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  Option B, he could embark on a new life as a federal judge and a $169,000 salary—a professional life of seeing justice done—and a personal life of financial security, life and health insurance—including dental—paid vacations, and a fully-funded pension. He could be proud of his life and provide for his daughters. It would be a good life. A perfect life for United States District Judge A. Scott Fenney. Option B, however, required the support of the two Republican U.S. senators from Texas and Senate confirmation. Even with Judge Buford backing him, it was far from a sure thing.

  Option C, he could continue his current life of losing lost causes and not making enough money to pay the mortgage, cover the office overhead, take the girls on vacation, save for college, or buy braces for Pajamae.

  He crossed out Option C.

  Scott had often driven around Dallas in the Ferrari whenever he needed to think things out. Funny, but he didn't seem to think as well in a Jetta. He parked and walked into the law offices of Fenney Herrin Douglas, an old two-story Victorian house located just south of Highland Park, and found the firm's entire staff gathered around the front desk. They looked like the cast from Lost: Bobby Herrin, thirty-eight, the short, chubby character with thinning hair and a pockmarked face, always handy with a witty remark … Karen Douglas, Bobby's whip-smart and very pretty love-interest character (and now spouse), ten years his junior and seven months' pregnant with their first child … Carlos Hernandez, twenty-eight, the Latino character oozing machismo from every pore of his tattooed brown skin, six feet tall and two hundred pounds of muscle, dressed in black leather pants and a black T-shirt tight around his torso, studying to be a paralegal and the firm's Spanish translator … and Louis Wright, thirty years old, the gentle giant black character with the gold-toothed smile, the firm's driver and the Fenney family's self-appointed bodyguard. Their expressions were somber, as if they had just been told they would never get off this island.

  "Hey, guys, it's not the first case we lost."

  "We lost?"

  Scott sighed. "Yeah, Bobby, we lost."

  "Guess we don't get paid this month," Carlos said.

  Louis shot Carlos a sharp look.

  "Don't worry, Carlos, I'll figure something out."

  No one said anything.

  "What?"

  The others glanced at Bobby as if he had drawn the black bean then abruptly turned and headed to their respective offices. Before disappearing around the corner, Louis said, "Mr. Fenney, appreciate the new book."

  Pajamae would not call him Dad, and Louis would not call him Scott.

  "That Fitzgerald dude," Louis said. "He's pretty good." Louis stood tall and recited like a Shakespearean actor: " 'So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.' "

  F. Scott had been right: life seemed to beat A. Scott back into his past.

  "Very good, Louis."

  Louis seemed proud as he walked out of the room.

  "What's this month's book club selection?" Bobby said.

  Louis's formal education had ended with ninth grade, but he yearned for knowledge. So Scott had introduced him to books. Louis had developed a real passion for reading. Each month, Scott gave him a new book. Last month it was The Great Gatsby. This month it was—

  "No Country for Old Men."

  "Good book. Movie, too."

  Scott climbed the stairs to his office. Bobby followed, smacking the gum he had taken to chewing to quit smoking now that he was going to be a father.

  "Billy," he said.

  Baby names. They were going to have a boy.

  "Billy Herrin," Scott said. "Sounds like a shortstop."

  "Joe?"

  "Maybe."

  "Sid?"

  "No!"

  Scott and Bobby had grown up together, two renters in Highland Park. Scott's football heroics had opened the door to success in Dallas for him, at least for a while. Bobby hadn't been a football star, so the door had been shut in his face. After SMU law school, Scott had gone on to a partnership at Ford Stevens, Bobby to a storefront in East Dallas. After eleven years on career paths heading in opposite directions, they had reconnected two years ago for the McCall murder case. They had practiced law together since. They now entered Scott's office.

  "Uh, Scotty, on the news this morning—"

  "Bobby, you're not going to believe what Buford wants to do."

  "What?"

  "Put me up for federal judge, to replace him."

  "No shit? Wow, that's, uh, that's great, Scotty."

  Bobby had stopped smacking his gum. Scott saw the concern on his friend's face. Bobby was about to become a father and the "Fenney" in "Fenney Herrin Douglas" might leave the firm. They were barely making it now; without their lead lawyer, they wouldn't make it at all.

  "Bobby, a federal judge gets to hire his own staff attorneys, like you and Karen. And a paralegal like Carlos and a … well, I'll have to figure out a position for Louis."

  "So we'd be federal employees?"

  "With benefits."

  "Maternity?"

  "I'm sure—it's the federal government."

  "I've never had a job with benefits. Course, I've never had a real job."

  "Well, you will now."

  "If you get confirmed."

  "A minor obstacle."

  "With two Republican senators? I won't count my benefits just yet. What about our clients?"

  "Civil rights claims are federal cases tried before federal judges."

  Scott settled in behind his desk, leaned back in his chair, and kicked his feet up. Bobby sat across from him. They were quiet, both considering their legal futures. Scott gazed at the gleaming downtown skyline framed in the window like a portrait. Once again, downtown Dallas beckoned to A. Scott Fenney. But would he return to a corner office on the sixty-second floor or to a judge's chambers in the federal courthouse? To $1 million or $169,000? To Ford Fenney or as Judge Fenney? To money or justice? Two years before, he had faced the same choice; he had chosen justice. Which decision had cost him everything he had once held dear, including his wife. Everything except his daughter. But it had given him another daughter and another life, if not another wife. He would make the same choice again. And he would make the same choice now.

  "You'll be a good judge, Scotty."

  "Thanks, Bobby. So what were you saying?"

  "Oh … yeah."

  Bobby's jaws worked the gum hard again. He exhaled heavily.

  "There was a murder down in Galveston and she's been arrested and charged—"

  "She who?"

  Bobby opened his mouth to answer, but Scott's phone rang. He held up a finger to Bobby then put the receiver to his ear and said, "Scott Fenney." He heard a heavy sigh, almost a cry, then a voice he hadn't heard in twenty-two months and eight days.

  "Scott—it's Rebecca. I need you."

  FIVE

  They would spend their summer vacation on Galveston Island.

  It was the following Monday morning, and Scott wasn't thinking about Ford Fenney or Judge Fenney. He was thinking about Rebecca Fenney. His ex-wife was sitting in the Galveston County Jail, charged with the murder of Trey Rawlins. The man his wife had left him for was now dead.

  Scott was driving the Jetta south on Interstate 45 through East Texas. Consuela was sitting in the passenger's seat and quietly saying the rosary—she was deathly afraid of Texas highways—and Boo and Pajamae were watching a Hannah Montana DVD on their portable player in the back seat while little Maria sucked on a pink pacifier and slept peacefully in her car seat between them. In the rearview Scott saw Bobby and Karen in their blue Prius, and behind them, Carlos and Louis in the black Dodge Charger.

  "Good God Almighty, Mr. Fenney, what the heck is that?"

  Pajamae was pointing out the left side of the car at a six-story-tall white statue overlooking the interstate like a giant observing his toy cars speeding past.

  "Sam Houston. The first president of the Republic of Texas."

  "Mr. Fenney, did y
ou know that Sam Houston and a bunch of white boys just stole Texas from the Mexicans?"

  Fifth grade had studied Sam Houston and sex.

  "I heard something about that."

  "Our teacher said now the Mexicans are taking the place back, all of them moving here."

  "What's that?" Boo asked.

  "Mexicans?"

  "No—that."

  They were now in Huntsville, located seventy miles due north of Houston and notable for two structures: the Sam Houston statue and the state penitentiary. In the rearview, Scott saw Boo looking out the side window. He glanced that way and saw what she saw: bleak brick buildings behind tall chain-link fences topped with concertina wire and secured by armed guards in towers at each corner of the perimeter. The State of Texas incarcerated 155,000 inmates in those buildings behind those fences.

  "A prison," he said.

  In the rearview, he saw Boo twist in her seat to stare at the prison until it was out of sight. She turned back. Her face was pale. Scott knew her thoughts had returned to her mother. The murder had made the network news Friday and Saturday evenings, and no doubt the cable coverage was nonstop; fortunately, the Fenney household did not have cable. He had told Boo about her mother, but he was able to shield her from the worst of the news.

  "Mother's in a place like that?"

  "No. That's a prison. She's in jail."

  "What's the difference?"

  "I can get her out of jail."

  She had left him for another man, a younger man who had given her what she had needed because her husband had not. Scott Fenney had failed her. Now, two years later, she needed what only Scott Fenney could give her: a defense to a murder charge. This time, he wouldn't fail her.

  "I didn't kill him," she had pleaded on the phone. "I swear to God, I'm innocent."

  Rebecca Fenney was not a murderer. Or his wife. But she was still the mother of his child. What does a man owe the mother of his child?

  She said she had no money to hire a criminal defense lawyer. If Scott didn't defend her, a public defender would be appointed to represent her. Which was another way of saying, Rebecca Fenney would become Texas Inmate Number 155,001. She would spend the rest of her life in those bleak buildings behind those tall fences. Boo would visit her mother in prison.

  She had left him, but she had not taken Boo from him. "You need her more than she needs me," she had said back then. That one act of kindness had saved Scott's life and had indebted him to her for life. He owed her.

  A. Scott Fenney would defend the mother of his child.

  SIX

  Galveston is a sand barrier island situated fifty miles south of Houston and two miles off the Texas coast, a narrow spit of sand thirty miles long and less than three miles wide. The city sits at the east end of the island, protected by a ten-mile-long, seventeen-foot-tall concrete seawall constructed after the Great Storm of 1900. West of the seawall the island lies at the mercy of the sea. So, naturally, that is exactly where developers—flush with cash during the great credit boom of the early twenty-first century—built hotels, high-rise condos, and luxury beach homes. The homes sat atop ten-foot-tall stilts, but they weren't tall enough to withstand a hurricane pushing a seventeen-foot storm surge. On September 13, 2008, Hurricane Ike washed away the West End of Galveston Island. Exclusive beach-front subdivisions became streets of homeless stilts, as if God had dropped a box of giant toothpicks that had fallen to earth and embedded in the sand. The surviving houses held a lonely vigil on the desolate beach. In 1528, the Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca shipwrecked on Galveston Island and soon dubbed his new home the Isla de Malhado—the Island of Misfortune.

  The title still fit.

  Scott had rented one of those survivors for $2,000 a month, half the going price before Ike. It was out past the condos and hotels and fishing piers off San Luis Pass Road, a two-story house on stilts with six bedrooms and four baths right on the beach. He parked the Jetta in the shade of the house. It was just after three.

  "Look—the beach!" Boo said.

  Galveston Beach was not white sand and blue water with sleek cigarette boats cutting through the waves like in Florida. The sand was tan, the water brown, and the boats oil and cargo tankers heading to the Ship Channel and the Port of Houston. But it was still a beach, something not found in Dallas.

  The girls bailed out and ran to the sand.

  Bobby parked the Prius behind the Jetta. He had followed Scott Fenney since ninth grade, like a young boy follows an older brother. Even during the eleven-year gap when Scotty had left him for Ford Stevens and a Highland Park mansion, Bobby had followed him in the society pages and business section of the newspaper. Now he had followed him to Galveston to defend his ex-wife charged with murdering the man she had run off with. He had tried to get Scotty to think it through, but he had said he had no choice: she needed him. He was going to Galveston. Bobby couldn't let him go alone. Bobby Herrin was either loyal to a fault or he had a serious worship thing going.

  Scott shielded his eyes from the sun and watched the girls on the beach. He turned back when Bobby got out of the Prius and said, "Forty-seven miles to the gallon, Scotty—doing seventy."

  A born-again hybrid driver. Bobby helped Karen out of the car. Her belly seemed bigger than when they had left Dallas. She had a funny expression on her face.

  "Another accident?" Bobby said.

  She nodded. Bobby turned to Scott.

  "Every time she laughs or cries, she pees her pants. She wears adult diapers now."

  Karen was now the girls' de facto mother. They—and Scott—relied on her for the motherly touch, even though she was still two months away from being a mother.

  "They're really not that bad," she said. "Although they do crawl up—"

  The roar of a massive engine drowned out her voice and the image of her diaper crawling up from Scott's mind. The black Dodge Charger screeched to a stop, windows down and music blaring. Louis was singing along like a rock band's groupie, and Carlos was playing the drums with two pencils on the dashboard. Bobby shook his head.

  "Five hours in a car without air-conditioning—the heat got to them."

  Scott checked again on the girls. They were splashing through the surf. He cupped his mouth and yelled, "Stay where I can see you!"

  The concert abruptly ended. Louis climbed out of the Charger and headed to the beach with a book in hand. Duty called.

  "I got 'em," he said.

  Next to the house was a concrete basketball court, apparently the neighborhood playground when there was still a neighborhood. Under the house was an open garage. Scott counted four stilts in, then reached up and found the house key right where the rental service had said it would be. They climbed stairs to a deck overlooking the beach with chairs and a table with an umbrella. A digital thermometer mounted on the frame of a sliding glass door read "88" but the sea breeze made the air seem cooler. Scott unlocked the door and entered the house. Inside was a spacious room with a kitchen at one end and a living area with a big-screen television at the other. Two bedrooms with private baths were on that floor, and four bedrooms that shared two baths were on the top floor. Karen and Consuela checked out the kitchen, Carlos the refrigerator, and Bobby the television. He pointed the remote at the TV like a gunman holding up a convenience store and commenced channel-surfing.

  "CNN, CMT, TNT, MTV, HBO … We must have a hundred cable channels."

  The girls' wish had come true, at least for the summer.

  "Consuela and I'll go get groceries," Karen said. "After Maria and I change our diapers."

  Bobby had not turned from the television. "CNBC, MSNBC, Hallmark, Cartoon Channel, History Channel, Food Channel … Hey, pick up some beer, okay?"

  "But not that light beer," Carlos said. "Man beer."

  Karen laughed. "Man beer? Is that on the label? You want man beer, Carlos, you come with us. You can drive."

  "Yeah, okay. Mr. Herrin, we get Telemundo?"

  "I'm not there yet. Bravo, Disney, Dis
covery, SciFi … Yep, we got Telemundo."

  "Oh, good. I won't miss Doña Bárbara."

  "Carlos, do you drink man beer while watching soap operas?"

  "No. Just baseball and Dancing with the Stars. That Julianne girl, she is hot."

  Scott felt as if he were starring in a reality show: Survivor-Galveston Island. A lawyer defends his ex-wife accused of murdering the star pro golfer she left him for. Who in Hollywood could dream that up? Who would dare? And the case would surely make the TV and tabloids. Scott Fenney might well end up the butt of jokes on Letterman—The Top 10 Reasons a Lawyer Would Defend His Ex-Wife—or at the annual state bar convention's gossip sessions. But if he didn't represent her, Rebecca Fenney would surely end up a prison inmate. He would blame himself, and one day, Boo would also blame him. He could not allow that day to come.

  "Man," Bobby said, "we get all the sports channels—FSN, ESPN, Golf—"

  Scott was standing at the open glass doors and staring out at a solitary seagull struggling against the wind when he realized the room behind him had fallen silent. He turned back. Everyone now stood frozen in place and focused on the TV. On the screen was the image of Trey Rawlins, shirtless and sweating—the man who had had sex with Scott's wife while she was still his wife—and who was now dead. He held up a glass of chocolate milk and in a smooth Texas drawl said, "Golfers are athletes too, even if you do ride in an electric cart. So after your round, you need a recovery drink—and the best recovery drink is all-natural chocolate milk, just like your mama used to give you after school." He gulped down the milk in one continuous drink and emerged with a brown upper lip and a big smile. "Got chocolate milk? Then get some."

  The screen cut to the announcer: "That was Trey's final commercial."

  Behind the announcer was a view of a green golf course; a byline read "Houston Classic." The pro golf tour was in Houston that week.