she’d suffered from horrible night terrors. Her intelligence was not, however, by anyone’s standard, deficient. Ramon could attest to that fact himself. Not surprisingly, though, by the time she’d reached her early teens, she’d been rebellious and belligerent, acting out in frightening ways.
“Like I said, she took some tough blows.”
“Yeah,” Zach agreed softly. “I told Pilar that a couple brushes with the law shouldn’t be held against her. I mean, she’s made a real success of herself, right?”
The waitress arrived with fresh coffee just then, and Ramon took advantage of her presence to delay replying. He shifted in his chair, crossed his legs, pinched the crease in his slacks, anything not to look Zach in the eye, because the truth was that in a court of civil law, Lori’s past could very much be held against her—and he would have to be the one to see that it was. The idea left a sour taste in his mouth.
She’d been only fifteen when she was arrested for marijuana possession. Because she’d pled guilty and performed community service, the record would have been expunged had she not gotten caught again only months later. There were other scrapes, too, such as skipping school and petty shoplifting. She’d wound up on probation and at one point it had seemed that she was destined for detention, but then she’d been placed with an older couple by the name of Evans, both now deceased, and everything had changed.
It pained Ramon to think of her having been in trouble with the police. He remembered only too well his own early experience with the heavy hand of the law. It was part of the reason he’d been so ready to dislike Zach. Even now, the memory rankled.
He and a couple of friends had been lounging against their cars at a popular strip mall on the outskirts of Richmond, cutting up and talking as teenagers will do, music throbbing from someone’s CD player, when a fight had broken out across the parking lot behind them. It had nothing to do with them and was far enough away that they hadn’t felt threatened at all. They’d scoffed among themselves at the stupidity of scraping up knuckles and faces in some silly macho exercise, when suddenly they were surrounded by cop cars.
Before Ramon had known what was happening, he’d found himself thrown to the ground, arms wrenched behind him and pinned back with steel cuffs. No one would listen to a word he had to say. Instead, they’d hauled in everyone in the lot. It turned out that the fight had been called in as a gang action, which meant that the police were taking no chances, but the unfairness of the whole experience still smarted for Ramon.
He’d been a good kid, raised in church by strict, loving parents, destined for college and the fulfillment of the American Dream; yet he’d been thrown in the clink, identified as a possible gang member, questioned for hours and finally turned loose without so much as an apology. As a result of that single arrest, his college choices had been limited, and even though the charges had been dropped, the taint of possible gang involvement had followed him for years.
Ramon was proud of what he’d accomplished with his life. He felt that, fired by the indignity of injustice, he’d turned a negative experience into a worthwhile vocation. Yet he couldn’t quite forget or forgive what had been done to him. Just the shock and embarrassment that his parents had suffered because of his arrest could still cause his face to heat and his temper to rise.
Things had gotten a little better since his sister had married Zach. Ramon had to admit that Zach was definitely one of the good guys, and he’d helped Ramon see things from a different perspective. But not even Zach could change reality. The world, so far as Ramon was concerned, remained a biased, unfair place. It was not, in Ramon’s estimation, the sort of place that a wise, just, loving God would tolerate. If anything, Lori Sumner’s personal story reinforced that conviction for Ramon.
Groaning, he pinched the bridge of his nose and baldly admitted, “I wish I’d never gotten involved in this child-custody case.”
Zach made a sympathetic sound, sipping from the cup that the waitress had filled moments before. “It’s your calling to wield power for the powerless.”
Ramon had to smile. His brother-in-law had come to know him well. “My sympathies definitely lay with Yesenia, but…”
“You can’t help feeling sorry for Lori Sumner,” Zach surmised correctly.
Ramon swallowed. He owed Yesenia the very best legal representation that he could provide, and he had little doubt that he could win the case, but he couldn’t help regretting the pain that his actions were bound to cause Lori.
“I never thought I’d have to argue to take a child away from a woman whose only fault is in loving that child and wanting to give her a home,” he said softly.
“I hear you,” Zach remarked. “On one hand, the Diaz girl is the baby’s mother, and on the other, Lori just wants to give that baby a home. I’m glad it’s not up to me to decide who wins this one. Frankly, I’m not sure I could do it.”
Privately, Ramon wasn’t sure he could, either.
The waitress stopped by again to ask if Zach wanted to order something to eat.
“I had breakfast with my family this morning.”
His smile turned introspective, almost secretive, and all at once Ramon found himself strangely envious, which wasn’t like him at all. Ramon relished his solitude. Yes, he loved his extended family, and he had a very healthy appreciation for the opposite gender, but his single life was full and satisfying and easy, which was just what his demanding career required.
He asked for the check and dug out his wallet, tossing bills onto the table. The tip was overly generous, but he’d been coming into the Starlight Diner several times a week for years now. When he wasn’t dining out with some client or eating at his mami’s table, he generally took his meals here. It was convenient, comfortable and familiar. Plus, the food was uniformly good. It did, however, on occasion, get kind of old. Maybe that was what lay behind the recurring feeling of…emptiness. As if something was missing from his life. He shook his head.
“What?” Zach asked.
“Just too much work.”
“Well, we’ve got a long weekend coming up.”
Ramon had forgotten about the upcoming holiday weekend. His family always participated in the annual community Labor Day picnic in Winchester Park. This year it would be particularly good to get his mind off work. And Lori Sumner’s beautiful green eyes. Getting quickly to his feet, he prepared to take his leave.
“Guess I’ll see you Monday.”
Zach nodded and hooked an arm over the back of his chair. “Glad to hear it. Now if you’d just promise to turn up at church on Sunday, I could go home and tell my very pregnant and equally emotional wife that I have completed my assignment.”
Ramon arched an eyebrow. “So that’s what this is about. No chance meeting at all.”
Zach lifted a hand. “She’s worried that you might think the two of you are on opposite sides of this custody thing. It would do her a world of good just now if you’d—”
Ramon clapped a hand onto his brother-in-law’s shoulder, squeezing just a bit harder than was absolutely necessary. “You may tell my sister that I will see her on Monday,” he said, “and that if she had a lick of sense in her beautiful head she would stay home on Sunday and put her feet up.”
Zach
