For the Children Page 9

  And somehow, in the midst of everything else, alcohol had become his first obsession.

  “The more cases he won, the more he’d take on. It got to the point that we hardly ever saw him. He missed every one of the boys’ birthdays. He was either working or traveling with clients or partners in his firm, even on the major holidays. Christmas was about the only time some of the single partners would take off, and he used to insist that he had to party with them. According to him, those social occasions were when most of the real business was done.”

  Kirk was still watching her attentively. But he said nothing. She wanted to know what he was thinking.

  “I’d talk to him, try to reason with him, even beg, but it was like talking to a wall. He just didn’t get it. He kept saying that his values hadn’t changed. That those values were driving him to do the best job he could.

  “He’d miss school plays, Cub Scout functions, parent-teacher conferences, Sunday dinners. I’d tell him the boys needed their father. He’d say they had a father who worked night and day to provide for them. A father who was making the world a place in which his sons could succeed.”

  “It’s all about control.” Kirk said, glancing at her through lowered lids. “If he controls the world, or his portion of it, he has something solid to pass down to his children. Which is just an illusion, of course. The only true freedom comes from an ability to surrender and not lose self.”

  Valerie stared. Nodded. He understood—and he was attributing nobler motives to Thomas than her deceased husband deserved.

  Kirk’s sense of perspective, of the balance between public and private, between the material and the spiritual, made him as different from her husband as a man could be.

  “I used to wonder how he could look at the boys and me and not see what he was doing…”

  And then she’d just stopped wondering.

  “Sounds to me as though he probably didn’t look.”

  He was right.

  Of course.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “YOU COMIN’ Billings?”

  “Nah, you guys go ahead.”

  Walking around the corner in the mostly deserted locker room after practice the Monday before Thanksgiving, Kirk stopped suddenly, listening as his players gathered their things and jostled their way out. He wasn’t interested in eavesdropping. But he’d learned to pay attention to his instincts. And his instincts were telling him to stay right there and listen.

  The door had closed. They might all be gone. Still, leaning against the wall, a basketball tucked under each arm, he waited.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Abraham’s voice echoed between empty lockers. There was no other sound. No rustling of clothes or collecting of personal belongings.

  But someone was still there.

  “Nothing.”

  Brian Smith, in protective mode.

  Abraham and the Smith twins. Blake’s stomach must be giving him problems again. If Kirk didn’t miss his guess, the boy was sitting on the bench between the lockers, doubled over.

  “I ate something bad.” Blake confirmed at least one of Kirk’s suspicions.

  Silence fell and Kirk pushed against the wall, righting himself.

  “What?” That was Brian again. Kirk stopped.

  “Don’t know,” Blake muttered.

  “Why didn’t you go with the other guys?” Brian challenged Abraham. To distract him from Blake?

  “Didn’t feel like it.”

  “So what’re you hanging around here for?” Brian asked, with none of the usual insertions from his twin.

  “No reason. You got a problem with that?”

  “Maybe.”

  About ready to make his presence known, Kirk grinned at the entire exchange. Male bonding at its best.

  “So what’s the matter with you?” Abraham was obviously talking to Brian now. His tone had changed, softened as much as a twelve-year-old tough guy’s voice could, stopping Kirk yet again.

  “Nothing’s wrong with him.” Blake’s voice was still a little strained.

  “Why’s he so much skinnier than you?”

  “He just doesn’t eat much.”

  “Yeah,” Brian chimed in. “I just don’t eat much.” He sounded more like a little kid than the man holding his own he’d been just seconds before.

  “You guys got a ride home?”

  “Eventually,” Blake said. It sounded as though he or someone had stood up.

  “Our mom comes after work. Sometimes she’s late,” Brian added. “Why, you need a ride?”

  “Nah. I can call my mom. Or walk.”

  “So why you hanging around?” Brian asked yet again.

  “Just don’t feel like going yet, that’s all.”

  “Stuff at home, huh?” It didn’t surprise Kirk that Brian had picked up on that. He was the more sensitive of the Smith twins.

  “Maybe. What’s it to ya?”

  “Nothing,” Blake said. “It’s nothing to us. Come on, Bry.”

  “It’s cool,” Brian said, apparently ignoring his brother for once. “Everyone’s got stuff at home sometimes.”

  “Come on, Bry,” Blake said again. “Mom’s probably waiting.”

  “She won’t be here for another fifteen minutes.”

  Leaning back against the wall, Kirk listened to the boys.

  “You got a dad?” Blake asked.

  “Doesn’t everybody?”

  “He a jerk?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “He dead?”

  “Nah.”

  “Took off, huh?”

  “Yeah. Before I was born.”

  “Yeah,” Brian said. “Ours is dead.”

  Silence followed. Kirk could picture the boys standing there. Perhaps nodding awkwardly, while frantically searching for what to say or do next.

  “You want a cigarette?” Abraham asked.

  “You smoke, man?” That was Blake. “That’ll kill ya.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Or your mom will if she catches you,” Brian said.

  “Right.” Abraham’s voice turned nasty. “Like she’d ever notice. Besides, I get ’em from her.”

  “She knows you smoke?” Blake’s voice held something akin to admiration, setting off Kirk’s internal warning system.

  “Sure.” There was a lot of bravado in the answer. And then, “Hey, you guys ever seen a Playboy magazine?”

  “Who hasn’t?” Blake asked with enough bluster to reveal it as a lie.

  Kirk, sensing that Abraham wasn’t nearly as innocent as the Smith twins, decided it was time to make his entrance. He wasn’t going to have Valerie’s boys led astray right under his nose. Moving quietly to the door that lead from the gym, he swung it open, banging it against the outer wall.

  “Hey, guys,” he said cheerfully, coming around the corner.

  The boys had all changed back into street clothes, jeans and sweaters. Kirk was still wearing the sweats, T-shirt and tennis shoes he’d had on for practice.

  “Coach.” All three boys stood a little taller.

  “How’s your stomach, Blake?”

  The dark-haired boy started, then looked away guiltily. “Fine.”

  “You tell your mom about it yet?”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  Brian’s face, as he listened to the exchange, was pinched.

  “You think something’s wrong with him?” he asked Kirk.

  “Probably nothing serious yet, but if it’s not taken care of, it could be.”

  “See, Blake! I told you to tell Mom.”

  The boys shared a look heavy with an unspoken and weighty message. Adopting a bored posture, Abraham watched them. But he didn’t manage to camouflage the interested glint in his eye.

  “She’s got enough to worry about,” Blake said, turning worried green eyes on Kirk.

  “You won’t tell, will you?”

  Abraham looked away.

  Kirk had mastered the subtle art of answering with nei
ther truth nor lie long before he’d reached the age of these boys. Evasion. Prevarication. Distraction. In his former life, an indirect response was second nature.

  “I’m hoping you will,” he told the boy. “You’re a good player, Blake. But skill is only part of it. You have a contract with this team, and with yourself, to be the best athlete you can be. That contract includes maintaining your equipment. Your shoes. Your uniform. And your body.”

  Blake stared down at the floor. “Yes, sir.”

  “How about you?” He looked at Brian next. “Are you eating three meals a day?”

  “No, Coach.” The words were mumbled, and Kirk wrestled with a mixture of compassion and frustration.

  “You’re working harder than any other boy here,” he told Brian. “If you’d put even a tenth of that determination into your diet, you’d be on the team.”

  “There’s no spot open.”

  The boy had him there.

  “And if one does open, you aren’t going to be ready for it.”

  Brian didn’t respond.

  “Tell you what,” Kirk offered, his gaze moving between the twins. “Blake, you come see me during lunch tomorrow, and you and I can have an honest talk about the severity of your stomach upsets, and we’ll go from there.”

  The boy’s eyes lit up. “Okay, Coach, thanks.”

  “Brian.” He nodded at Blake’s brother. “I want you to keep a log of everything you eat. You have to turn it in to me before you’re allowed to practice each day.”

  “Yes, Coach.”

  “And I want to see balanced meals there,” Kirk added. “I want you to tell me how large of a serving of everything you actually ate, not just what your mother put in front of you.”

  “Can I do it in pencil or does it have to be in ink?”

  Kirk shook his head. Working with kids was so different from anything he’d ever known.

  “I don’t care what you write with,” he told Brian. “Nor do I care if it’s on a napkin, in a notebook or on your arm. Just get it to me.”

  Brian grinned. “Yes, Coach.”

  “Now scram, you two. I imagine your mother’s outside waiting for you.”

  At ten after five, he knew she was. He’d called her earlier to try to talk her into a game of tennis that evening and, during her very ladylike rejection, she’d mentioned her light calendar that afternoon. She’d be at the school by five to take the boys out for pizza, she’d said. Then they were going shopping.

  Not that he could tell them. Valerie’s boys had no idea their coach even knew their mother’s first name.

  Let alone that he had a slight case of hero worship for the beautiful judge.

  “Abraham, hold on a sec, will ya?” Kirk called as the boy started to head out with the twins.

  The young man turned back. “Yeah?”

  “Have a seat.” Kirk indicated the long wooden bench, straddling one end.

  Abraham sat on the very corner, hunched over with his backpack on his shoulders. Turning his head, he looked at Kirk.

  “You’re an incredible basketball player, Abe.”

  Staring, Abraham said nothing.

  “The game could very well be your ticket to whatever freedom you crave—whatever you want to achieve in your life.”

  Still silent, the boy sat there, perched for flight.

  “Think of it,” Kirk said. “Free to go, to make your own destiny, to study, to become whoever you want to be.”

  Kirk didn’t bother to subdue his intensity. This young man, who touched him in such an elemental way, was on the brink of making the most important deal of his life. And if he made it with the devil he could be sentencing himself to seventy years that were far worse than anything he was experiencing now.

  “As your coach, I need to know what’s holding you back.”

  Abraham stared at the floor. The boy was harder to read than many of the hardened and world-wise businessmen he’d brought down in his time.

  “I know you care about the game.”

  Kirk understood the boy’s silence. And was concerned.

  “I also want you to know that I care about you.”

  A slight jerk of a shoulder was the only reaction he got, but it was all Kirk needed. He’d scored. The win was within his grasp.

  But the real winner, ultimately, would be Abraham Billings.

  “CHANDLER.” At home that evening, Kirk answered his phone on the first ring.

  He’d stopped avoiding calls.

  “The statute protects them,” his lawyer’s voice said. “Nothing’s going to happen unless we can show that the father named on that birth certificate is not the child’s biological father.”

  Troy Winston wasted no words, as usual.

  “So do it.”

  “It’ll mean publicizing the reason you were at the cemetery that day, including details of your emotional state. As well as reports on Susan’s.”

  “That boy is mine. Do it.”

  “This isn’t business, Kirk. We’re talking about personal lives here.”

  “Yes, mine. And my son’s.”

  “No judge will want to touch this. Chances are it’ll get thrown out.”

  Gazing out the rounded wall of windows circling the atrium in the middle of his home, watching the shadows reflected by the lights and plants over the pool, Kirk detached himself from the situation and welcomed the numbed relief.

  “You get the depositions, file whatever you have to file. I’ll work on the judge end.”

  “You have connections.”

  “Maybe.”

  Troy chuckled. “Only you, man.”

  “What?” In the old days, Kirk would be grinning. Now he just frowned out into the night.

  “Only Kirk Chandler could find connections in high places while he’s working as a crossing guard.”

  Kirk didn’t know about that.

  “This is probably going to take some time….”

  The warning, Troy’s version of goodbye, was the most upsetting part of the conversation as far as Kirk was concerned.

  TUESDAY WAS THE DAY she heard delinquency cases, and this particular Tuesday was busier than usual, since everyone wanted to push as much business through before the holiday as possible. She’d spent the morning on a molestation case—a fourteen-year-old boy with his eight-year-old brother—and had heard testimony that was buffeting everything sensitive inside her.

  With the lights out in her office, Valerie lay back in her chair, taking a couple of minutes to herself before going to pick up the boys. They’d had a game that afternoon—an away game—and wouldn’t be back at the school until almost six.

  “Excuse me, Judge Simms?” Leah knocked at the door.

  “Come in.” Sitting up, Valerie switched on her desk lamp—and only then realized that she was still wearing her robe. Slipping it off, she hung it in the closet behind her desk as her assistant approached with a couple of folders.

  In just her slacks and matching tunic, she felt lighter.

  “I have a request for immediate action here,” Leah said. “April Bradley’s P.O. wants you to issue a bench warrant.”

  Listening as Leah outlined the sixteen-year-old’s probation violations, Valerie looked over the papers, signed and initialed them, and handed them back.

  She reduced probation on another one of her kids from intensive to standard just in time for the holidays. The things that made her job worthwhile.

  And there was a pretrial motion to sign.

  “Here’s the Billings file you asked for,” Leah said, placing the manila envelope in front of Valerie. She opened it. Hesitated.

  She hadn’t yet reported the smoking violation. Had decided instead to order twice-weekly drug testing. She wrote out the order.

  Knowing full well that nicotine wasn’t going to show up there.

  If they pulled Abraham from his home, moved him someplace in another part of the city—or state—they could monitor any potential nicotine problem. Right now, she just wanted to make
sure they didn’t have any more serious substance-abuse issues to deal with.

  Leah didn’t ask any questions when Valerie handed back the signed form.

  KIRK FELT A LITTLE BAD. But not enough to deny himself the victory. It was ten o’clock Wednesday night, and he’d convinced Valerie Simms to go for a walk with him. Just around her neighborhood. Which also happened to be his neighborhood, although he was fairly certain she didn’t know that. The boys were in bed, and, calling on her cell phone, he’d played on her sympathies. Tomorrow was Thanksgiving and he’d be spending it alone. Surely she could spare him a few minutes tonight.

  “Your manipulation didn’t work, Chandler,” she said as she joined him at the end of her driveway. He couldn’t see the front door of her large, secluded ranch-style home. It was hidden behind a walled-in alcove surrounded by rosebushes. “I agreed because I wanted the exercise and didn’t feel safe going out alone.”

  “No lunchtime skate today?”

  “Yeah, I skated.”

  She looked cute in black spandex pants that outlined her legs and derriere. He liked her in the tennis shoes she often ended up wearing around him instead of her usual high heels. The flat shoes made her seem less imposing. More accessible.

  There were no sidewalks in the elite mountain community. Walking on the edge of the wide, quiet road, Kirk kept enough of a distance to avoid touching her. But it was hard. Something he hadn’t expected. Until that moment, he’d thought himself permanently immune to any kind of passion.

  Let that be a warning to you, he told himself. If he could have extricated himself from the situation—this…relationship—without raising questions, he would’ve done so. Immediately.

  “What are you doing on Thanksgiving?” she asked after several minutes of silence.

  Visiting the cemetery, he could have told her. But didn’t. “Same thing I always do,” he answered instead. “Eating out.”

  “Eating out? Whoever heard of eating out on Thanksgiving?”

  “You’d be surprised.” Of course, in the past, eating out might have meant in a five-star resort restaurant at a table filled with powerful people, but now it meant a meal at whatever local diner he found open.