Free The Abortionist's Daughter by Elisabeth Hyde

the report. I’ve got to be professional here,” she said. “You and I are friends. I don’t want the report thrown out for bias.”
    “What, so you think I killed her?”
    “No, Frank,” she said. “But I’ve been in court. I know what they can do with a written report. Let’s just take steps to make sure everything’s above board here.”
    “Jesus, Piper.”
    “Frank, you’re tired,” she said. “You’re tired and about as stressed as anybody can possibly be. It’s no big deal, John writing the report. It won’t say anything different from what I would say. It’s just that John’s not a good friend of yours.”
    “So?”
    Piper was quiet for a moment. “We go back a bit, Frank,” she reminded him.
    Frank looked up. Megan was watching him closely. He scribbled the words
nothing final
on a piece of paper, then stepped out onto the deck and huddled back against the door, where the deck was barren of snow. The sky had cleared, but the air remained frigid.
    “What are you saying, Piper?” he said in a low voice. “You suddenly feel like telling the whole town we slept together a couple of times?”
    “It was more than a couple of times,” said Piper, “if you remember. And I wouldn’t have to tell anyone; the whole town knew. Look, Frank, I don’t think you realize something. This isn’t just some accident in a pool. And Diana’s not Marcus Welby. The press is going to be all over this tomorrow. Now, I’m your friend, but I’ve got two kids in college and I’m up for reelection next year. Do you see what I’m saying?”
    She was right, but Frank felt a strong sense not only of abandonment but of accusation as well. Having once been intimate with him, Piper knew a lot of things about his relationship with Diana that most people didn’t know. And she knew
him
too: how under the right set of circumstances, his temper could flare.
    “So fine,” he said. “Have John write up the report.”
    “I will. And Frank?”
    “What?”
    “You’re going to need an attorney,” she said.
    —————
    The children who lived on Hill Street were crushed to learn that after fourteen hours of blizzardlike conditions, school authorities still refused to declare a snow day on that cold Wednesday morning. Particularly crushed because, having had no major snowstorms in three years, they’d spent the previous night waxing sleds and tying up phone lines as they debated the relative merits of every hill, every slope in the neighborhood. Given their high expectations, the disheartening news from the radio that morning gave them no recourse but to crawl back into bed and groan and complain until their parents (who felt quite the opposite about snow days, who hated them with a vengeance for the hole they dug into daily routines) threatened to withhold television privileges if the kids didn’t snap to it and get moving.
    So the kids got up; they got dressed; they ate their breakfasts with morose faces. But then they opened their doors and saw the yellow tape stretched all around the Thompson-Duprey yard—the people who’d put a friggin’
pool
in their house and never invited anyone to try it
out
!—and their long gloomy faces lit up. A crime! In their neighborhood! Wow!
    Even the parents got excited: by the time the yellow school bus came lumbering up the street, five or six of them stood huddling together, unwashed, unshaven, holding steaming mugs of coffee as they speculated on the possibilities. Only one of them had seen the ambulance the night before, the others having closed their drapes to insulate their great rooms from the bitter cold; but the one who saw the ambulance was consumed with problems of her own, namely her eighty-six-year-old mother out in California who’d just that evening wandered out of the nursing home in another Alzheimer’s fog. Now this morning, with the yellow tape suggesting a slew of dark possibili-ties, everyone’s mind was racing, and as they waited for the bus, they