Playing By The Rules. Beverly Bird

parenting time.”

      “Pshaw,” I heard Sam say in an undertone.

      I wheeled on him in disbelief. “What?”

      His eyes widened innocently. “I didn’t say anything.”

      “You said pshaw. Is that a Deep-South word or something?”

      “I don’t know,” Sam protested. “They sure don’t say it in Texas.”

      “People, please,” Larson interrupted. “This is a courtroom.”

      This time Sam stepped around me to speak earnestly to the judge. “Mr. Woodsen isn’t comfortable with his children spending unsupervised overnights with their mother, either. She has that—how can I put this delicately?—rather complex sense of self.”

      A rather what? I felt tension wrap around my spine. “Be more specific,” I snarled, nudging him aside again so I could see the judge, too.

      “It’s my understanding that Lisa Woodsen has spent a good part of the last several years undergoing vigorous psychiatric treatment,” he said.

      Drugs, I thought. It had to be drugs. He’d need something worse than Lyle’s alcoholism, and that would do it.

      I went back to my table and sat again, feeling a headache coming on. I glared at him, trying to figure out what he had up his sleeve and why I hadn’t been aware that there was anything there until just this moment. Sam crossed his arms over his chest and watched me right back. If he smirked, I would have to wipe the floor with his face, I decided.

      “I have no idea what he’s talking about, Your Honor,” I said finally. And, oh, how it rankled to have to admit it.

      Judge Larson sighed gustily. “Mr. Case, I like you. I genuinely do.” There’s a revelation, I thought. “But I don’t like you well enough to overlook your generous use of evidentiary loopholes. Even in divorce court, we have such a thing as discovery.”

      Hallelujah.

      Then Sam turned a soulful gaze on the judge. The man had blue eyes that could charm Satan, and a crooked smile that could melt that same black soul. He’d just broken the most basic court rule in the book, and I was pretty sure he’d done it intentionally, yet he managed to look abashed and a bit confused. “Gosh, Your Honor. I’m sorry.”

      Gosh? I choked, and—predictably—Larson forgave him.

      “Very well,” she said, “but I’m still going to adjourn these proceedings until Friday to give the defense a chance to catch up.”

      As slaps on the wrist went, it was relatively minor, but I consoled myself with the fact that at least it was something. The judge banged her gavel and rose neatly from the bench. I waited. It took Sam no more than a minute to clear his client out of the courtroom.

      I shifted in my seat to look at Lisa Woodsen. “So how right is he?” I asked her.

      “A little.”

      I felt my headache pop behind my eyes, gaining life. “This isn’t one of those gray areas in life, Lisa. Either you’ve had psychiatric treatment or you haven’t.”

      “Well, then, yes. I did. Do. But I’m staying on my medication this time.”

      Medication. Oh, glory, I thought. “What’s your problem exactly?”

      “It’s complicated.”

      “I can probably grasp it,” I assured her.

      “It’s…well, a form of schizophrenia.”

      I folded my arms on the defense table and lowered my now-throbbing forehead against them. A complex sense of self, indeed! It wasn’t drugs after all, but this was definitely worse than Lyle Woodsen’s nightly twelve-pack-and-shooters habit.

      Lisa Woodsen began to cry, so I lifted my head and dug a tissue out of my briefcase. In family law, tissues—along with candy, coloring books and trading cards—are crucial accessories. I raided my daughter’s supplies with some regularity. So far Chloe hadn’t caught on.

      I spent another five minutes comforting the woman before we left the courtroom. When she’d passed through the heavy oak doors of the lobby into the blinding sunlight outside—for some reason the sun always shines brightly on the rotten moments of my life—I looked around for Sam.

      I knew he would have waited for me, and he had. The sad truth was that he was my upstairs neighbor and my very best friend—platonically-speaking—to boot. All in all, that made it very hard for me to hate him on any kind of regular basis.

      He stood beside the water fountain, leaning one nicely broad shoulder against the wall there. I bore down on him.

      “You just talked your way right out of tonight’s linguine and scampi, pal,” I said.

      He straightened from the wall and his eyes went as soft and hopeful as a puppy’s. “You were going to make me scampi?”

      “No. I was going to make Chloe and me scampi. I was going to let you have the leftovers. But now I’ve changed my mind.”

      “You’re a hard woman, Amanda Hillman.”

      “Only when I’ve just been played for a fool.”

      “I thought Lisa had told you. I thought you were just holding it close to your vest and hoping I didn’t find out.”

      “You were holding it close to your vest and hoping that I didn’t find out.” No wonder he hadn’t wanted to bother with exchanging interrogatories, I thought. He’d said it would just run up the Woodsens’ respective bills, and we both knew the couple couldn’t afford that. But the simple act of having my client answer all those detailed questions would have revealed all sorts of vermin in the woodpile.

      I rubbed my forehead.

      “Another headache?” Sam asked.

      “You gave it to me,” I muttered.

      “Lisa Woodsen gave it to you. She should have confided in you. And I keep telling you that your forehead isn’t the root of the problem. It’s the way your neck gets all knotted up. Turn around.”

      I wanted to be obstinate, but it would have been a little like cutting off my nose to spite my face. Sam has hands to die for.

      I turned and gave him my back. His strong fingers flexed at the base of my skull and found all the tight spots down the line of my vertebrae. My headache waned even as something coiled in the pit of my stomach. This was a normal reaction to Sam’s neck rubs that I had learned to ignore over the months. But this time I think I might have groaned aloud.

      “Better?” he asked.

      “Much. I’m still mad at you, though.”

      He laughed and his hands fell away. My loss. I turned to face him again.

      His dark hair had fallen over his brow sometime during our long afternoon in court. Together with his just-slightly crooked, bad-boy grin, it gave him a rakish look. It was something else I’d noticed before and that I tried to disregard. As a general rule, it’s not good to get all quivery inside over your best—platonic—friend.

      “Our first priority should be those kids,” I said finally, pulling myself back to business.

      “Agreed. So share your scampi with me and we’ll talk about it over dinner.”

      “No.” I pivoted sharply and headed for the big oak doors and all that sunshine outside.

      “I have a date, anyway!” he called after me.

      I swung back to him. “That’s two already this week, Sam. You’ve got an obsession going on here. Want me to ask Lisa Woodsen for the name of her shrink?”

      “Hey, I’m busy looking for the wrong woman.”

      Which I knew he had found many, many times. More