatory sentencing and unequivocal upholding of the Three Strikes law.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” I said. “Those are the laws.”
Judge Miller nodded. “Nowhere in your brief did you make any stipulation for the defendant’s rehabilitation or his continued education in the prison system.”
“I wasn’t aware that you were asking for me to take a position on such things,” I said. “I was merely providing the appropriate laws pertinent to the matter at hand.”
“Yes, and you did it brilliantly. You are brilliant, Mr. Haas. I have no question or doubt that you would make an exceptional prosecutor. And to be perfectly frank, I’d rather not work with Mr. Harris.” He pursed his lip. “He’s a bit of a bore. But I’m concerned that you see only the law; the words on paper, and not the lives behind them.”
I straightened to my full height. “I don’t understand, Your Honor. The law is the law. Isn’t our duty to uphold it as it is written?”
He held my gaze, lips pursed. “Why do you want to be a federal prosecutor?”
For my mother.
“Justice,” I said. “The punishment should fit the crime, and the criminal should be punished.”
“And leniency?”
“I…I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know that personal feelings should interfere with this kind of work.”
Judge Miller sighed. “I’ve seen your type before. Full of piss and vinegar, as my father would’ve said. More concerned with being right than with being fair. You are not a coldhearted man. I can see that in you. But feelings, Mr. Haas, are what make us human. And humanity should be the beating heart of justice.” He leaned back in his seat and reached for some papers on his desk. “That is all.”
I left Judge Miller’s chambers feeling as if I had just been sucker punched and then doused in ice water. I had no idea what he was asking of me. In the deep catalog of California law codes I had committed to memory, there wasn’t one mention of emotions or feelings. That’s why I liked law. It was black and white, right and wrong.
On the Muni home, I racked my brain for a way to give the Judge what he wanted.
Life.
But my mother was dead. Killed by a drunk driver when I was eight years old.
I gripped the Muni bar hard as the train screeched into a tunnel and the windows went black, as if it were taking me into the dark heart of my worst memories.
Blue and red flashing lights fill the foyer with garish color. Clown colors, from a nightmarish carnival. A knock at the door. I step into the hallway behind my dad. Emmett tugs on my pants. He’s only four, but my little brother’s smart. He knows something’s very, very wrong, and he’s scared.
Like me.
I’m so scared I can’t breathe.
“Mr. Haas?”
My dad’s head bobs. “Yes?”
“I’m very sorry but there’s been an accident.”
Dad staggers back a step then clutches the doorjamb. His knuckles are white. The red and blue lights spin around and around. Their sirens are off, but the sound is deafening. Screaming. Ripping the black of the night, tearing through my father and brother and me like a banshee; shrieking with sinister glee that nothing will ever be the same again.
The Muni train surged into daylight and I blinked the horrible reverie away. The memory retreated slowly, never far from sight and always crystal clear in my perfect memory.
The defendant—my mother’s murderer—had been jailed for alcohol-related incidents twice before, and was driving with a suspended license. But it didn’t matter. The judge used discretion. Discretion. I fucking hated that word. The driver was released and three weeks later, he killed my mother. He was sentenced to twenty-five years but what the fuck did that matter? He’d already put my mother to death and given my father, brother, and I life sentences.
And none of it needed to happen.
My hand on the Muni rail tightened again until my joints ached. The senselessness of it gnawed at my guts whenever I thought of it for too long. I turned my focus on what I could do as a prosecutor, instead. Sought sanctuary, as I always did, in the law.
But Miller’s lecture in his office had me scared shitless. If I didn’t give him what he wanted—life, in a briefing about senseless death—I’d lose everything.
I was still pondering these questions when I walked up to the Victorian. In my flat, Darlene was at the kitchen table, sitting next to Olivia in her high chair, feeding her a snack of cubed cheese and grapes that Darlene had cut in half.
“Hey,” she said brightly. Her beautiful face like a ray of sun I basked in for a moment. “Elena came by. She said Hector did break a bone but it was a clean break, no surgery needed.”
“Good, good,” I said. “Glad to hear it.”
“How was your meeting?”
Catastrophic.
“Fine.”
I leaned over Olivia’s high chair from behind. “Hey, baby. Having a snack?” I plucked a piece of Jack cheese from her tray and ate it.
“Cheece, cheece,” she said, and I watched her tiny fingers pick up the white cube and bring it to her mouth.
I looked up to see Darlene watching me. She quickly averted her eyes.
“She’s got a great vocab,” she said, brushing a curl of Olivia’s hair out of her eyes. “She’s a smarty, aren’t you, sweet pea?”
“Would you mind hanging out for one more minute?” I asked. “I want to change out of this suit.”
“Knock yourself out.”
In my bedroom, I changed into my evening uniform of flannel sleep pants and a white, V-neck undershirt. I grabbed my wallet from my suit on the bed, and pulled out a twenty dollar bill. In the kitchen, Darlene was wiping Olivia’s face with a cloth, and saying something to make my daughter laugh.
Jackson’s words from this morning came back to haunt me. Darlene was beautiful, fun, and great with Olivia.
Why not ask her out?
It seemed like such a simple thing, but I was on the verge of losing my clerkship. Aside from studying and classes, I was going to have to devote even more time to Judge Miller’s final assignment to ensure I gave him what he wanted.
The tiredness fell over me like a heavy coat.
I have nothing to offer her.
Darlene removed the tray from Olivia’s highchair, and set her down on the floor where my daughter made a bee-line for the wooden blocks scattered on the carpet by my desk.
“We were making towers,” Darlene said. “I’ll clean those up.”
“No, it’s fine. Here.” I held out the twenty. “I don’t know what your going rate is but…”
She was already shaking her head. “Nope. I owe you from the other night. I was so pushy, and I still feel bad about it.”
“What? No. Take it.”
Darlene ignored my money and knelt beside Olivia. “Bye-bye, sweet pea.”
“Bye-bye,” Olivia said. She stacked a wooden block with letters on each side on top of another that was covered in numbers.
“So smart, this girl.” Darlene popped back up with a breathy exhilaration. Her eyes were impossibly blue. “I should go.”
“Darlene…”
Her phone chimed a text. She fished it out of her bag. “Oh, that’s Max. He’s a friend. I told him I’d meet him later, so yeah.” She shouldered her bag and headed for the door.
Max. Okay.
I followed Darlene to the door to open it.
Max is the guy who’s going to ask her out if he hasn’t already because you won’t.
“Such a gentleman,” Darlene said as I held the door for her.
“You should take the money,” I said stiffly. Almost harshly. “You saved my ass today so…”
I held out the cash again but Darlene pushed my hand away and held on for a moment. Her fingers were soft and warm on mine.
“Your money’s no good here. We’re even.”
A short silence fell, and my mind—so full of every goddamn thing I’d ever seen and read—had no words.
“Goodbye, Sawyer the Lawyer.”
She let go of my hand, her smile softer now, and turned to go. Half a second later, she stopped and spun back around.
“I changed my mind. I know how you can pay me for today.”
A small laugh erupted out of me, despite myself. God, this girl.
“How?”
“Last Friday, at the grocery store? You said that I was a…” She held her hands out.
I blinked. “A what?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know. You never finished your sentence.”
I thought back to that night, that moment. “Oh, yeah.”
“You remember, right? Your mega-mind has it?”
“Yeah, I have it but I’m not sure you want to hear it.”
“Try me.”
“Well, I was going to say you’re like a human tornado.”
“Oh,” Darlene said. Her face fell, the light in her eyes dimmed slightly. “I’m like a twisty windstorm that destroys everything I touch?”
“No, not at all.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “I didn’t say it then because I thought you’d take it as an insult. And saying it now, it sounds like an insult. But it’s actually—”
“A compliment?”
Her light was back and she was standing so close to me.
“Yes. I meant, you’re like this whirling ball of energy that sweeps people up so they…can’t help getting caught up in you.”
“Oh,” she breathed. “They can’t?”
I can’t.
I was leaning over her, my shoulder against the doorjamb, and she was right there, her breath on my chin and her eyes so blue with light and life.
Darlene is full of the life Judge Miller wants. I’m the machine that has to keep going and going until there’s nothing left of me.
I straightened and smiled faintly. “Thanks for taking good care of Olivia, Darlene.”
Darlene’s smile was brilliant and her words, seemingly innocuous, hit me right in the chest and sank in.
“Thank you, Sawyer, for the lovely compliment.”