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will only get better now.”
    He’d wanted to believe it, if for no other reason than
to spite his father, the honorable mayor of New Orleans at that time, who felt
J.D., his shining hope for the future, was throwing his life away by marrying
the daughter of a used car salesman.
    No, he hadn’t been in love with Laura any more than
she had been in love with him. But neither of them believed in abortion, and
both believed that, eventually, they could come to love one another, for the
sake of the child, if nothing else.
    For a while, the hope had sparkled like new diamonds.
William Damascus had been a dream child, healthy, happy, a bundle of pleasure
that filled J.D. with enough love that he didn’t miss the void of affection he
shared with his wife. But, little by little, the glimmer had eroded as he was
forced, thanks to his father cutting him off financially, to work a night job
in order to pay his way through his last year of law school.
    The pressures of school and mounting bills had corrupted
their home life. There had been talk of divorce. But again, the thought of his
father’s “I told you so” had been the impetus to hang in there. He had been
certain, once he passed the bar and landed the A.D.A.’s position, that he and
Laura could start fresh. William was everything to him. The idea of weekend
visiting privileges seemed intolerable.
    Yet, despite the immense love he had felt for his son,
he found himself burying himself more deeply in his career. Avoidance, a marriage counselor had
termed it. A failure to communicate. If he would be more attentive to his
affection-deprived wife, perhaps she wouldn’t need to drown her sorrows in
American Express Platinum cards and daily jaunts through the Neiman Marcus
catalogues. J.D. had snidely remarked that if she backed off the Am Ex and Neiman
Marcus catalogues, perhaps he wouldn’t have to put in twenty hours a week of
overtime.
    It hadn’t helped that, thanks to hourly threats from
the criminal element, he was forced to start wearing a gun.
    In a space of two short years he had become The Man
Most Likely to Be Snuffed.
    The prediction had almost come to fruition when someone
unloaded a shotgun through his bedroom window. In order to keep Laura from
collecting Billy and hightailing it to her parents in Milwaukee, he had taken a
leave of absence to try to save their marriage. They’d rented a condo in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and tried to revive their nonexistent love for one another—romantic
walks on the beach in the moonlight, champagne and candlelight, and sex like
horny teenagers. Two weeks later, they had driven away from the love nest with
the absolute certainty that they had no future together. Three weeks later,
Laura had informed him she was pregnant. So much for condoms.
    He couldn’t imagine that he could ever love another
child as much as he loved Billy. Not possible. But the moment he held Lisa in
his arms, he had been gut-punched, brought to his knees by her cherubic face,
awash with such heartrending responsibility and protectiveness, he had been
willing to sell his soul to the devil to keep the marriage together. He cut
back his workload, lived for the moment when he could sprawl on the floor and
allow the children to jump on his belly as if he were a trampoline. Never mind
that he and Laura existed in an emotional vacuum where they rarely spoke and
slept in separate bedrooms. The love he felt for his children was his cup that
runneth over.
    Lisa with her wispy, blond pigtails bouncing around
her shoulders as she chased butterflies in the park.
    Billy on the first day of school looking back over his
shoulder, eyes full of tears, as J.D. stood on the sidewalk with his hands
crammed in his pockets and a knot the size of a goose egg in his throat.
    Birthday parties, tooth fairies, Santa Claus.
    Then they were gone.
    As J.D. lay in the dark in his bed, the nearby buzz
fan doing little to assuage the heat that made his naked body sweat, he stared
at the