Dark Justice Read online

  I knew, at that point, that I had two choices - either co-sign a lease that I was going to be on the hook for, inevitably, as mom evidently could not keep up on her rent, or allow her to move in with me. With great reluctance, I chose the latter.

  I was doing well for myself. I was a senior associate in a large downtown law firm and I was not exactly hurting for money. In fact, I had just bought a condo in Malibu, right on the beach. It was only a two-bedroom condo, although, at 2,500 square feet, it was a fairly large one. Before my mother moved in with me, I was using that extra bedroom as a home office. Now, I had to move my home office into my bedroom, which was fine, because my bedroom was a large one.

  What wasn’t so fine, however, was the fact that my mother was the same as she ever was. That is, she didn’t do a whole lot around the house. She still had a job, working as a model, and she was paid quite well for that. She had always been a model, a sought-after one, even if she never entered the pantheon of supermodel. Now, because she was almost 70 years old, but could easily pass for her early 50s, she was getting jobs that catered towards the senior community. That hurt her ego, I knew, because mom never wanted to think of herself as being senior in any way, shape or form. Therefore, she could never imagine that she was going to be used to sell products geared towards the older folks. Yet, she knew the reality, which was that she had to take what she could get. She made commercials for things like AARP, Depends, senior citizen dating services, protein drinks such as Ensure, and other commercials that were shown to seniors across the country.

  I was just happy that she was working. I knew that she was paid well, so I knew that she should be helping out around the house as far as expenses go. However, almost every cent that she made doing this modeling gig was spent on shopping and shoes and going out to lunch with her girlfriends. I had threatened to kick her out of the condo many times before, because it annoyed me that she spent her money on things other than the upkeep of the house, but she had always managed to manipulate me and talk me out of it just when I was ready to show her the door.

  There was one other potential problem with my mother living with me, although I hoped that this problem wouldn’t become a reality for a long time. I was possibly going to be taking two young girls into my home.

  I found out about this six months ago, and I had been bracing myself for that reality ever since. I had a home study done and I had been approved. But then my mother showed up, and completely threw everything off the rails. I had to only hope that I had time to make the necessary provisions for the two girls before something happened to their mother, who was their only parent. That was, get a bigger place and get my mother to stop storing her weed around the house. I was prepared to bring the girls into my condo, as it was big enough for the three of us. However, with my mother there, the condo wasn’t big enough anymore, and that was a problem.

  As I jogged along, I thought about how I found out that I was potentially going to be a parental figure to two young girls. I had gotten into my office, as usual. I liked to decompress when I went to the office, which included eating breakfast at my desk while surfing the Internet for entertainment and research for the day. I didn’t like to be disturbed for at least a half hour, yet my assistant, Sarah Tucker, barged on in anyhow.

  “Is there something that you need to tell me, something that can’t wait until after I put my bag down, have breakfast at my desk, and log online to see what’s going on?” That was my ritual when I got into the office. Along with my cup of coffee, I usually had a low-carb protein shake that I would bring from home, and I would drink it at my desk, along with eating a stick of string cheese or some nuts. I would have my breakfast, such as it was, at my desk while I got online and surfed around to my favorite sites. That was always something that would relax me, and I needed to have that ritual before I faced the day there at the firm. Sarah knew this, so I couldn’t understand why it was that she was going to be barging in on me like this.

  “Yes. There is something very important for me to talk to you about.”

  I felt defeated, but I pointed to the chair in my office across my desk. “Have a seat. Tell me what you need to tell me.”

  “Do you remember a case that you took when you were a baby lawyer, and you were working assigned cases in the Family Court?”

  “Yes. Of course I remember those days.” To tell the truth, those were some of the worst days of my life. Family Court was the ninth circle of hell, if not the pit of hell. I was inevitably defending some kind of crack whore who was trying to hold onto her kids, even in the face of a serious addiction and serious neglect. I couldn’t count the number of times that a mother would appear in court, stoned or high, and she would drop a dirty urine test. She would feign innocence about how she “dropped dirty,” when she “knew” that she had not gotten high lately.

  It was all so ridiculous. It was all such a game. My client would try to convince me that the test was dirty because it had been tampered with, or that she had eaten a poppy seed bagel and that made the test results positive, or some such excuse. I never quite understood mothers who were so desperate to get their kids back, but not desperate enough that they could stay straight for just that one morning. They knew that they would be taking a drug test. They had to know that if they were serious about getting the kids back, it would mean that they would have to not show up high. But they would show up high, they would flunk the urine test, and they would inevitably have their parental rights terminated.

  I tapped my figures on my desk is I stared at Sarah. There was something else that she was going to tell me. Obviously. But she certainly was slow in coming out with it, whatever it was.

  “Do you specifically remember a client by the name of Teresa Vinova? If you remember rightly, she had her kids taken away from her, because she was doing drugs. And, from what I understand, she was one of the rare ones who got them back. She has two kids, age 14 and 8, both girls. Their names are Arabella and Luna. Is any of this striking a cord with you?”

  I nodded my head. “Yes. I remember that. She was one of the rare ones, as she get her act together and was able to keep her kids. And, as I remember it, the father of those two kids was in prison, serving time for robbery.”

  Sarah smiled. “That’s right. You have a good memory. Incidentally, the father is no longer incarcerated. He had a heart attack in prison, and he died within 24 hours. So, Teresa is the only living relative of these two kids. And now she’s dying. Ovarian cancer. The doctors have given her just over a year, as it’s Stage IV.”

  Those poor kids. Two drug addicted parents, and now the father was dead and the mother soon would be. “That’s sad, between their mother doing drugs and their father being in prison for robbery. Those two kids have gone through too much in their young lives and now apparently they’re going to have nobody.” Their mother was addicted, and then got clean, and then relapsed, again and again. Nonetheless, I wasn’t quite sure what any of this had to do with me. I shook my head. “As I said, that’s sad, but what does it have to do with me?”

  “I’ll tell you what it has to do with you. There is a conservator for her estate. Apparently, Teresa had the presence of mind to make a will. In her will, she stated that if anything should happen to her, she wanted you to be the guardian of her children. I’ve been talking to the conservator, who is waiting in the conference room, and she’s told me that the will only dealt with this particular issue. Apparently, Teresa had no property to pass onto her girls, so she only hired a conservator because she wanted to make sure that the girls were cared for after she died.

  Now, you can try to fight this. And I wouldn’t blame you, because I know that you’re not exactly equipped to take in two children, let alone a teenager. But of course, if you don’t take these kids, they’re going to go into the system. So, I thought you might want to talk to this conservator about the situation.”

  I wasn’t quite comprehending what Sarah was telling me. It sounded like she was telling me that I was goi
ng to have to take in two small girls. I had no clue what these girls were like. What I did know was that they had an addicted mother, and the father was probably also an addict. At least, that was what I gathered about him – he robbed a liquor store because he needed money to buy drugs. That certainly sounded like he probably was an addict. So these two girls had two drug addicted parents, their father was dead and their mother soon would be. What were the chances that I was going to be able to take care of two children who came from such a situation and were more likely than not to have some kind of genetic predisposition towards addiction?

  Nonetheless, I couldn’t abandon these two girls, and, at that time, I had plenty of room in my condo for them. I knew that if I said “no” to the guardianship, which was my choice, as I was never consulted by Teresa on the situation, then the girls would end up foster care. There was always a possibility that they would be split up if they went into the system, and the older child, at the age of 14, might have difficulty finding a home. The younger one probably would have been able to find a decent foster care situation, but not everybody was keen to take in a teenager into their homes. I wasn’t going to leave those two girls to that situation, so I went ahead and consented to the guardianship.

  I met with the conservator of Teresa’s will, had the necessary paperwork drawn up, had the home study done with a social worker who did a background check on me and did an in-depth interview where I was asked all manner of really personal questions, and the whole guardianship was signed off by a judge. At that point, it was only a matter of waiting for poor Teresa to die, and then I would go ahead and take custody of the girls.

  But when my mother showed up, it was a whole different ballgame. The major thing was that the condo suddenly wasn’t big enough for me and the two girls. I would have to find a bigger place, which wouldn’t necessarily be that big of a deal. After all, I was able to pay cash for my $2 million condo on the beach, because I settled a large class-action lawsuit where my fees ended up being $4 million. I bought this condo five years earlier, so I knew that it had gone up in value, and I also knew that selling it would go a long way towards a down payment on a larger condo, hopefully in the same area.

  I’d grown to really love living on the beach. There was nothing that was quite like having a glass of wine on the terrace and listening to the sounds of the ocean waves, and seeing people outside at all times. There was something comforting to me about being in the middle of so much action.

  I also loved being able to just take a swim whenever I wanted to, and I ran along the beach every single morning. There was no way that I wanted to move away from my neighborhood. So, when my mother showed up, I immediately started looking for a larger place, in anticipation of getting the girls. I also was going to call the social worker who had approved the original home study and explain to her the situation with my mother, so that she could okay the new arrangement.

  My mother was going to be a pain in the ass, as far as my getting the girls. She wasn’t the best of influences. I grew up fine, even though I was an only child, and she was a single mother, therefore she was my only role model growing up. How I managed to come out in one piece after growing up with her, and only her, I didn’t really know. I didn’t know how I managed to stay sane with her as a mother, let alone be able to go to Stanford Law school and graduate towards the top of my class, not to mention being an editor of the Stanford Law Review. She therefore didn’t manage to screw me up too badly, so maybe she wouldn’t screw up the girls, either.

  And she might actually be a help. If she decided to clean up her act, and promised me that she wouldn’t get too drunk, or smoke pot, or generally be irresponsible, there was the possibility that she might actually be able to watch these kids while I was working. Of course, that was probably asking way too much. What I did know, however, was that I was going to have to find somebody to watch those kids while I was working.

  I finished my run down the beach and I could see my condo in sight. It was time to get dressed and go to work.

  I got to the condo, and my mom was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a grapefruit.

  I looked at her suspiciously. “That grapefruit has a lot of carbs in it, doesn’t it?” I asked her. With her grapefruit was her usual breakfast accompaniment - an extra spicy Bloody Mary.

  For as long as I’d known her, she’s had a Bloody Mary with her breakfast. Usually, thankfully, that was the only drink that she would have all day. She insisted that the Bloody Mary was the best way to wake up, and was much better for her mental state than coffee would be. Not that I would know – I never drank coffee, and for that matter, I never drank a Bloody Mary in the morning. I did drink, socially, but there was something about drinking before 7 AM that made me want to vomit. Of course, mom would always say that it’s 5 o’clock somewhere, and that was her excuse. It was a lame excuse, but nevertheless it was an excuse that she made. I didn’t know if she was being funny when she would say things like that, or if she really believed it. Either of these scenarios were a possibility.

  She smiled. “Oh, dear, I thought you knew that I was re-feeding.” Mom adhered very strictly to a very low carb diet for the most part, as did I. That was one of the good things about my mother, to be honest. She was on a low-carb high-fat diet long before Atkins became a household word, and, because my mother was human, in that she loved bread and sweets, she figured out how to make low-carb versions of her favorite foods. Through her, I learned how to make low-carb pizza crusts, low-carb bagels, low-carb cookies and crackers, and all kinds of treats. Because of that, I never had a weight problem, and I managed to stay under 130 pounds even though I’m 5’9”. Growing up, our house never had potato chips and cookies and junk like that. My friends had them at their houses, but I never did. Because I never started eating them, I never started missing them.

  I always forgot, however, that sometimes my mother did what she called re-feeding. That was when she, every once in awhile, had a day where she ate a lot of carbohydrates. That didn’t mean that she went out and got cinnamon rolls and donuts. Rather, for my mother, it meant that she ate higher carb fruits, such as grapefruits.

  “I forgot.” I headed towards my shower, my mother following me into the bathroom, her spoon scraping out the grapefruit. I knew that I was going to have to mop up the grapefruit juice off the hardwood floor, because my mother was never careful about such things. She didn’t bother to have a plate for her grapefruit, she just scooped it out and let it juice all over the floor as she walked.

  She followed me into the bathroom and sat on the toilet while I undressed and got into the shower.

  That was another thing about my mother. She never believed in giving me my space. I just got used to the fact that she was going to talk to me while I was in the shower, and I had to strip down front of her.

  “Dear,” she said to me as I washed my hair and scrubbed up. “Did you hear about that actress?”

  “Addison Wentworth?” I asked her. “Of course I’ve heard about it. Everybody’s heard about it.” It didn’t help that Addison’s mansion, at least one of her mansions, was just down the beach from my condo. It was within running distance from me. Because Addison’s mansion was so close to where I lived, I could see down the street that there were camera crews and reporters on her front lawn. Constantly, 24/7. As far as I knew, she had been missing only since yesterday, but it was already the biggest story in town.

  “What do you think about that? I’m going to see my psychic today, and then ask her about this situation and see what she has to say about it. I have a feeling that you’re going to be taking the case.”

  I took a deep breath as the water poured over me in the shower. That was another thing about my mother. She fashioned herself to be a psychic, and I had to admit that most of the stuff that she told me was going to happen usually did come true. Tarot cards would tell her this or that, and she also had spirits around her who would tell her other things.

  Mom did Tarot card spreads
every day of the week. She depended on the spreads, her spiritual advisors, and astrological charts to tell her the best times to take trips, or take a new job. She also consulted them before she started dating somebody new. Mom dated both men and women, although she always told me that she preferred men. Nonetheless, over the course of my life, she’d been in a relationship with three men long-term, and two women long-term. One of the women who she dated was currently her best friend, Natalie.

  “And what, pray tell, tells you that I’m going to be involved in this case? Besides, as far as I know, nobody has been charged in his case. From what I understand, the police are tracking down leads and questioning people, but nobody has yet been arrested.”

  I stepped out of the shower, and put a towel around me. Mom was still sitting on the toilet, drinking her Bloody Mary. I was happy that this was a very large bathroom. It was attached to my bedroom, and it was one of my favorite parts of the house. The shower was large, and there was a jacuzzi tub that I enjoyed immensely. Nothing relaxed me more than sinking into that tub and blasting the jets, while drinking a glass of wine. The sinks were black granite and even the toilet was made of marble. That was one of the things I really wanted when I looked for a condo - a nice bathroom. That, and a large kitchen. I loved to cook, so having a large kitchen with an island and lots of overhead space for my high dollar sauté pots and pans was important.

  I loved my condo. It had hardwood floors throughout, with a large balcony that overlooked the beach, and lots of windows. I was my mother’s daughter in a few different ways, and one of the ways was that I favored colorful furniture. In the condo were a matching deep-purple couch and chair, a coffee table with an artistic painting etched into the top, a huge leather easy chair and a big-screen television in the living room and the den. Colorful throw rugs in complementary colors were strewn all over the living room and dining room. My dining room table was made of distressed wood, with overhead chandeliers that were in different colors. The table was as tall as the chairs, which also had colorful cushions.