WE ARE ALL, I SUPPOSE, beholden to our parents—the question is, how much? This is what runs through mymind while my mother jabbers on about my father’s latest affair. Not for the first time, I wish for siblings—ifonly so that I would receive sunrise phone calls like this only once or twice a week, instead of seven.

“Mother,” I interrupt, “I doubt that she’s actually sixteen.”

“You underestimate your father, Campbell.”

Maybe, but I also know that he’s a federal judge. He may leer after schoolgirls, but he’d never do anythingillegal. “Mom, I’m late for court. I’ll check back in with you later,” I say, and I hang up before she canprotest.

I am not going to court, but still. Taking a deep breath, I shake my head and find Judge staring at me.

“Reason number 106 why dogs are smarter than humans,” I say. “Once you leave the litter, you sever contactwith your mothers.”

I walk into the kitchen as I am knotting my tie. My apartment, it is a work of art. Sleek and minimalist, butwhat is there is the best that money can buy—a one-of-a-kind black leather couch; a flat screen televisionhanging on the wall; a locked glass case filled with signed first editions from authors like Hemingway andHawthorne. My coffeemaker comes imported from Italy; my refrigerator is sub-zero. I open it and find asingle onion, a bottle of ketchup, and three rolls of black-and-white film.

This, too, is no surprise—I rarely eat at home. Judge is so used to restaurant food he wouldn’t recognizekibble if it slid its way down his throat. “What do you think?” I ask him. “Rosie’s sound good?”

He barks as I fasten his service-dog harness. Judge and I have been together for seven years. I bought himfrom a breeder of police dogs, but he was specially trained with me in mind. As for his name, well, whatattorney wouldn’t want to be able to put a Judge in a crate every now and then?

Rosie’s is what Starbucks wishes it was: eclectic and funky, crammed with patrons who at any time might bereading Russian lit in its original tongue or balancing a company’s budget on a laptop or writing a screenplaywhile mainlining caffeine. Judge and I usually walk there and sit at our usual table, in the back. We order adouble espresso and two chocolate croissants, and we flirt shamelessly with Ophelia, the twenty-year-oldwaitress. But today, when we walk inside, Ophelia is nowhere to be found and there is a woman sitting at ourtable, feeding a toddler in a stroller a bagel. This throws me for such a loop that Judge needs to tug me to theonly spot that’s free, a stool at the counter that looks out on the street.

Seven-thirty A.M., and already this day is a bust.

A heroin-thin boy with enough rings in his eyebrows to resemble a shower curtain rod approaches with a pad.

He sees Judge at my feet. “Sorry, dude. No dogs allowed.”

“This is a service dog,” I explain. “Where’s Ophelia?”

“She’s gone, man. Eloped, last night.”

Eloped? People still do that? “With whom?” I ask, though it’s none of my business.

“Some performance artist who sculpts dog crap into busts of world leaders. It’s supposed to be a statement.”

I feel a momentary pang for poor Ophelia. Take it from me: love has all the lasting permanence of a rainbow—beautiful while it’s there, and just as likely to have disappeared by the time you blink.

The waiter reaches into his back pocket and hands me a plastic card. “Here’s the Braille menu.”

“I want a double espresso and two croissants, and I’m not blind.”

“Then what’s Fido for?”

“I have SARS,” I say. “He’s tallying the people I infect.”

The waiter can’t seem to figure out if I am joking. He backs away, unsure, to get my coffee.

Unlike my normal table, this one has a view of the street. I watch an elderly lady narrowly avoid the swipe ofa taxi; a boy dances past with a radio three times the size of his head balanced on his shoulder. Twins inparochial school uniforms giggle behind the pages of a teen magazine. And a woman with a running river ofblack hair spills coffee on her skirt, dropping the paper cup on the pavement.

Inside me, everything stops. I wait for her to lift her face—to see if this could possibly be who I think it is—but she turns away from me, blotting the fabric with a napkin. A bus cuts the world in half, and my cell phonebegins to ring.

I glance down at the incoming number: no surprise there. Turning off the power button without bothering totake my mother’s call, I glance back at the woman outside the window, but by then the bus is gone and so isshe.

I open the door of the office, already barking orders for Kerri. “Call Osterlitz and ask him whether he’savailable to testify during the Weiland trial; get a list of other complainants who’ve gone up against NewEngland Power in the past five years; make me a copy of the Melbourne deposition; and phone Jerry at thecourt and ask who the judge is going to be for the Fitzgerald kid’s hearing.”

She glances up at me as the phone begins to ring. “Speaking of.” She jerks her head in the direction of thedoor to my inner sanctum. Anna Fitzgerald stands on the threshold with a spray can of industrial cleaner anda chamois cloth, polishing the doorknob.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“What you told me to.” She looks down at the dog. “Hey, Judge.”

“Line two for you,” Kerri interrupts. I give her a measured look—why she even let this kid in here is beyondme—and try to get into my office, but whatever Anna has put on the hardware makes it too greasy to turn. Istruggle for a moment, until she grips the knob with the cloth and opens the door for me.

Judge circles the floor, finding the most comfortable spot. I punch the blinking light on the call row.

“Campbell Alexander.”

“Mr. Alexander, this is Sara Fitzgerald. Anna Fitzgerald’s mother.” I let this information settle. I stare at herdaughter, polishing a mere five feet away.

“Mrs. Fitzgerald,” I answer, and as expected, Anna stops in her tracks.

“I’m calling because…well, you see, this is all a misunderstanding.”

“Have you filed a response to the petition?”

“That isn’t going to be necessary. I spoke to Anna last night, and she isn’t going to continue with her case.

She wants to do anything she can to help Kate.”

“Is that so.” My voice falls flat. “Unfortunately, if my client is planning to call off her lawsuit, I’ll need tohear it directly from her.” I raise a brow, catch Anna’s gaze. “You wouldn’t happen to know where she is?”

“She went out for a run,” Sara Fitzgerald says. “But we’re going to come down to the courthouse thisafternoon. We’ll talk to the judge, and get this straightened out.”

“I suppose I’ll see you then.” I hang up the phone and cross my arms, look at Anna. “Is there somethingyou’d like to tell me?”

She shrugs. “Not really.”

“That’s not what your mother seems to think. Then again, she’s also under the impression that you’re outplaying Flo Jo.”

Anna glances out into the reception area, where Kerri, naturally, is hanging on our words like a cat on a rope.

She closes the door and walks up to my desk. “I couldn’t tell her I was coming here, not after last night.”

“What happened last night?” When Anna goes mute, I lose my patience. “Listen. If you’re not going to gothrough with a lawsuit…if this is a colossal waste of my time…then I’d appreciate it if you had the honestyto tell me now, rather than later. Because I’m not a family therapist or your best buddy; I’m your attorney.

And for me to be your attorney there actually has to be a case. So I will ask you one more time: have youchanged your mind about this lawsuit?”

I expect this tirade to put an end to the litigation, to reduce Anna to a wavering puddle of indecision. But tomy surprise, she looks right at me, cool and collected. “Are you still willing to represent me?” she asks.

Against my better judgment, I say yes.

“Then no,” she says, “I haven’t changed my mind.”

The first time I sailed in a yacht club race with my father I was fourteen, and he was dead set against it. Iwasn’t old enough; I wasn’t mature enough; the weather was too iffy. What he really was saying was thathaving me crew for him was more likely to lose him the cup than to win it. In my father’s eyes, if youweren’t perfect, you simply weren’t.

His boat was a USA-1 class, a marvel of mahogany and teak, one he’d bought from the keyboard player J.

Geils up in Marblehead. In other words: a dream, a status symbol, and a rite of passage, all wrapped up in agleaming white sail and a honey-colored hull.

We hit the start dead-on, crossing the line at full sail just as the cannon shot off. I did my best to be a stepahead of where my father needed me to be—guiding the rudder before he even gave the order, jibing andtacking until my muscles burned with effort. And maybe this even would have had a happy ending, but then astorm blew ............