The Trials of Kate Hope

Wick Downing

• Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780547528335

A teen lawyer stars in a novel that “portrays a girl possessing power in the actual world, trusting her own mind and conscience and sense of justice” ( Los Angeles Times ).
 
When she was not yet a teenager, Kate Hope started “reading law” in the office of “Judge” Hope, her half-blind grandfather, a grumpy eighty-nine-year-old lawyer with problems. One big problem is that he believes in justice for all, not just those who can afford it. He also needs a partner. Together they find a loophole in Colorado law, and Kate becomes a lawyer—technically. She has a law license hanging on the wall in her office, but she has no idea how to practice law. In a courtroom. With a judge and jury and defendants.
 
It doesn’t help that things don’t start out so well for Kate’s legal career. The firm of Hope and Hope has an unusual first case, and if they lose it, a dog named Herman—the only friend an old woman has—will be destroyed. But Kate’s grandfather falls ill, leaving her to try the case on her own. Will Kate be able to save Herman from doggy death row? Will Grandfather Hope recover in time to make it to the courtroom? Will life ever be normal again for Kate Hope? Will justice be served?
 
“The social issues of the day flavor the narrative, which is also laden with legal detail and discussions of justice that will appeal to aficionados of courtroom dramas . . . a unique premise.” — School Library Journal
 
“Entertaining . . . Educational.” — Kliatt

Chapter One

Winter 1965

I STARTED CALLING MY DAD ZOZO when I was just a little kid, because of this fascinating scar on his face. He got it in the war at the same time a bomb or something blew off his left arm, but his arm didn’t interest me as much as his scar. It started under his left eye near his nose and angled in a straight line to his cheekbone. Then in another straight line it went from his cheekbone to the space between the bottom of his nose and the top of his lip. From there it drooped a little, curving around the top of his mouth to somewhere in the middle of his left cheek.

I’d sit on his lap and trace that old scar with my finger. “Zozo,” I said, trying to say “Zorro.” He smiled. I called him Zozo after that, because I liked his smile.

But the Saturday after Christmas of 1965, Zozo and Law went skiing. Law was my older brother. I wanted to go with them, but they wouldn’t take me along. “You’re not ready yet,” Zozo said. “Next year, maybe. We’ll see.”

“You’re a girl,” Law said, his voice popping all over the place because it was changing. He grinned at me as he opened the garage door. “You’d just get in my way.”

“I hate it when you call me a girl!”

“Okay, you’re a boy. Try to look like one. Okay?”

He made it sound as though there was something wrong with being a girl. “How can I get ready if I can’t even go?” I asked Zozo, watching him put the skis in the rack on top of the old station wagon we had then. His left arm was just a little stub that hung from his shoulder, so he had only his right arm to work with. But he could use it really well and in two seconds, the skis were in the rack, all latched down tight, and they were ready to go.

“You’re too young, Katie,” Zozo said. “You aren’t even seven. Law didn’t start until he was ten.”

“Girls grow up faster than boys.”

He laughed. “We’ll see about it next year. Now give me a kiss.”

“No.”

He shrugged and climbed in the car.

“We’ll bake something,” Mom said, holding on to me so I wouldn’t run into the street after them. “For the boys, for dinner.” It was snowing outside, but not hard.

“I don’t want to bake anything!” I wailed. “I want to go skiing!”

“You be a good girl,” Zozo said, blowing a kiss at me with his right hand, “We’ll go see Snow White tomorrow.” He backed the car onto the driveway and waited for Law to pull the door down. Law stuck his tongue out at me as the door was closing.

I never saw either one of them again. Coming home that night, they swerved to avoid hitting a car that was skidding on the ice. Their car slid off the road and pitched over a cliff.

They were killed.

Chapter Two

Spring 1969

I GLIDED MY BIKE TO A STOP in the driveway of my grandfather’s house. There were patches of snow on his lawn, but the streets were dry, and it was warm enough outside for the old man to have his front door open. He lived in the same house he’d lived in forever, and I could see his old face peering over the brick wall that guarded the wraparound porch. I used to hide behind that wall when Law threw snowballs at me, hoping he’d miss and break a window. “Hi, Grandfather,” I said.

“Kate darlin’!” he said, recognizing my voice. He’s practically blind. “Come give me a hug.”

I leaned my bike against the lilac bush by the porch, where buds on the branches were changing into little tiny green leaves. I skipped up the steps and went over to where he sat, kind of like a lump, in an old wooden rocking chair with a low back. Getting behind him, I wrapped my arms around his chest and nuzzled my face in the white hair around his head, then kissed him on his bald spot. “Mom made cookies,” I said, peeling off my backpack. “Want some?”

“That would be nice.”

He’d changed since the accident, Mom said. He’d given up the law practice he’d been in with my dad, and didn’t care about things the way he used to, things that would get him excited and angry, like politics and civil rights and the war in Vietnam. Most of the time he looked like he’d rather be somewhere else and was just waiting for a taxi to take him there—but he always brightened up around me.

“How’s your mother?” he asked me.

“She’s fine.” Why bother him with the truth? It had been three years, but she barely let me out of her sight. The telephone would ring any minute now, and it would be Mom, making sure I was still alive.

“She’s fine, is she?” he asked as I pulled the cookies out. There was a table near his chair where he kept his pipe, and I spread them out on a paper towel. “Those cookies smell good,” he said, feeling around until he found a cookie. “Mmm,” he said, taking a bite. “Drag up a chair, young lady, and have one with me.”

I found the weathered old wooden chair that liked to stab me with splinters, pushed it next to him, and sat down. “I don’t want to bake cookies when I get old,” I told him, picking one up and biting off a piece. Even though it was delicious, I knew that being a good cook was not what I wanted out of life. “I hate working in the kitchen.”

“Well, now. That’s not very ladylike.”

“I don’t even want to be a lady.”

He smiled. “You don’t, do you? What I’d like to know is this. What are your options?”

“I mean, when people see me, I don’t want them to think, ‘Isn’t she a lovely lady!’ I want to work when I grow up and don’t ever want to get married or have some man take care of me. I’ll just skip the motherhood thing, too, because I don’t want babies!” I started getting emotional. “Maybe if Mom had worked all her life and never married Zozo, then . . .”

He leaned over and found my arm. “My pretty one,” he said, finding my hand. Pipe smoke surrounded him like a cloud, and I loved the smell. I loved the look of his gnarled old hand, too, like the branch of a tree. “Wish I could hear you better, Kate,” he said, “but I see you well enough. Your grandmother didn’t like the kitchen either, but I made her stay in it.” He shook his head as he thought about it. “She won’t let me forget it, either.”

“But she’s dead, Grandfather. How can she . . . ?”

“Course, things were different in 1922, the year we got married. Married women didn’t work in those days. A woman’s place was in the home, but that arrangement just didn’t suit your grandmother. She’d burn up a perfectly good pot roast and blame it on the oven and insist I take her out to dinner. I think she did it on purpose some of the time so she could get out of the house.” He sucked on his pipe, but it had gone out. “She was fearless, your grandmother, and this was when women weren’t supposed to be like that. But you didn’t want to make her mad.” He laughed a little, remembering something as he searched in his pockets for matches. “Have you heard about the Ku Klux Klan yet in that school you go to?”

“The men who wore robes and masks and did awful things to Negroes and Jews and Catholics?”

He nodded as he struck a match and got his pipe going. “One night the Klan planted one of their burning crosses right out there on the lawn of this house,” he said, pointing to the place with the stem of his pipe. “I wasn’t home, but she was, and when that cross flared up, she tore out of the house with a kitchen knife in her hand and chased five men into their cars and threw the knife at them. They had those silly robes on, and Don Bowman, across the street, was all ready to come to her rescue with a gun, but when he saw how scared they was of a small woman with fire in her eyes, he just laughed.”

“Why did they burn a cross on your lawn in the first place?” I asked. “You weren’t a Negro or a Jew or a Catholic. I don’t get it.”

“I was running for the state senate, and gave speeches about the stranglehold the Klan had on the judges, and how I’d do everything in my power to beat them. We were Unitarians, your grandmother and me, and they said that was worse than bein’ a Jew. They were awful people, and your grandmother Maggie hated them with her whole heart. As small as she was—she barely topped five feet—she could make herself heard.”

“But you kept her in the kitchen?”

“I did. After your father was born. She didn’t like it a bit, but the truth is, in some peculiar way that seemed normal in those days, she thought that was where she belonged.” He tapped his pipe. “Of course with all this new women’s liberation business, I don’t feel good about it now.”

The phone rang. “That’s Mom,” I said. “Want me to get it?”

“If you don’t mind.”

I ran into the house. The telephone was on a great old mahogany table in the foyer, underneath the steps that led up to the second floor. I yanked it out of its cradle, ready to start a fight. “Hope residence.”

“Hi, dear,” Mom said. “How’s your grandfather?”

That was a disguise. She just wanted to make sure I’d gotten to his house and hadn’t been flattened by a trolley bus. “He died,” I said. “He fell out of his rocking chair and hit his head.”

“Kate, that’s not funny. How is he?”

“Mom, I’m okay. I’m all in one piece. We’re talking about the Ku Klux Klan and how Grandmother Hope burned up pot roasts in the kitchen.”

“O-kay” she said, slowly. “Ask him if he’d like to come over for a pot roast tomorrow after church.”

“Grandfather!” I yelled.

“Stop that. Go ask him nicely.”

I put the phone down and went back out on the porch. “Grampa?” He twisted his head and looked at me out of eyes that could see only blurs. “Mom wants to know if you’d come over tomorrow after church and have pot roast.”

“You tell her I can’t think of anything in this world I would rather do. Ask her what time.”

I went back to the phone. “What time?” I asked Mom.

“Tell him I’ll pick him up at three. And Kate?”

“What.”

“You don’t have to call when you leave. Just come home when you’re ready. I love you, dear.” She hung up quickly, before I could say anything.

Grandfather was sitting up straighter, and his pipe was going full blast when I sat down next to him. “Let me have your hand, young lady,” he said, reaching out with his.

I took the gnarled old thing—it was more than eighty years old, like the rest of him—and pressed it against my cheek.

“Your mother’s still struggling with it, isn’t she?” he said quietly.

“With what?”

“The loss of your father and brother.” He took a pull on his pipe. “My son and my grandson. It takes time for a grown woman to just let it go, don’t you see. It takes time.”

“It takes kids a long time too,” I said.

“Has to be hard for you, darlin’. How old are you?”

He asked me that every time we were together. It was kind of a habit, I think, like the way some people will say “What?” all the time, even if they’ve heard you. “Ten,” I told him.

“Is your mother still seeing that therapist woman?”

“Just once a month,” I said. “She keeps telling my mom to move.”

“Now just how is that any of her business?” Grandfather wanted to know.

“She thinks Mom and I need a fresh start in life, and that the house will always remind us of Zozo and Law and keep us planted in the past.” I looked at his old house and wondered if he’d thought about moving after Grandmother Hope died.

“How do you feel about it?” he asked me.

“I like my house,” I said. “I like being around Zozo and Law. At first it was hard and I cried all the time, but it’s different now.” He waited quietly for me to go on. “I still cry when I think about them, but I smile too. It’s just different. I don’t want to leave my friends, either. Mike Doyle?”

“A fine boy. Irish, but then so is your mother.”

“His mom drinks a lot, Grandfather. His dad is never around. He kind of needs me.”

“Well now. You just be careful about who you start taking care of.”

A beat-up green car pulled up next to the curb. An old woman struggled to get out, then emerged and slammed her door shut.

“Who’s here?” Grandfather asked.

“A woman, Grandfather. Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Hmph!” But he smiled as she marched toward us. “What does she look like? A pretty young thing, or old and fat?”

“I’ll tell you later,” I whispered.

“Judge Hope?” the woman demanded, climbing the steps. She was big and tough-looking. “Remember me?”

Grandfather pushed himself out of his chair. “Not yet.”

“Your son was my lawyer, but I talked to you as well. You made my husband pay child support. It’s Lydia Bartram.” She stood directly in front of him and glared into his face. “Surely you remember me now.”

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