She walks over and sits down beside me in the other leather armchair. “And I’ll definitely take that into consideration,” she says, and moves the vase of wildflowers from the round table between us to the floor. Judge Reed puts her pen and legal pad down on the table. The lined yellow pages are still blank. Then she props her elbow up on the table, rests her chin in the palm of her hand, and fixes her blue eyes on me. As if to say, If you wanna stay with your mom, you’d better give up the goods.

And I do. About everything that happened Saturday. About Sunday for as long as I can remember. About his lies. His double life. Let me tell you, the fear of the judge ordering me to live with that man has me spilling all the beans.

Judge Reed lifts her head. “Yeah, that’s hard. I found out about my other siblings around your age, too.” She leans back in her chair and puts her cowboy boots up on her desk. “That’s when my mama died.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, surprised the judge has family drama like mine.

“Don’t be, sweetie. We weren’t close. You see, she left when I was a little baby . . . like four or five months old. Supposedly one of those big-time oil execs came into the IHOP where she worked, and she ran off with him. Left me and my daddy behind in Plainview and never came back. Never heard from her again,” she says, and runs her fingers through her hair.

“Then one day,” she continues, “I get this letter in the mail saying she died and left me and my siblings a whole bunch of money. My mama had three kids from her marriage with that rich man, you see. I didn’t even know they existed. But now we’ve all been getting together for Christmas Eve dinner for some forty-plus years.”

I picture myself having dinner with Shannon. Nope. Not happening. “But weren’t you mad? I mean, your mom abandoned you and then went and raised all those other kids.”

“I guess I could’ve been, but there’s no use being mad at a dead woman. No use being mad at my siblings, either. They didn’t do anything. Besides, all that money I got from my mama put me through college and law school. In a way, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for her running off.”

The judge telling me all of her business has me feeling comfortable. So comfortable I think about putting my Blazers up on the desk to join her boots, but I don’t. “True, true. But how can you still call her Mama?”

“Well, that’s what she is, isn’t she? What about your mama? You don’t have grievances against her?”