Winner Take All Read Online Free

Ever since Marcus had made the horrible error of asking Kirsten to marry him.
    That particular night had been a gift of fabled perfection. Not even Kirsten’s customary reserve had been able to resist the enchantment. After an intimate dinner they had walked Raleigh streets perfumed by a coming summer storm. When he had reached for her hand, she had responded by wrapping an arm around his waist, drawing close, and laying her head upon his shoulder. Not even that had been enough, however, and a second arm had reached across to form a ring of union around his middle. Then she had sighed his name, sung it almost, so comfortable with him and the night she had turned his name into a melody of promise. So he had asked her. Boom. Surprising himself almost as much as her.
    Kirsten had said nothing for a time, but even before the arms had retreated he could sense her withdrawal. The past four weeks had not improved matters. The further they moved to time’s relentless tread, the quieter she became, the more repressed. Which was why he had been dreading this call.
    So before Marcus answered, he took a moment to settle his feet upon the floor. He felt the coolness of time-honed wood and fixed himself firmly in the here and now. He stared out the back window at trees not yet detached from the night and hoped for wisdom. Then he picked up the phone.
    “Marcus, good, I was afraid it would be your answering machine and I didn’t have idea one what I was going to say. Are you awake?”
    It was a woman’s voice, and familiar. But his relief that the caller wasn’t Kirsten left him unable to identify anything further. “Totally.”
    “You know who this is?”
    He did then. “Judge Sears.”
    “At four-thirty in the morning it’s Rachel, all right? We need to talk.”
    Rachel Sears was a fragile-looking brunette with piercing emeralds for eyes. She was also a district court judge and a friend. In the pasttwo elections, a number of women had shoved aside the dinosaurs who had come to assume the bench was theirs by right. These new judges were introducing a novel brand of compassion and judicial sharpness.
    Marcus took a hard breath. “I’m here.”
    “Yesterday a young woman caught me outside the court. She was crying and lost, and had two babies doing the frantic routine at her legs. You got the picture?”
    “Yes.” It was a common enough scenario. Single mother, poor reading skills, drawn to court by some legal document that terrified her. The bored Highway Patrol officer who pulled detail at the information booth downstairs, a duty they all loathed, likely as not had sent her to the wrong floor. In the central foyer by the elevators she would confront a series of yard-long computer printouts listing the day’s cases by courtroom, randomly assigned and not in alphabetical order. Between four or five hundred names in all.
    “She’s being evicted. I glanced over the document. Pretty standard stuff, failure to pay for ninety days, three warnings. Now she’s been locked out. Her belongings have been confiscated to pay back rent. But something about this one bothered me all night. Then an hour ago it hit me. Just by chance, I mean, this is in the million-to-one category, I had another eviction cross my desk three weeks ago. I’ve got the case file in front of me now. Similar deal, young single mom, preschool kids. The same southeast Raleigh address, thirty-four units in the complex. With me so far?”
    “Are you at the office?”
    “Came in to check the facts, see if my mind was playing tricks from lack of sleep. It wasn’t.” There came the sound of rustling papers. “The first woman refused a court-appointed attorney, she wanted to make sure she had a chance to tell her story in court. She accused the landlord of soliciting sexual favors in exchange for rent.”
    “Nothing new there.” Tenants facing eviction were a clan that shared information and tactics. Nothing frightened most landlords like the prospect of public