Chapter One
MONDAYS IN THE SUMMER are made of two sounds.
The first is Mr. Diaz downstairs, banging on his radiator at six-fifteen the way he's banged on his radiator every morning since I moved into this building, even though it's June and there's nothing in that radiator to bang at.
He told me once it was the principle of the thing.
The radiator had given him grief in February, and he'd decided, as a man, that he wasn't going to forget.
The second is the bus letting out its long pneumatic sigh at the stop on the corner, like even the bus is exhausted by the start of a new week.
Mondays in the summer are also—
Nope.
My mind almost had me there.
It's been eighteen years, but my mind just refuses to forget about the worst Monday of my life. I don't even know why that is when my own husband of nine hours forgot he was supposed to spend his wedding night with his bride, and not his...not-bride.
That's all I know of her. She wasn't me.
And that's enough.
I make my coffee. I rinse my cup. I lock my door behind me, two turns of the key the way I've locked it every morning of my careful little life, and head down the four flights to the street. No elevator in this building, but I look at it as my daily workout, so it's fine.
The L's thirty-five minutes if I make my connection and forty-five if I don't, and either way Mr. Bell will be there before I am because Mr. Bell's been the bailiff in Judge Iverson's courtroom since I was in middle school.
The courthouse on a Monday morning has its own specific flavor of madness.
Lawyers with three coffees and one shoelace untied.
Defendants who've cried in the bathroom and are pretending they haven't.
Family members holding bouquets they shouldn't have brought.
I weave through it the way I've weaved through it for twelve years, and even though I've been working here for twelve years, I can still count on one hand the number of people I know by name.
I'm not shy or anything. I'm just...not good with crowds.
They eat up my social battery pretty fast, which is why my best friend Odessa still can't understand why I chose this.
You live in your head, June, she's said to me approximately a hundred times. Why do you also work in a room full of strangers?
To which I've always said: because in this room, I'm the one whose words become the record.
She has yet to find that satisfying, but Odessa lives in Lisbon now, so her opinions arrive on a five-hour delay, and I've learned to outrun them.
"Morning, June." Mr. Bell's already at the bench, polishing the gavel block with the soft cloth he keeps in his breast pocket—a small ritual nobody's ever asked him to perform, which is why he performs it.
"Morning, Mr. Bell."
I set my stenotype case down and start unspooling the cables, the way I've unspooled them every Monday for twelve years. The machine hums to life under my fingers. The transcript file opens. I am, in this small kingdom, exactly where I belong.
"Here's your coffee, Mr. Bell."
"You're always so kind, June."
"And you're always so nice to say that."
It's a script. We've been running it since my first month here. The day Mr. Bell forgets his line is the day I'll know one of us is dying.
Alan, our clerk, jogs in next, twenty-six years old and chronically nine seconds late, his tie crooked in the specific way of a young man who hasn't yet been loved by a woman who fixes ties. He drops the docket on his desk, mouths ‘sorry’ at Mr. Bell, and starts laying out the morning's exhibits.
Linda comes in behind him, our deputy, broad-shouldered, a coffee in one hand and a granola bar in the other. She nods at me—she's not a talker before nine—and takes her post by the door.
And then there were four, I find myself thinking, and almost smile. If you’re an Agatha Christie fan, that might sound ominous. But for me, the four of us is the shape of every Monday I’ve known for twelve years, and that’s the kind of shape I like.
The gallery starts filling, and I hear them before I see them: the shuffle of leather soles, the snap of a purse opening, the low murmur of a wife telling her husband to put the phone away, Chris, and Chris, presumably, putting the phone away.
The gallery, technically, though in my head I've called it the bleachers since my first week, because that's exactly what it feels like when a high-profile divorce is on the docket and twelve cousins from both sides of the family arrive ready to root for their team.
Then Elliot walks in.
He’s not the type of man to turn heads, and sometimes he gets teased about it, too, thanks to a Tribune profile that described him as ‘charmingly average.’ But if courthouse gossip is anything to go by, charmingly average is exactly what attracts women by droves.
Anyway...
Elliot’s approaching, and I’m already feeling bad—
"Good morning, Junebug.”
For both of us—
“Is it just me, or are you looking more beautiful every time I see you?"
Because he’s just been so, um, obvious about his feelings—
"It's just you."
That people have actually started making bets about us. Would they or wouldn’t they? Would she or would he?
"I'll pick you up for dinner at seven."
He's also a big flirt, which is why I don't take anything he says seriously...even if, technically, as an attorney, he's not supposed to lie.
Alan, in the meantime, has stopped arranging exhibit tags by case number, and he’s looking at us with interest because he’s one of those people. “Is that a date?”
"Yes," Elliot says.
"No," I say at the same time. "Mr. Wheeler's just joking, Alan.”
Alan’s face falls. Like I said, he’s one of those people, and judging by his expression, he’s also one of those who’s convinced it’s only a matter of time (and money) before Elliot and I start dating.
Elliot wheels his chair close to my table.
"I wasn't joking, though." He gives me his best puppy-eyed look, and a part of me is distracted. Not because it has an effect on me or anything, but I just suddenly remember overhearing some of our interns talking about Elliot’s puppy-eyed look, and I guess this is it?
The one they can’t resist?
Is it because I’m twice their age that I can, well, resist it?
“I’m always serious with you, Junebug.”
I take my morning's case file out and pretend to study the caption page, even though I've already read it twice on the L.
"Counsel's appearance for the petitioner," I say, in my official-record voice, "is noted."
“Come on, Junebug,” Elliot says cajolingly. “It’s just one date.”
I look at him with exasperation. “How many times—”
He doesn’t even let me finish. “As many times as it takes,” he assures me cheerfully, “to get you to say ‘yes’.”
I can only shake my head. He’s a good man, really. We’ve only known each other for two years, but his life is such an open book unlike—
Strike that, please.
My brain automatically works like a courtroom reporter, striking out every thought I’m not supposed to think. And honestly, it’s been a while since I last thought of him. A really, really long while, and so I wonder...
Why now of all times?
It’s like having someone walk over my grave, but I tell myself it’s nothing. It’s been nothing for eighteen years, and it’s going to stay nothing, too.
The door at the back of the courtroom swings open, and I feel more relieved than I should when Judge Iverson finally makes his appearance, his robe still settling around his shoulders, and his reading glasses pushed up on his forehead.
Mr. Bell calls the room to order. The gallery rises. Alan straightens his tie, and then it begins.
Monday shifts into work mode as my fingers find the keys.
The first case goes for an hour and twenty minutes.
The second one goes for forty. By lunch I've transcribed the dissolution of one twenty-four-year marriage, the contested custody of a Yorkshire terrier named Mr. Pibbles, and a deposition from a man who used the word allegedly so many times I started typing it with my eyes closed.
This is how life's been for the past twelve years, and I like it.
I know what I do isn't much. But I also know what I do matters. And if I do a really good job at it, there are more chances of the good guys winning over the bad guys, even if most days the good guys and the bad guys look like the same exhausted people in slightly different shirts.
At a quarter past five, Elliot sends me a text.
Ride home? Last chance to get out of dinner gracefully.
I send a text back, thanking him for the offer. But declining. Like always. And for more important reasons than he knows.
IT'S HALF PAST SIX when I get to my apartment building.
The guy at 4F, the unit across mine, pokes his head out as I unlock my door. He's eighty-three years old and a retired postman, and his cat is named Eppie.
"Hey, June."
"Good evening, Morris. How's Eppie?"
"Shedding. The man's a menace."
"Tell him I said hi."
"Tell him yourself, he's right here," Morris says, gesturing vaguely behind him at a cat I can't see. "He misses you."
"I'll come by tomorrow."
"He'll be devastated."
This is the building I've lived in for fourteen of the past eighteen years. It's neither the newest nor the nicest on this block, and honestly, the neighborhood isn't the nicest either. But my neighbors are the nicest, which is the kind of math I've come to believe matters more.
I let myself in, and the door clicks shut behind me. I toss my keys in the bowl on the entry table before walking into the living room. It’s all routine. Safe, familiar, and comfortable. Except...today isn’t.
Because there’s a man on my couch, and for one ridiculous second, my brain just...stalls.
Is it the plumber? A shadow? Am I seeing—
No, I’m not seeing things because the man on the couch has just moved, and so I know he’s real, and even worse—
I know...him.
He's sitting forward now, elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped, and the hands themselves are the first thing my body recognizes before my mind does. Big. Square-knuckled. A faint white scar across the back of the right one that I used to trace with my thumb when we watched movies in his living room. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that we tried to watch, but often ended up distracted—
Strike that off the record, please.
My point is, the scar’s still there while the rest of him...
I mean, if I have to be honest...
I was hoping he’d turn into a monster as he ages, but it’s the exact opposite.
His hair's still the same impossible raven-black, but there's grey at the temples now, threaded in with the kind of carelessness that suggests he's never colored it and never will. He was beautiful at twenty-seven, but in his forties, he’s more than that now. He didn’t age like fine wine. The way he’s changed—it’s more like leather, I’d say.
Tougher. More scarred. But at the same time, it’s those imperfections that make him seem more powerful.
Kingly. And so, so much more attractive that he even has me. ..
Me, the girl he married eighteen years ago, and betrayed with another woman, all in the same day—
He even has me thinking life’s so, so unfair because it’s not right.
It’s not right at all that a man without a heart can be this beautiful, and it’s so not fair either that he has me swallowing hard as he rises to his feet.
"Ciao, moglie mia."