A Farewell to Legs by JEFFREY COHEN Page B

others
want. I’m not so close to the solution that whoever’s responsible
has to be worried. Driving from house to house and throwing a rock
through every reporter’s window would take months. I just don’t
understand why they’re after me, and not anybody else.”
    Abby stood up and walked into the kitchen. I
followed, because there’s no point in trying to get her to stop
going somewhere, and she generally has a good reason. Turned out
she did this time, too, as she reached under the sink for the
garbage bags. She was going to throw the glass and splintered wood
away.
    “Wait,” I said, and went into the closet for the
contractor garbage bags, which are heavier and less likely to be
torn by broken glass. “Did you hear any of what I said?”
    “Of course.”
    “So?”
    She turned to me and did a perfect imitation of the
face Leah puts on when she’s in her
“I’m-about-to-become-a-pre-teen-and-boy-are-you-annoying” mood.
“I’m thinking !” Abby fussed, and we both chuckled.
    This time, she followed me back into the living
room, and we started the process of separating the wreckage the
rock in our window had caused from the wreckage that normally makes
up our living room. I was already thinking about how to cover the
pane of glass that had been damaged until repairs could be made,
and decided that cardboard and duct tape were the way to go.
    Abby exhaled, which I took to be a sign the thinking
was over and she had something to say. And sure enough, she said,
“You’re right. It doesn’t make any sense that they’d come after you
as opposed to any of the other reporters. So there’s only one
explanation.”
    Intrigued, I looked up, and came close to cutting
off my left pinkie on jagged glass. “Really? What?”
    Abigail frowned, and spoke quietly. “They must be
coming after me .”

Chapter

Nineteen
    Y ou have to understand, it
was now after two in the morning, and my mind wasn’t firing on all
cylinders. So I gaped at her for a few seconds, and not in the way
I usually do.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “I must have heard you wrong. I
thought you said they were coming after you.”
    “I did,” she answered, and I noticed she hadn’t met
my eyes for a while. “That’s the only logical explanation.”
    “We need a broom,” I told her, and got up to get
one. Abby stared at me as I left the room, went into the same
closet where I had gotten the bag, and emerged with a broom and
dustpan. I came back into the living room, and she was still
staring.
    “Don’t you want me to explain?” she asked.
    I began sweeping up the smaller pieces of glass.
“I’d be willing to bet fifty bucks you can’t,” I said. “What the
hell do you mean, the only logical explanation is that people are
coming after you?”
    Abby sat down on the stairs again and got a dreamy
look on her face, as if she weren’t actually there in the room with
me. When she spoke, it was as if she were talking to herself.
    “I had a case a couple of months ago, a guy who shot
his girlfriend and left her in an alley,” she began.
    “I remember,” I told her. “The pro bono case you
were assigned. She was in the hospital for a couple of weeks, but
she’s okay now, right?”
    She didn’t appear to have heard me. “The girlfriend
had to have four separate surgeries, but she’s mostly all right.
But the client, the shooter, went to jail.”
    “You lost the case.”
    This time, Abigail heard me, and her face sharpened.
She met my eyes for the first time in a number of minutes. “It had
a lot to do with the fact that he was really, really guilty,” she
said. “When six people see you shoot somebody, it’s hard to say you
were actually at the Dairy Queen.”
    “Sorry.” I dumped the last of the glass into the bag
and put the broom down.
    “It’s okay,” she said, dismissing my apology with a
wave of her hand. “Anyway, he got six years. But he got himself
another lawyer, and he’s appealing the decision. The