“There is some around here. Dad looked for silver, but that was all prospected out even before he came here, and I’m sure he never thought about opal. Unfortunately, I don’t think this spot is as rich as I thought it might be. I’m not finding much.”

Mike nodded, looking fatigued as he had most days in court. Lindy felt the urge to apologize to him for putting him through the court case, but resisted. He’d thrown her out and chosen Rachel. What did she have to apologize for? “It’s a long drive out here. Why don’t you rest? You look really tired.”

“Thanks. But I have to get going in a few minutes.”

Yes, you need to run on home to your pretty, young lover, Lindy said to herself, using the painful thought to touch the bruises on her heart and remind her that she needed to protect herself. He had no right to hurt her anymore.

“I came to talk to you.” Well, that was obvious. She saw how awkward he felt.

“One last time?” she said. “I thought we said our good-byes out by the lake that night.”

“I’ll be selling the business, moving on.”

Guarding herself at this introduction of the business between them she said, “That’s your decision, Mike, although I’m sorry to hear it. Do you want to work up some installment payment plan? If that’s what you came here to talk me into, that’s fine.”

Mike drank most of the bottle down in one long swallow. He set the bottle down on the table with a clatter. “You haven’t seen the receiver’s final report. My lawyer called me just before I left. All that expansion you were working on in Europe fell apart after you left. And the bottom dropped out of the domestic spa market. A Chinese company came in and undercut us. Somehow, it didn’t matter anymore to me-”

“How much did we lose?”

“We might get seventy million for it if we can sell it. Less if we liquidate and just go out of business.”

“But,” she could barely contain her shock, “how could that happen? I mean, at the beginning of all this, wasn’t it worth at least two hundred?”

“Months of neglect,” he said simply. “I let it go, along with you.”

“Seventy million. Mike, that’s my share. That’s the judgment my lawyer’s writing up right now.”

“So I’m told. I didn’t get it at first, but my lawyer says it’s the value of the business from the time we-”

“Yes. From the time we split up. Well, that’s awful news, Mike. I’m sorry.” She thought. “You’ll appeal the verdict then?”

“No. I’m done with courtrooms.”

“Mike, why’d you have to be so pigheaded-”

“Please, Lin. Not now.” Here was her chance to rub his nose in his failures, all of them, but how could she with him looking so collapsed and old in his defeat? She actually reached her hand out toward his hand, but thoughts sprang into her mind to arrest the gesture. On the witness stand he had barely admitted her role in the business. He had denigrated, insulted, cheated, and betrayed her… and all the while Rachel had whispered in his ear, touched his arm… she returned her hand to her side.

“Listen.” he went on obliviously, apparently too wrapped up in his own inner struggle to admit hers to his consciousness. “You want to know the worst thing? The worst thing is I don’t understand what happened to me. One day we were happy, and the next day I jumped into a bottomless pit.”

She bit her tongue, going back into the kitchen to get him another beer. When she returned, he had another stone between his fingers. He turned it back and forth in the light, his face intense and absorbed.

He set the stone back into the sack. “Rachel left me this morning,” he said, his eyes fixed on the sack, not her.

Lindy folded her arms. “The receiver’s report.”

“She read it. Then she set it down on the dining room table and she swung her purse onto her shoulder, and she said, ’Bye, Mike,’ and walked out the door. Went back to handsome Harry, is my guess.”

“And you came straight here to cry on my shoulder.”

“No, Lin, I…”

“You have some nerve,” Lindy said, unable to hide the anger vibrating in her voice.

“I came to tell you you were right. You’re smarter than me, Lindy. You’re smarter about living your life. I was too old for Rachel and she was in it for the money.”

“Now you figure that out?”

“I guess I knew, Lin, but I wanted her anyway. There’s no excuse, no explanation. I just lost my way.” He didn’t say anything more.

Lindy hadn’t seen Mike as rattled as this since the old days in the ring, after a few bad thumps on the head. “Well, I guess you loved her,” she said.

“For a month or two.”

“Was it all because we never had kids?”

“Only a little.”

“Still, too bad we didn’t. Then we’d have something more important than money to fight about.” She laughed slightly.

Mike was looking at her. “You let your hair go natural. And it’s longer than I remember. I like it. Goes great with your suntan. You look strong again. During the trial, I was worried about you.”

“Don’t you sweet-talk me.” She didn’t tell him she had worried about him, too. What would be the point?

Mike slid out from behind the table and came around behind her. Leaning his head down, he rested it on her shoulder. He stroked her hair, pulling it gently back, running his fingers through it. “I guess that’s all. I guess I should go.”

“Yes, you should go now.”

He pulled her up from her chair, and made her face him. He took both hands in his. “I apologize, Lin,” he said, putting his cheek against her cheek, “for ruining everything.”

“I don’t trust you anymore,” she said.

“I know.”

With her eyes closed, she tasted the salt of his sweat.

32

“You the public defender?” Sonny Ball sat in the glassed-in cage at the county jail talking through a telephone. He moved fast and jerky, like a man about to jump out of his skin.

“Sorry, no. I’m from Nina Reilly’s office. I’m talking with all the jurors in the Markov case.”

“I don’t have time for that. I’ve got my own trouble.” Sonny twiddled the phone, nodding his head rapidly to music only he could hear.

“Looks to me like you have time to burn, Sonny,” Paul said.

“Which explains why I need a lawyer.”

“If your lawyer comes in, I’ll leave.”

“Yeah, do that. So here we are. What you want to know? Your team won, didn’t it?”

“Well, we always want to do better,” Paul said. “It helps to interview jurors whether you win or lose. Find out what mistakes we made or what we did well.”

Sonny rolled his tongue around in his mouth. “What do I get out of it?”

“Well, I can’t pay you, but-”

“Make a phone call for me?”

“Sure, I guess so.”

“Here’s the number.”

Paul wrote it down.

“Tell him to get down here and bail me the fuck out.”

“Will do.”

“All right, then.” Sonny assumed a hilariously serious expression, still drumming and twiddling and nodding all at once, and said, “Ain’t this a laugh? I do my civic duty, and they check my name out and find this stupid drug warrant. They arrested me the minute I walked out of the jury room that day. That’s the thanks I get.”

“Your service on the jury was greatly appreciated.”

“Think it might help get me outa here?”

“I can’t make any promises.”

“It’s not like I got caught doing a line in the jury bathroom.”

“I don’t want to hear about it if you were. I’d like to talk about the last day of the deliberations.”

“Sure, sure. Sure.”

“You ended up voting for Lindy Markov.”

“Right.”

“Mind if I ask what factors influenced you most?”

“I didn’t like Markov. He’s the kind of guy that always takes advantage and gets all the credit. A bastard pain in the ass. Also, the girlfriend was very uppity. She never even looked at me once. And I heard so much bullshit in that jury room, my brain ached. It was time to go. And then there were issues.”