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off, get lost, end up outside all night. One day we might not find her in time. Your dad wouldn’t have wanted that.’
    Book thanked the officer and hung up the phone. He could not abide the thought of his mother in a nursing home. Myrna regarded him over her reading glasses.
    ‘You okay?’
    He wasn’t, but he nodded yes.
    ‘Messages?’
    Myrna held up pink call slips. ‘Fox wants you on the Sunday morning show, by satellite. To debate the Supreme Court’s decision on Obamacare.’
    ‘With whom?’
    ‘McConnell.’
    ‘Again? After our last debate?’
    ‘He’s a politician, doesn’t know you made him look like a fool.’
    ‘Wasn’t exactly hard work.’
    ‘And
Meet the Press
wants you to debate Schumer.’
    ‘Him, too?’
    She shrugged. ‘They’re gluttons for punishment.’
    ‘What else?’
    ‘They’re stupid, they’re egomaniacs, they’re—’
    ‘The messages.’
    ‘The
Wall Street Journal
and the
New York Times
want your comments on the case.’
    ‘When?’
    ‘Today. Front-page articles in tomorrow’s editions. And you’re late for the faculty meeting.’
    Myrnareached down to her oversized purse and came up again with a sealed plastic container. Several years back, she started bringing him leftovers from dinner the night before because he ate protein bars for breakfast, bachelor and all; it was now a daily ritual.
    ‘Chicken quesadillas,’ she said.
    ‘With your guacamole?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Thanks.’
    ‘Stu said I should charge you, even if they are just leftovers.’
    ‘Remind Stu that I didn’t charge him for his murder case.’
    A year before, Myrna’s husband had accidentally run over an armadillo in his four-wheel-drive pickup truck. An animal-rights activist, which is to say, a resident of Austin, had witnessed the ‘murder’ and called the police. The district attorney, up for reelection, charged Stu with animal cruelty. Book defended him and won an acquittal.
    ‘Mail?’
    Myrna pointed a thumb at his office door behind her. He walked through the open door and into his office crowded with a leather couch, a bookshelf filled with casebooks and a crash helmet, law review articles stacked along the walls, Southwestern art and framed photographs of himself with Willie Nelson and ZZ Top and other Texas musicians, a cluttered desk with an open laptop, and a work table where a young woman sat reading his mail.
    ‘Who are you?’
    ‘Nadine Honeywell. I’m a two-L. The dean of students sent me over. I’m your new intern.’
    Tenure had also earned Book a paid student assistant to help with his research, his law review articles, and his correspondence.
    ‘Where’s Renée?’
    ‘She quit.’
    ‘
Why
?’
    Nadineshrugged. ‘All she said was, “I didn’t go to law school to get shot at.” She was just joking, right, Professor?’
    Book dropped the armload of books and notes and Myrna’s plastic container onto the couch then stepped to the solitary window and stared out at the treed campus. He had grown to like Renée. Just as he had grown to like all of his interns. But sooner or later, they all quit.
    ‘Right, Professor?’
    He sighed. ‘Yes, Ms. Honeywell. She was just joking.’
    ‘I thought so.’
    He turned from the window. Nadine squirted hand sanitizer from a small plastic bottle into one palm then rubbed her hands together. The room now reeked of alcohol. She wore a T-shirt, shorts, sandals, and black-framed glasses riding low on her nose. Her black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and Book could discern no sign of makeup or scent of perfume. She was skinny and looked thirteen. She picked up an envelope and used a pocketknife to slice open the flap.
    ‘Is that my pearl-handled pocketknife?’ Book asked.
    ‘Must be. I found it on your desk.’
    She gestured with his knife at the pile of mail on the table in front of her.
    ‘Myrna said you get hundreds of these letters every week.’
    ‘Every week.’
    ‘So people all over the country write to you