Free Compelling Evidence by Steve Martini Page A

energized innocence will never have a childhood like my own, two loving parents together with her. My daughter is rapidly becoming the product of a broken home. "I have to go to the store for a few minutes. I may not be here when you two get back." There's an edge to Nikki's voice. Watching Sarah and me, she's caught herself teetering on the Precipice of happiness in my presence. But my wife is nothing @.,#
    not resilient. Quickly she recovers her balance and is again the jimage, the very soul, of indifference. Jj' "I was just going to take her to the park. I thought you might I‐MIT to come along. We could have lunch out."

    F‐ don't think so." The apathy of her voice is overshadowed 10fly by the aloof language of her body huddled over the sink, her M*k to me. "The two of you should have some time alone."

    to see the signs. Still, I am sure in the deep recesses of my soul that had I known, it would not have changed the ultimate result. "I'm sorry about Ben Potter. I know you'll miss him a great deal," It's delivered with meaning. But I'm reminded of Clarence Darrow, who admitted that while he never wished for the death of another man, there had been a few obituaries he had read with some pleasure. I think that Ben's passing is such an event for Nikki. "The two of you spent a lot of time together,"
    she, says. More time, she means, than I spent with her. Nikki still does not know the reason for my abrupt departure from Potter, Skarpellos.
    Whether she doesn't care, or simply hasn't mustered the brass to ask, Tv'e yet to discern. She is packing a considerable burden of pain these days, masked by a cool indifference that I know is only skin deep. With our separation I have finally come to concede, at least in my own mind, that I had relegated my family, Nikki and Sarah, to some secondary place in my life. Nikki could not win in this war with my career, and she has always taken that as her own special failing in life. "The firm was a busy place. It's the nature of law practice."

    "I know. But if it means anything, I just think that he appreciated the fact that you never let him down." She locks on my eyes for a fleetitig instant, reading the pupils like tea leaves. "All those long hours, briefs to write, prepping for trials into the early hours of the morning. Whenever be called, you were there. It was a little more than just work," she says. "It mattered what he thought of you. It mattered to you. That was important."

    She's tight. I'd come to realize too late that a single psychic
    "attaboy" from Ben was worth any endless number of long hours locked in the mental drudgery of the fluorescent cave that was my office at P&S.
    For at least forty of his sixty years Potter was a human dynamo, the closest thing to perpetual energy this side of the sun. He worked seven days a week. In addition to his law practice and academic pursuits, he served on a dozen government and private panels. He was the penulfirnate blue‐ribbon commissiober. Work was his life. It was his addiction.
    Perhaps it was because of this that Nikki never trusted him, nor for that matter liked him much. He had made particular efforts to be gracious in her company. But for some unstated reason she 'treated these gestures with the skepticism one might reserve for alchemy. I knew almost from the beginning that my marriage ‐.wlk my continued association with Ben were relationships , M‐R to produce friction‐that one would ultimately devour the 01 I suppose I also knew which was likely to fall victim, for 1', contracted the disease of my mentor. I'd become afflicted
    "X1 a compulsive and purposeless need for work. That is what iw,7711 our marriage. "Your work was important to you:' she says.
    Nikki's T‐le making justifications for me. I leave it alone, let it stand, as a truism. "What about her?" asks Nikki. "Who?"

    "Ben's wife‐what's her name‐Tricia?" 1 pause for an instant, as if I have to search the dark of my memory for the name of some fleeting