Indefensible Read Free Page A

backseat seemed to breathe with her.
    â€œDon’t worry. I can handle it.” That was a blatant lie—she’d never been able to manage her emotions around her children’s father, but she didn’t want to derail her kids’ excitement about their vacation before it had even begun.
    â€œIt’s just that the last time we saw him…” Lucy blinked at Elise. Unshed tears glimmered behind the worry in her eyes. “I don’t want you guys to fight again.”
    Guilt grabbed at Elise’s heart, twisting it into an even tighter knot. As usual, her daughter seemed to read her better than Elise read herself. Her child was her mirrorimage, except with one vital difference: Lucy was sunny where Elise was not. Funny how Lucy’s infancy threw Elise into a depression so deep she barely clawed her way out of it and now her presence was the only thing that kept Elise from falling into it again.
    And what had she done for this daughter who loved her with all her heart?
    Not enough.
    She was going to put the past few months behind her. Behind all of them. This was a chance to start over. She had made sure there would be no lasting reminders of what had transpired between her and her ex-husband in June. There was only one step left—
    A car laid on the horn. She jumped.
    Geez, Halifax drivers have gotten mean.
    â€œMum, it’s a green light.” Lucy glanced at her with a familiar look of concern.
    Elise hit the gas so hard that the SUV lurched forward. “Luce, read me the directions again,” she said, her tone reverting into we-are-starting-a-fun-vacation mode. She wished she didn’t have to force it. A few minutes before, she’d been excited. Just get the damn phone call over with and then celebrate by going out to supper tonight.
    She could do this. She knew she could. Her therapist had coached her over the phone this morning on how to handle this. But anxiety nibbled at her. She reached for another potato chip. The bag was empty.
    Lucy read the scrap of paper. “It says to go down Robie until you reach the lights at Inglis Street, then turn left. Go straight on Inglis until you reach Young Avenue, then turn left onto Point Pleasant Drive.”
    Ten minutes later they reached University Avenue. On impulse, Elise turned right.
    â€œMum, that’s the wrong way,” Lucy cried. From the back, Elise could sense Nick’s sudden alertness, but he said nothing.
    â€œI know,” she said. “It’s just a slight detour. I want to see my alma mater.” She drove down University Avenue, the long boulevard framed with trees, hospitals on either side and a fire station on the corner. Elise slowed when they neared the law school. It had been years since she’d been a student there, almost twenty, but they had been the most formative of her life.
    She’d come to Hollis University Law School at the tender age of twenty-two, untested and unsure of her own strengths. It was hard to remember herself back then. So keen, her mind stretching and expanding to meet the challenge of abstruse legal arguments. She had found her confidence here in Halifax, found some of her closest friends and found a profession.
    Surely she could find herself here again.
    She wondered if all her classmates had screwed up their lives as much as she had. No. Not all of them. Not Cathy. She was just as solid as ever. Just like the building she drove by. Why had Elise wanted to see her law school? Was she hoping that it would remind her of what she had accomplished?
    She was a successful tax lawyer at a prestigious Bay Street firm in Toronto. Acquaintances often asked her—with a note of incredulity in their voice—how she liked being a tax lawyer. Elise knew it sounded dull and arcane, but she loved her work. She loved the elaborate structures, the legal fictions, the satisfaction of renderingconcrete an entity that was abstract. Of giving form to something