“That would sound too much like fate.”

The truth is, I don’t. Life will continue to be one random accident until, sooner or later, we peel a little too much off the ozone layer.

“Did you tell Sarah I’m working with Chet Bracken on the Wallace case?” I ask her, moving the subject along. She is spooning her soup the way my mother taught me forty years ago in eastern Arkansas: move the spoon through the soup away from you as if it were a Feris wheel and then bring it to your mouth. You don’t look so greedy that way. Manners. An overrated virtue to people who don’t have any.

“I would rather you breach your client’s confidentiality Rainey says dryly.

Sarah puts down her fork, and says in a high voice, “You told me once that Chet Bracken was a brilliant thug.”

I look at my daughter and remember that is exactly what I said. What goes around comes around.

“I meant some attorneys believe that about him,” I backtrack, “but there’s never been any proof he’s ever done one thing unethical.” Losing ground with Sarah, I turn to Rainey.

“Did you know he’s a member of your new church?”

Rainey sips her tea.

“There’re only five thousand members at Christian Life,” she says, giving me an un usual deadpan expression.

“I haven’t met them all in the last four months.”

I managed to keep Bracken’s secret that he has cancer a total of two hours before I told Rainey, which is probably a record for me. I deposit information with my girlfriend faster than a squirrel stores nuts for winter.

Rainey keeps her mouth shut, which is more than I can say for myself.

Sarah has consumed about an ounce of soup. She’d rather have red meat any day. She moves the spoon around in the bowl.

“What case?”

I explain briefly about the Wallace murder and my client’s connection with Christian Life.