Gray Mountain: A Novel(29)

Standing at the main door were two men, a couple of ruffians with matted hair and tattoos. They stared at Annette, Samantha, and Phoebe as they walked by. In the hallway, Phoebe whispered, “Those thugs are with Randy, all in the meth business. I gotta get out of this town.”

Samantha thought: I might be right behind you.

They walked into the office of the Circuit Court and filed the divorce. Annette was asking for an immediate hearing for a restraining order to keep Randy away from the family. “The earliest slot is Wednesday afternoon,” a clerk said.

“We’ll take it,” Annette said.

The two thugs were waiting just outside the front door of the courthouse, and they had been joined by a third angry young man. He stepped in front of Phoebe and growled, “You better drop the charges, girl, or you’ll be sorry.”

Phoebe did not back away; instead, she looked at him in a way that conveyed years of familiarity and contempt. She said to Annette, “This is Randy’s brother Tony, fresh from prison.”

“Did you hear me? I said drop the charges,” Tony said in a louder growl.

“I just filed for divorce, Tony. It’s over. I’m leaving town as fast as I can, but I’ll be sure and come back when he goes to court. I’m not dropping the charges, so please get out of the way.”

One thug stared at Samantha, the other at Annette. The brief confrontation ended when Hump and Richard walked out of the courthouse and saw what was happening. “That’s enough,” Richard said, and Tony backed away.

Hump said, “Let’s go gals. I’ll walk you back to the office.” As Hump lumbered down Main Street, talking nonstop about another case he and Annette were contesting, Samantha followed along, rattled by the incident and wondering if she needed a handgun in her purse. No wonder Donovan practiced law with a small arsenal.

The rest of her afternoon was client-free, thankfully. She had heard enough misery for one day, and she needed to study. Annette loaned her some well-used seminar materials designed for rookie lawyers, with sections on divorce and domestic relations, wills and estates, bankruptcy, landlord and tenant, employment, immigration, and government assistance. A section on black lung benefits had been added later. It was dry and dull, at least to read about, but she had already learned firsthand that the cases were anything but boring.

At five o’clock, she finally called Mr. Joe Duncan and informed him she could not handle his Social Security appeal. Her bosses prohibited such representation. She passed along the names of two private attorneys who took such cases and wished him well. He was not too happy with the call.

She stopped by Mattie’s office and they recapped her first day on the job. So far so good, though she was still rattled by the brief confrontation on the courthouse steps. “They won’t mess with a lawyer,” Mattie assured her. “Especially a girl. I’ve been doing this for twenty-six years and I’ve never been assaulted.”

“Congratulations. Have you been threatened?”

“Maybe a couple of times, but nothing that really scared me. You’ll be fine.”

She felt fine leaving the office and walking to her car, though she couldn’t help but glance around. A light mist was falling and the town was growing darker. She parked in the garage under her apartment and climbed the steps.

Annette’s daughter, Kim, was thirteen; her son, Adam, was ten. They were intrigued by their new “roommate” and insisted that she join them at mealtime, but Samantha had no plans to crash their dinner every night. With her crazy schedule, and Blythe’s, she had grown accustomed to eating alone.

As a professional with a stressful job, Annette had little time to cook. Evidently, cleaning was not a priority either. Dinner was mac and cheese from the microwave with sliced tomatoes from a client’s garden. They drank water from plastic bottles, never from the tap. As they ate, the kids peppered Samantha with questions about her life, growing up in D.C., living and working in New York, and why in the world she had chosen to come to Brady. They were bright, confident, easy to humor, and not afraid to ask personal questions. They were courteous too, never failing to say “Yes ma’am” and “No ma’am.” They decided she was too young to be called Miss Kofer, and Adam felt as though Samantha was too much of a mouthful. They eventually agreed on Miss Sam, though Samantha was hopeful the “Miss” would soon disappear. She told them that she would be their babysitter, and this seemed to puzzle them.

“Why do we need one?” Kim asked.

“So your mother can go out and do whatever she wants to do,” Samantha said.

They found this amusing. Adam said, “But she never goes out.”

“True,” Annette said. “There’s not much to do in Brady. In fact, there’s nothing to do if you don’t go to church three nights a week.”

“And you don’t go to church?” Samantha asked. So far, in her brief time in Appalachia, she had become convinced that every five families had their own tiny church with a leaning white steeple. There were churches everywhere, all believing in the inerrancy of the Holy Scripture but evidently agreeing on little else.

“Sometimes on Sunday,” Kim said.

After supper, Kim and Adam dutifully cleared the table and stacked the dishes in the sink. There was no dishwasher. They wanted to watch television with Miss Sam and ignore their homework, but Annette eventually shooed them off to the small bedrooms. Sensing that her guest might be getting bored, Annette said, “Let’s have some tea and talk.”