“What?”

“That’s what happened. Howie plays poker on Sunday nights. Every week it’s the same thing. He stays out too late, drinks too much, wakes up hungover.” She lowers her eyes to her lap. “Mondays are always bad.”

“But this one was worse than usual,” I venture. Good God, I hope I’m right.

“Yes.” She looks up at me, tears streaming down both cheeks. “This time he did it up big.”

I wait in silence.

“He was out all night. It was after five when he came crashing through the door. And he’s supposed to be at work at eight. He passed out on the couch, didn’t even make it to the bedroom.”

I nod.

“I tried to wake him at seven. I really did. I tried five or six times to get him up for work.”

It seems important to Sonia that I believe this particular piece of information. “I’m sure you did,” I tell her.

“When he wouldn’t get up, I called in for him. Told them he was sick. Lots of people get sick this time of year; I think they believed me.”

I nod again.

“That doesn’t usually happen. Howie almost never misses work.” A man with a work ethic. What a catch.

Sonia rests her cast on the counter and wipes her face with her sleeve. “He woke up around noon, really mad. It was my fault he missed work, he said. It was my fault because I didn’t get him up. I told him I tried. I swore I tried, but he didn’t believe me.”

Sonia shakes her head, her expression bewildered, and lowers her eyes again. “When I told him I called in for him, called in sick, he got even madder.”

I stare hard at her. She doesn’t recognize the insanity in what she’s describing.

“He started drinking again,” she continues, still staring into her lap. “The day was wasted anyway, he said. He was storming around the living room; he was so mad his eyes were bulging. I went into the kitchen to get away from him, but he came in and grabbed me and slammed me against the refrigerator. He kept slamming me; I thought the damn thing was gonna fall over. When he let go, my knees wouldn’t work and I fell.”

She looks up at me. “He kicked me then.”

“Where?”

She points to her swollen, purple eye.

Howard Davis’s thick work boots appear before me.

“I thought he was finished,” she says. “Maggie was already outside and…”

Sonia catches her breath and interrupts herself. “Maggie,” she breathes, her good eye wide with panic. “What about Maggie? Where is she?”

“She’s fine. She’s at my office. She can stay with me until things get sorted out.”

Sonia sits back and takes a deep breath. “Thank you,” she whispers.

“It’s no problem. But Sonia, today’s Monday. Why wasn’t Maggie in school this morning?”

She drops her head onto her cast and I wait.

After a while, she looks up at me, embarrassed. “Maggie misses a lot of Mondays,” she says.

Of course. Mondays are always bad. She told me that.

“Okay, Sonia, so you thought he was finished.”

“Yeah. Usually it’s just one fit, you know what I mean? Usually once he takes a break, it’s over.”

“But not this time.”

“No, not this time. I tried to get to the kitchen door. Maggie left it open and was calling for me to come out. She’d started the car.”

Sonia almost smiles, her tears still falling. “I didn’t even know she knew how.”

I do my best to smile back at her. “So you ran for the kitchen door.”

“Yeah. But Howie grabbed me from behind. He threw his arm around my neck, really tight. I couldn’t breathe. When I tried to pull away he grabbed my arm with his other hand.” She pats her cast. “He bent my arm back, and he kept bending it.”

I close my eyes, picturing the physical disparity between Howard Davis and Sonia Baker.

“He wouldn’t stop.” She cries harder with the memory. “I heard a bone snap. He heard it too. He had to. But he wouldn’t stop.”

I remind myself to breathe.

“When he let go, I tried to get out again. Maggie was screaming outside. But I wasn’t fast enough. He smacked me in the face with the back of his hand.”

“That’s when your lip split.”

“I think so. Anyway, I fell into the kitchen table. I remember the salt and pepper shakers rolling onto the floor.” Sonia shakes her head and almost smiles again. “It’s funny I remember that, don’t you think? With everything else going on?”

I nod, encouraging her to continue, but she falls silent. We’re just getting to the hard part, I realize. “Then what, Sonia?”

“Then what?”

“What happened next?”

“Nothing happened next. He was done. He let me go. I got into the car with Maggie and she drove to your office. She said it was time to put an end to this and that you could help. She’d seen you visiting Patty Hammond, she said. And she’d seen you on the news. I wasn’t in any shape to argue.”

I stare at her. She’s composed now.

“Maggie driving,” she says. “I still can’t get over it. She did all right, too.”

I lean forward and look into her only open eye. “Listen, Sonia, I’m your lawyer. You need to tell me what happened.”

“I just did.”

“That’s everything?”

“Isn’t that enough?” She’s incredulous.

I’m not asking the right questions, and I’m not surprised. I knew I’d make a lousy defense lawyer. I was a prosecutor for too many years. “Sonia”-I lean forward and try again-“what happened to Howard?”

She stares at me and shakes her head. “I don’t know. I thought maybe you’d tell me. That’s why I asked to see you.”

If she’s lying, she’s damn good at it.

“Do you know where he was when you ran from the cottage?”

“Of course I do. I didn’t dare take my eyes off him. He was headed back to the living room. Back to his couch and his bottle.”

The bottle.

“Sonia, what was Howard drinking this morning?”

She lets out a long sigh. “Same thing he always drinks. Johnnie Walker Red.”

“Did you see it?”

“See what?”

“The bottle.”

“Of course I saw the bottle. He was pouring from it when I went into the kitchen.”

“How much booze was in it?”

She tilts her head to one side. “About half.”

“Are you sure?”

She nods and looks off into space. “Yeah, I’m sure. I watched him pour. I remember thinking it was going to be a long day.” She hangs her head and looks up at me again. “I didn’t know it would be this long.”

She’s used up.

“Sonia, at the arraignment tomorrow, we’re going to raise all possible defenses. If it turns out we don’t need some of them, we’ll drop them, okay?”

“Sure.” She shrugs one shoulder.

“I’m going to ask the court for funding to have you evaluated by a psychiatrist, okay?”

“Okay.”

The look on Sonia’s face tells me it’s not okay, though. She’s starting to wonder about me.

“I’m going to say some things you don’t want to hear. I want you to be prepared for that. I’m going to raise a legal issue known as battered woman’s syndrome. I’m also going to raise a self-defense claim.”

Sonia stares at me, but says nothing.

“Try to sleep,” I tell her. I start to hang up my phone, but she raises a hand to stop me.

“You think I killed him,” she says.

“The Commonwealth thinks you killed him, Sonia. And until we know how much evidence the prosecutor has to back that up, we can’t leave any stone unturned.”

“I didn’t.”

“Okay.”

“Can you tell me-are you allowed to tell me-how he died?”

I look hard into her open eye and see only the question. “He was stabbed.”

No words. Just a sharp intake of breath.

“Sonia.”

She looks up at me, her eyes running like faucets.

“Maggie wanted me to tell you she loves you.”

Sonia smiles through her tears and hangs up the phone.

I fudged a little. That wasn’t exactly what Maggie wanted me to tell her mother. She wanted me to tell her that we’ll straighten out this mess, that everything will be okay. I just couldn’t bring myself to say that.