I do not pull into my driveway until almost eight o’clock.

It is just as well. My daughter is at Arkansas Governor’s School, a summer camp for the gifted and talented. Without Sarah, my house will be a tomb-just me and a presumably hungry dog. It is not until I have to push myself out of the Blazer that I realize I am exhausted; however, there won’t be many times that I will be fired, enter private practice, and pick up a well-to-do client all in the same afternoon.

I walk across tall, scrufiy grass to the house, mulling over the fact that Andrew Chapman is a behavioral psychologist, not a psychiatrist, as I previously assumed. Shrinks work with the mentally ill. I have no idea if the girl carried a dual diagnosis of mental retardation and mental illness. Wouldn’t she have to be insane to mutilate herself? It is an area I know nothing about. Chapman can start my education tomorrow.

Seldom has a lawyer known so little about his client. Despite my ignorance, I do know one thing, and that is this case ought to be great for business. If I can’t pick up some clients from the kind of publicity this case will generate, I’m not long for private practice.

In the mailbox is the usual junk mail (Amnesty International-if they had spelled my name right I’d have given them more money-now I’m glad I didn’t) and, much more pleasing, a letter from Sarah. I am thrilled she was selected to attend Governor’s School but have privately wondered if her unusual racial background didn’t make the difference.

Granted, she is unusually bright and a hard worker, but she is hardly a genius, having inherited my defective math genes.

The selection committee arguably (and probably only theoretically, since she identifies herself as white) could count her as Hispanic, Indian, and black-a cornucopia of unmentioned but undoubtedly very real racial requirements.

I can hear Woogie screeching on the other side of the door.