Rule of Law

by Randy Singer

  They rode together down the escalator to the first floor, and he told her how impressed he was with her argument.

  “Thanks. But let’s not talk about it.”

  He asked her out to lunch, but she politely refused. She had too much to do, other cases that needed attention. Honestly, she just wanted to be alone and pout.

  But he wouldn’t take no for an answer, and the smile eventually worked its magic. They settled on a compromise. He would buy her lunch at the hot dog stand in front of the Chesapeake courthouse. She could take it back to the office and lick her wounds.

  He held her briefcase while she put on her coat, helping her slip one arm in the sleeve. “Thanks,” she said. He held the door on her way out, and she braced for the January wind.

  It was a bright day with a few thin clouds and a strong breeze that cut through layers of clothing. The poor guy running the hot dog stand was layered with a hooded sweatshirt inside a down jacket. Patrick ordered three dogs and grabbed two bags of chips and two drinks. He slathered mustard on his.

  “Cookie?”

  “No thanks.”

  They walked side by side to the parking lot. “For a lawyer, you’re a cheap date,” Patrick said.

  “How did you even find out about this hearing?”

  “You mentioned it a few days ago. It sounded interesting. I wanted to see you in action.”

  The comment made Paige smile. The guy walking next to her was a Navy SEAL. He probably wasn’t all that impressed with what her profession considered “action.”

  “Not my best day,” Paige said.

  “I thought you were awesome.”

  Either he was trying to make her feel good, or he had been clueless during the hearing. “Except for when I missed the fact that Colson was the same judge that had written the Thornburg opinion they kept asking about.”

  “I thought you handled it well,” Patrick said. “You had an answer for everything. There’s no way this case should get a new trial.”

  This was part of what attracted her to Patrick. Like her, he was a crusader. There were good guys and bad guys, simple as that. In their own ways, Paige and Patrick were both doing their part. It wasn’t about the money or fame. She couldn’t imagine arguing for a criminal defendant any more than he could see fighting for ISIS.

  She was already starting to feel a little better just being around him. Lunch with Patrick would beat brooding alone.

  “Maybe we could eat lunch together in your truck,” Paige said. “You could give me more details about how brilliant I was and cheer me up a little.”

  “Sounds like a date.”

  It took him three more weeks and eight more times together—two movies, three dinners, one walk on the beach, and two seven-mile runs—before he kissed her. He did it on the same night that he told her he would be deploying in a little over a month. “Basically a cruise in the Med. Nothing dangerous.”

  He was dropping her off after a date, and he walked her to the front door of her condo.

  They had grown comfortable with hugs, but he had never tried to kiss her. Others from the same dating service, especially after a few drinks, had tried much more than that on the first date.

  Yet on this night, just before he said good night, he gave her a hug but didn’t pull away. He gently brushed a lock of hair behind her ear and traced her cheek with his finger. She looked at him intently, her breath catching in her chest.

  She closed her eyes as he leaned in to kiss her. And when he pulled away, his little romantic mission completed, he flashed that irresistible smile. “Was that okay?” he asked.

  She could hardly breathe. Things were spinning. “It’s about time,” she said. Then she leaned in and kissed him again.

  When he left that night, she stepped inside, closed the door, slumped against it, and felt her knees go weak. She smiled and slid slowly to the floor.

  Get a grip, she told herself. It’s only a feeling.

  But it was a feeling, and a night, that she knew she would remember for the rest of her life.

  9

  The opinion in Markell v. Virginia was released on Tuesday, March 13, and it was as bad as Paige had feared it would be. All three judges agreed that Lori Benton had a conflict of interest that she should have disclosed to her client. The judges were not willing to assume that the conflict was harmless error, as Paige had argued. “Instead, given the overriding importance of a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to competent legal counsel free from bias, and given the flaws in defense counsel’s handling of this case, we hold that the conviction is tainted and the defendant is entitled to a new trial.”

  Paige stewed about the opinion for an hour before she called commonwealth’s attorney Destiny Brown. “You did everything you could,” Destiny said unconvincingly. “But there won’t be another trial. The victim is not willing to go through this again, particularly with Wyatt Jackson as the defense lawyer.”

  The call, along with the opinion, made Paige sick. The attorney general’s office was in Richmond, two hours from where Paige lived, so they allowed her to work from home. She normally loved the arrangement because if she wasn’t in court, she could dress casual, work on briefs, go for a run in the middle of the day, and never have to worry about office politics. But on a day like today, she needed the companionship. Instead, she fumed in isolation.

  That night, she was supposed to go with Patrick to dinner at his friend’s house. Patrick talked a lot about Beef Anderson and his family, and now he was taking Paige to meet them. Under normal circumstances, Paige would have been excited to go. But after reading the opinion, she didn’t really feel like putting on a happy face for Beef, Kristen, and their two little boys. On the other hand, it was just a few days before Patrick’s deployment, and she knew she would regret not spending the evening with him.

  In midafternoon, she texted him to let him know that she wasn’t feeling great.

  He replied quickly. You want to just hang out? Call off dinner?

  She stared at the text for a long time. The thought of spending time alone with Patrick was tempting. But it would mean a lot to him for her to meet his friends. She had heard that the SEAL community was a tough group to crack.

  No, I’ll be fine.

  By seven thirty that evening, Paige was glad she had decided to go. The Andersons lived in a crowded neighborhood on a nondescript cul-de-sac in Virginia Beach. Their two boys, four-year-old Justin and three-year-old Caleb, had pretty much taken over the small house. There were toys and shoes and plastic guns scattered around, the walls and shelves crammed with pictures. The Andersons had a big German shepherd named Tiny, and he was a licker.

  “That’s why Patrick brought you here,” Kristen Anderson told Paige. “To make sure you passed muster with Tiny.”

  Paige liked Kristen from the moment she met her. Kristen was a little shorter and frumpier than Paige had imagined she would be. The word on the street was that SEALs’ wives were all “government issue,” beautiful and athletic. But Kristen didn’t fit the mold. She was plain, easygoing, down-to-earth, and very welcoming of Paige. She wore a fitted T-shirt, Bermuda shorts, and sandals despite the chilly weather. Paige liked the fact that Kristen couldn’t cook, or so she claimed. Beef and Patrick spent the first twenty minutes manning the grill.

  “How many deployments have you been through?” Paige asked as the two women stood at the kitchen counter making a salad.

  “Probably ten or fifteen,” Kristen said. She tossed a slice of cucumber to Tiny, who was sitting obediently at her side. “But some of them were pretty short.”

  “What’s the hardest part?”

  “Three days after he comes home. The first two days—and nights—are awesome.” Kristen smiled at the thought of it. “But then Troy starts messing up the routine I’ve established while he’s gone. He wants to fly back in and take over the house, and I’m thinking, we’ve done pretty well while you were gone, thank you. Plus, the first few days he’s back, he lets the boys get away wit
h murder. So yeah, by day three we always have our knock-down, drag-out. Once I win that, we’re good again.”

  A few seconds later, Kristen was mediating an argument between the boys, and Paige was working on the salad solo. She tried to picture herself like this. Was it even possible to be married to a SEAL and still have a normal family and career? Somehow the warmth of this home and the sheer normalcy of it—right down to the boys competing with each other for her attention—were oddly comforting.

  Dinner could only be described as high energy, the boys relentless with their questions. Justin had jagged blond hair that looked like Kristen had cut it while the kid squirmed. He was wide-eyed and polite with a Dennis-the-Menace smile and mischievous blue eyes. Little brother Caleb was nearly the same size, though where Justin was all sinew and bone, Caleb was roly-poly. Caleb was also more sensitive than Justin, looked like his mom, and had already hugged Paige three times by the time they started dinner.

  Much of the conversation centered around Beef’s exploits, which Kristen described in coded PG terms so that little ears wouldn’t pick up any ideas. There were more than a few barroom brawls and a couple of pranks that had gotten out of hand. Patrick grinned sheepishly as Kristen exposed some of his shenanigans as well.

  The real entertainment started after the meal. It came at the insistence of four-year-old Justin, though at first Patrick and Beef politely declined. “Please, Daddy! Please, Uncle Q!”

  When little Caleb started chiming in, Paige knew it was over. The men would be deployed soon, and she could tell that they didn’t have the heart to say no.

  “Sorry about this,” Beef said, and Paige knew she was in for a treat.

  Kristen just shook her head. “Miss Paige is going to think we’re all nuts.” But her two little boys were already scurrying off down the hallway.

  Beef followed them, and Patrick just leaned against the counter, arms crossed, a smirk on his face.

  “Where are they going?” Paige asked.

  “You’ll find out.”

  While the boys got ready, Patrick moved into the family room and started pushing the furniture up against the walls, pulling a coffee table out of the way. A few minutes later, Beef’s deep voice came booming down the hallway that led back to the bedrooms in the single-story ranch.

  “And now, weighing in at a svelte 185 pounds!”

  Kristen almost spit out the water she was drinking. “Add another forty!” she shouted.

  “A nuclear physicist hailing from Transylvania, Pennsylvania, the Incredible Hulk!”

  Following the introduction, Beef Anderson sauntered into the living room, posing and flexing his muscles. He was quite a sight—shirtless and wearing a tight pair of green sweatpants he had cut off at the knees. He had a huge tattoo of an American eagle on his chest, wings spread across his impressive pecs. His face was painted green, and the man could strike a pose.

  “Booo!” Kristen shouted. “Throw the bum out!”

  But Beef just went on posing, undeterred. He was used to being the villain. “Hulk’s partner, from a dairy farm in upstate New York,” he announced, gesturing toward Patrick. “The American doughboy, soft and pudgy and cuddly, also known as Patrick ‘Q’ Quillen!”

  Patrick glanced at Paige, giving her a quick roll of the eyes. Then he moved to the center of the room and bounced around, shaking out his limbs like a true wrestler. He might have been a little embarrassed, but she could tell he loved it.

  “And now, weighing in at forty-three pounds wringing wet, Captain America!”

  Justin Anderson came running down the hall in his Captain America outfit, missing only the trademark shield. He pointed at his dad and started trash-talking. He yelled back to his brother. “Hurry up, Caleb!”

  A few seconds later a chubby little Spider-Man came running down the hallway, his mask skewed to one side, and the fight was on. Patrick and Beef dropped to their knees and rolled around with the boys while Kristen and Paige watched, smiling. The boys liked to jump from the arms of the couch onto the backs of the big men, and the big men liked to twirl the boys around until they got them dizzy and then lie on top of them. Tiny barked and circled the melee and darted in and out of the action. There was a lot of roughhousing and laughing and tickling. At one point, Caleb got kicked in the face and came running to Kristen, crying. Kristen healed him with the magic of a mother’s kiss and sent him back into the fray.

  After a spectacular fifteen-minute cage match, the little boys finally pinned the Navy SEALs, and Beef called the festivities to an end.

  That night did something to Paige that she couldn’t quite describe. She had been at war with her own father since he left when she was in middle school, and she had always felt a little jealous of friends who could turn to their dads for advice. But something about the way Beef was not just a father but also a friend to his little guys made her think that maybe someday she could rise above her own past and experience something like this in her family too. Especially with a guy like Patrick, someone who would not cut and run when things got tough.

  10

  Two days later, on the night before his deployment, Patrick took Paige out for dinner at a fancy restaurant on the boardwalk named Catch 31. It was the first time Paige had seen Patrick in a button-down shirt, along with a dress sweater and his normal jeans. He had wanted to sit at the outside tables with the fire pits, but there was a steady drizzle and a stiff March breeze that forced them to go with plan B.

  They found a cozy booth, and Paige allowed herself to enjoy the time together, chasing away thoughts about the deployment and how long it would be until they saw each other again. When the main course came, they talked about the Anderson family, and Patrick asked Paige if she ever saw herself as a mother. He took a bite of his steak—in a seafood restaurant—and waited for her response.

  “Sure. Someday. But right now I’m more focused on my career.” She turned the question on him—“Have you ever thought about having kids?”—and took a sip of wine.

  “Oh yeah,” Patrick said. “I’d like to have an entire basketball team.”

  Paige stopped mid-bite. “You’re dating the wrong woman for that.”

  Patrick shrugged. “I figured I would start high and leave room to negotiate.”

  Aren’t we skipping a few things? Paige wanted to ask. They had never even talked about marriage, and now they were negotiating kids?

  “Let’s take it one step at a time,” she said.

  “It’s a hypothetical,” Patrick said, grinning. “And if we needed to, I could be a player/coach and settle for four.”

  It wasn’t the only time that night that things got personal. Patrick had a way of asking soft, probing questions, his dark eyes oozing empathy, and Paige would surprise even herself in the way she let him in. They talked about how her father left the family and how her mother had abruptly moved to Nashville in order to marry a pastor as soon as Paige graduated from high school. “That’s the year I stopped going to church,” Paige said.

  There were two boyfriends in college, and one in law school who had proposed to Paige before he graduated and moved to New York City. Six months later he moved in with a coworker, and the wedding was off. “He told me in a phone call,” Paige said. But she knew it was for the best; the guy was on his third female roommate now. “I’ve probably got serious abandonment issues,” she said.

  “Just a poor judge of men,” Patrick said.

  “Undoubtedly.”

  Patrick reached over and took her hand. “You can trust me, Paige. I’m not perfect—you’ve probably figured that out—but I would never hurt you.”

  Paige leaned a little closer. “I know that,” she said.

  Later that night, Patrick pulled into the parking lot of Paige’s condo. They had this thing going where Patrick would jump out of his truck, run around to the passenger’s side, and try to open the door for Paige. But she never waited for him. Instead, she would hesitate for just a moment, then open her own door seconds before he careen
ed around the front bumper to get his hand on the handle.

  But tonight, neither of them got out.

  “You want to come in?” Paige asked.

  He turned to her. “I don’t think I should. I don’t trust myself.”

  They were in the front seat of his truck with a console between them. He reached over it and put his arm around her shoulder, and she scooted toward him. She remembered how awkward it had been on their first date.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Patrick said.

  “Sure.”

  He thought for a moment, as if rehearsing the words in his mind, making sure they came out right—editing, revising, restating. “What would you think about getting married?” he asked.

  The question stunned Paige and, frankly, confused her. Was he proposing? Was it one of those I’ll-ask-you-to-the-prom-if-you-say-yes questions? After just three months?

  “I’m not . . . really sure,” Paige stammered, the surprise evident in her voice. “It seems like everything is happening so fast.”

  There was an awkward silence as her mind reeled. Married?

  “In my world,” Patrick said, “we make quick decisions and trust our instincts. Plus, I’ve prayed about this, and I knew we were right for each other from that first kiss—actually, from the first time we met.”

  Paige had no idea what to say. She leaned toward him, over the console, her head against his shoulder. In her world, she acted on logic, not instincts. And certainly not emotions.

  “I just . . . I don’t know,” Paige said, looking out the front windshield. “I love the thought of it, but I would want to make sure it’s right, not just something we do because you’re going away and we want to lock something in.”

  “Think about it,” Patrick said. “I don’t need an answer tonight. I wasn’t really expecting one.” He hesitated. “Well, to be honest, I did have this plan of proposing on the boardwalk right after dinner. But then the weather . . . and our dinner conversation about that guy who dumped you in law school.”