Page 56 of Danny Hall Gets a Lawyer
Great. Now the internal voice sounded even more annoyingly smug. It sounded just like Marty when he knew he was right about something. I wanted the original prosecutor back.
“I’m fine, Mom. Better than fine, actually. Guess where I’m calling from.”
Mom’s voice was warm when she said, “I’ll play. Where are you?”
“New York.”
“What on earth are you doing in New York?”
“Oh, just reading through the onboarding paperwork for my new job at Winston, Baker and Fisk,” I said and waited for her to congratulate me.
“Oh!” She was quiet for a moment and said, “Well, if that’s what you want, I’m happy for you, honey.”
She didn’tsoundhappy for me. She sounded more confused than anything. And that had me confused. Of course this was what I wanted.
Wasn’t it?
“You know it’s what I want,” I said. “It’s always been my dream.”
“I know, but last time you were here to visit you were happier than we’ve seen you in a long time. We figured you were finally settling down, making a life in Hopewell.”
“Settling down?” I frowned at the brick wall outside my window. “I can settle down in New York too, Mom.”
“Oh, I know that,” she said. “Just, you seemed to really like Hopewell.”
“You can’t get a decent coffee after ten p.m.,” I said.
“Well, you shouldn’t be having coffee then,” she said. “How much coffee are you drinking? You know your dad gets heartburn.”
“It’s not hereditary,” I said, even though I had no idea if that was true or not.
“It’ll catch you up at some point,” she said, and I didn’t have an answer for that because that was definitely true. “And you’re always telling us to watch our diets.”
“Not like that. Just, you know, cutting sugar is good.”
“I know it is.” She was quiet for a moment, and I figured we were both wondering how we’d gotten so off track. “Did you know you can buy turkey bacon? It’s like bacon, well, supposedly, but it’s made from turkey.”
Apparently, she’d committed to staying off track.
My mom wasn’t flaky, not that you’d know it from our current conversation, but she did have the habit of changing the subject when she thought you might not like what she really wanted to say. Once, in high school, my brother started dating a girl my parents didn’t like, and when he asked them what they thought of her, Mom went on a twenty-minute tangent about deep ocean exploration.
So what wasn’t she saying now?
“I don’t know what this has to do with my moving to New York,” I said.
“Just, there are more important things than late-night coffee,” she said. “You’ve made friends in Hopewell. And what about Danny?”
“What?”
“Danny. Your friend. I got the feeling there might be something there, that’s all.”
“Who told you about Danny?” I asked. For a wild second I had the insane idea that someone—okay,Marty—had called my mom and given her the scoop. “I’ve never mentioned him.”
Mom laughed softly. “Oh, honey. You mentioned him when you were here for my birthday.”
I didn’t remember it, but I’d had a few strong drinks at Mom’s birthday—my dad was a generous barman—and we’d talked a lot, so it made sense that I might have said something about Danny in passing. “So I mentioned him a time or two. It’s an interesting case. That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Let’s see. He has an awful neighbor who cut down his tree and he works at a gas station, but that doesn’t mean he isn’tsmart, because he is. He lives in his grandma’s house with three other guys and two of them are identical twins. His grandma is a pistol, and he’s cute and funny, and?—”
