Where Nobody Dies by Carolyn Wheat

seven. Then it’s lunch and an occasional afternoon snacker. We close at three-thirty and I spend the rest of the afternoon and evening cooking and baking for the next day. When do I make this take-out and how late do I have to be open to sell it?”
    â€œGood questions,” I put in. It was funny to see Dorinda, my least practical friend, turning into a businesswoman before my eyes. With, it must be said, Ezra’s help.
    Of course, Ezra had answers. Of course, Dorinda didn’t like them. Of course, the argument ended in the usual friendly stalemate.
    Finally, Dorinda’s cooking was done, and we stepped out of the restaurant together. As Ezra kissed me good-bye, he whispered, “Cass, I’ve got one word for you, too: burglar alarm.”
    â€œWhy is sex always so much better when you’re on trial?” Matt Riordan’s famous courtroom voice was lazy as he murmured the question into my ear. We both knew the answer, so I replied with a quick hug instead of words. The adrenaline that had carried him through the long, rough court day and the brutal press conference that followed had propelled him into bed. Our lovemaking had been as intense as his cross-examination—and just about as tender. I understood. I try cases, too.
    A muffled snore woke me from a light doze. I raised myself on one elbow and turned to see Matt, exhausted from his long day of performing for court and camera, thoroughly asleep.
    Reminded of the scene in Gaudy Night in which Harriet Vane’s sympathy is aroused by a sleeping Lord Peter, I smiled at my slumbering lover. Sleep had taken years from him; gray-flecked black hair, tousled like a toddler’s, fell across his brow. One hairy arm was flung protectively over his head, as if to ward off a blow. It was, I realized, the only time I’d ever seen Matt Riordan vulnerable.
    And yet, vulnerable he was, and growing more so every day. His entire professional life had been spent on a tightrope, with clear lines of demarcation between what he would and would not do for his clients. Now the lines were beginning to blur. Already the press slyly insinuated that hiring Matt Riordan for the defense was itself a confession of guilt. He’d been held in contempt during his last trial, and before that a federal judge had publicly questioned his ethics. There were new worry lines around the shrewd blue eyes, and it was taking two or three more glasses of whiskey to relax him after a day on trial.
    The tightrope on which he’d always performed was swaying now. I’d tried to talk to him, to share my fears for his future, but Matt Riordan, who’d always prided himself on working without a net, had only laughed.
    Now, watching him sleep away the tension, I found myself wishing I’d pushed the conversation harder, made Matt listen. The feeling was irrational; I knew from experience that no one made Matt Riordan do what he didn’t want to do. And so I sighed and pulled the covers up to his chin. Then I slipped out of bed and went for my coat.
    I went home to Brooklyn. There wasn’t much to smile at in my thoughts, so I spared an inner laugh for the graffiti in the Bergen Street station: In God we trust, in transit we bomb .
    At home, I quickly undressed and sat down to finish the latest Arthur Lyons. It was great, as usual, but the words began to blur before my eyes. Sitting in the glare of a single lamp, a comforter wrapped around me, I thought at first that the real mystery that had entered my life was dwarfing the fiction, but then I found my thoughts wandering.
    Nathan. I felt a sharp pang of loss as I remembered my dead lover. I’d buried my grief in work, realizing for the first time the fierce joy I took in practicing law on my own, without the safety net of Legal Aid. I had a moment’s pride, thinking how proud of me Nathan would have been.
    My house. It was more than a building that devoured my cash—it was a responsibility bigger