For the Children

“You’re going to stunt your growth, Bry,” she said gently. “You and Blake are just entering your biggest growth years. He already weighs ten pounds more than you do. And if this keeps up, he’ll spring right up—but you won’t.”

With pinched cheeks Blake turned to his brother. “Eat a couple of egg rolls, Bry, and then we can go shoot some hoops.”

Giving a troubled nod, Brian did as he was told.

CHAPTER TWO

KIRK HATED Friday nights. They meant a whole weekend ahead with nothing to do but lecture himself.

He particularly hated this Friday night.

Letting himself into his plush Ahwatukee home, in a secluded Phoenix neighborhood set into the base of South Mountain, he tossed his keys on the antique cherry-wood table by the door, caught the alarm before it went off and headed straight for the phone.

He ignored the blinking red dot that signified messages. Saw on the LED screen attached to the blinking machine that there were twelve calls waiting for him and still ignored it. It was the same every day.

He’d push the playback button sometime that evening. And half listen to the messages. It was a form of treatment—to listen and remain calm, unaffected.

Sometimes he needed a drink first.

Tonight, he needed the phone.

Corporate attorney Troy Winston always picked up Kirk’s calls immediately. Even now.

“What’s up, buddy?” Kirk’s right-hand man of ten years greeted him.

“Susan had a baby.” Kirk could barely get the words past the stiffness in his face. He’d run into an acquaintance of theirs at the Corvette dealership when he’d gone in for an oil job that afternoon.

“Okay.”

No surprise there. Kirk felt the stab of disappointment.

“You knew.”

“Yeah. I ran into Bob Morrison a few months back.”

A name from his past. His ex-brother-in-law. Kirk didn’t respond.

“And you didn’t bother to tell me.”

“I didn’t think it mattered.”

Susan’s gone on with her life, Troy’s tone of voice told him. He stood, feet apart, the muscles of his thighs straining against the legs of his jeans.

“The baby’s a month old.”

“Let it go, buddy,” his attorney, the only person still on Kirk’s payroll, advised him. “Give up this idiotic plan you’ve locked yourself into and get on with your life. Go out. Call someone. Date. You could have a new kid, too.”

“I have a kid.”

“Kirk, you’re really starting to worry me. I went along with this whole school guard thing because I thought you needed some time off. But I didn’t think it would last a week, let alone three months. All this isolation is starting to get to you.”

“I slept with Susan ten months ago.”

“You guys weren’t speaking to each other ten months ago. As a matter of fact, as I remember it, the woman freaked out anytime you were close enough to breathe the same air.”

He could always count on Troy to tell him the truth. That was why the man had quickly risen to the seat right next to Kirk Chandler, CEO of one of the nation’s most controversial, well-known and financially successful acquisitions firms.

Of course, all of that was over. Done. Kirk had closed the company almost a year ago. And Troy, while still handling Kirk’s personal affairs, was enjoying the good life.

Kirk took a deep breath. And another. He concentrated on the fingers holding the phone, refusing to allow them to clamp the thing so tightly it bruised his hand.

“I ran into her one night at the cemetery. She didn’t freak.”

“Not freaking at a cemetery bears no resemblance to having sex. None. At all. Let me swing by, take you out for a beer. I know a couple of women who’d—”

“It was late. I was there when she came walking up. We were both too tired to make sense of anything….”

“Not good enough, Kirk. You forget who you’re talking to. This was the woman who, after your divorce, not only had her own name changed, but changed your daughter’s as well. Hell, I was there when Susan turned into a raving lunatic at the funeral just because your car was close by.”

Sliding his free hand into the pocket of his jeans, Kirk flexed the muscles in his shoulders and down his back. The flannel shirt he was wearing still felt odd to skin more used to silk.

“I was crying. That night.”

Silence hung on the line.

He’d left Troy Winston speechless. At a different moment, there’d be some satisfaction, maybe even humor, in that. Another moment in another lifetime.

“She walked straight into my arms, broken, needy. Hurting so bad she was craving death….”

Kirk knew he had to stop. To think about his fingers on the phone.

Loosen up, man. Loosen up. It’s in the past. It can’t be changed. The future can be changed.

They were the only words that kept him sane.

“The woman I’d married, planned to grow old with, was in my arms. I walked her home. And when she didn’t want me to leave, I stayed.”

“I’ll make some calls.”

Troy’s voice was deadly serious as he rang off.

And Kirk was satisfied.

BY SUNDAY NIGHT, all the boys could talk about was the basketball tryouts coming up that week. There was a practice Monday after school and the actual tryouts were on Tuesday. Throughout the weekend they’d alternated between half killing themselves in the driveway, attempting to become shooting stars in two days, and driving her crazy with energy that only seemed to grow the more they expended it.

“Larry Bird flicked his wrist right as he threw the ball. That’s the trick,” Blake said, rolling the die but forgetting to move his little metal car along the Monopoly board.

“Dan Majerle was the best-three point shooter in the league. I think he flicked his wrist, too,” Brian added, staring at the board. “We need to flick our wrists…”

“And we didn’t practice that at all.”

Neither boy seemed to notice that the game in which they were currently engaged had stalled.

“Mom? Can we go shoot—”

“No!” Valerie laughed. “It’s pitch black out there, guys. You have tomorrow’s practice and you’ll have time before dinner tomorrow, too.”

“Do you think we’ll have to do one-on-ones?” Blake asked his brother.

The die still lay, double sixes, on the Monopoly board. Valerie was quite proud of her six red hotels and twelve green houses.

Her boys, who were usually land magnates, owned the utilities and a few of the railroads.

“I’m sure,” Brian said, frowning. “You don’t have to worry, though. Just steal the ball and blow them away.”

Picking up the Community Chest and Chance Cards, she put them in their storage slot on top of the one-dollar bills. Then she cleared off the rest of the board and folded it to fit inside the box.

The real estate didn’t really mean that much. She’d had no competition.

The twins continued to discuss everything from shoes and socks to ways they could maintain control of the ball, completely oblivious to the game’s disappearance.

“Let’s go get some ice cream,” Valerie finally suggested.

In tandem, the boys looked at her. At the empty table. And then back at her.

“Sorry, Mom.” Brian spoke for both of them.

She grinned. “It’s okay, guys. I’m glad to see you so jazzed about something.”

And she was. Overjoyed, actually. Brian had been eating all weekend. She realized this was just a temporary fix, but it seemed pretty obvious that basketball could be the thing they’d been searching for to help her son with his flagging self-esteem.

Talk of basketball continued as all three ate their ice-cream cones, filled with the strangest concoctions of vanilla ice cream and mix-ins they could come up with, stopped by the store for the week’s groceries, and then tried to focus on the boys’ homework. Brian hauled out a disgusting-looking object he’d been hiding, unbeknownst to her, wrapped in a towel under his bed.

“It’s my science project, Mom!” he’d protested when she insisted he throw it away immediately.

“What is it?” Valerie wasn’t convinced.

“A piece of bread I dipped in fabric softener. There’s another one dipped in diet soda.”

“Yeah,” Blake piped up from his spot on the living-room floor. “His theory is that one will be preserved and the other will be eaten away by the acid. Cool, huh?”

Yeah. Cool. She should’ve had girls.

“Mom?” Pen in his mouth, Blake was frowning as he looked up at her. “Dad would be really happy if he knew we were trying out for the team, huh?”

Valerie straightened the cushions on the couch. “Of course he would.”

“And he’d come watch every single game, wouldn’t he?” Brian asked, stopping on the way back to his room to return the experiment.

Blake chuckled. “Yeah, he’d be one of those dads who know every kid’s name and stats and shout from the stands like a maniac.”

It was clear the boy meant that as a compliment.

Valerie agreed with only one part. The shouting. But it wouldn’t have been from the stands in a junior-high gym.

“He wouldn’t have missed a single one,” she told the boys, leaning over to pick up some lint from the off-white carpet.

She was saved from any further sojourns down fairy-tale lane when, apparently satisfied, they returned to more immediate concerns. Algebra problems that were due in the morning.

Thomas Smith was dead. Leaving behind a memory that was mostly not bad to his sons. Valerie knew that was because the boys’ memories had become selective—the human mind protecting itself, she supposed. So wasn’t it kinder to let the myth perpetuate itself?

Or was she just weak? Choosing the easier way of pretending all had been well, rather than being honest with the boys.

Some things could remain buried forever, but there were others the boys would eventually have to know….

Not now. Not yet. They were still children. Her little boys.

And Brian was already treading such dangerous ground.

KIRK TOSSED his cell phone from one hand to the other and then back, looking down at the elegant kitchen tile again; 6:00 a.m. Arizona time meant that it was eight o’clock in Virginia. He’d put off the call all weekend. Another hour and it would be time for him to head in to work. He liked to be on the corner long before the first kid arrived at school, and there was an early choir practice that morning.

Another hour and he’d make it. He could do this—follow through on his decision to abandon his old life as CEO of Chandler Acquisitions, the career that had consumed him to the point of heartlessness. He could outlast the temptation of making a final perfect deal. He was actually gaining a measure of peace in the job his old friend, Steve McDonald, had offered him during a painfully dark night several months before. Back then he’d been slowly killing himself—with hard truths and liquor. These days, taking care of the children as he’d promised Alicia he would, he actually slept at night.

He could put down the phone; the number implanted in his memory would eventually fade, along with the rest of Friday night’s messages begging him to handle just one more deal.

Someday, maybe even his uncanny ability to remember them at all would disappear.

The Gandoyne company produced aluminum cans, specifically for food products. Aster Sealants owned the patent on a material that would seal and reseal aluminum lids. This sealant had various uses, but if it was put together with food-product storage it could make both companies wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

The caller who’d left the number was Gandoyne’s son, who had no interest in taking over the business, who was worried about his father’s health and who had heard of Kirk’s win-at-all-costs reputation. He’d gone on to say that both companies were family-owned, headed by stereotypical patriarchs intent on doing business in the same way as their fathers and their fathers before them. They refused to sell stock options. Refused to let anyone else have any say in their businesses or give up the least measure of control.

“Leave them to it,” Kirk told the cup of coffee he’d poured, which had grown cold. He dumped out the offensive liquid, rinsed the mug and put it back in the cupboard.

“You can’t do that,” Susan used to say. “It wasn’t washed.”

“My mouth never touched it,” he’d tell her.

“But the coffee did.”

“And coffee is just what it’ll have in it the next time I use it.”

“It’s still wet,” she’d say next.

There wasn’t a lot Kirk managed to do right around the house. Of course, you couldn’t blame him much on that score. He’d never spent enough time around a house to learn.

And he’d tell her, “It’ll be dry by tomorrow morning when I need it again.”

She’d quit arguing, but her eyes would be speaking loud disapproval. And he’d bet his living trust that she’d go back afterward and wash the mug. Probably the whole cupboard of mugs in case any of the others were contaminated by his inadequate sense of what was sanitary—and acceptable.

Leaning against the counter, staring at the cell phone on the tiled island across from him, Kirk felt satisfied that, at least in this imagined exchange between him and Susan, he’d had the last word.

Gandoyne and his family were going to lose his empire if he didn’t reinvent his business practices. Aster Sealants would get an offer too good to refuse. Or if they said no, they’d lose out altogether when some young upshot fresh from Podunk College U.S.A. found a way to make the edges of an opened aluminum lid nonsharp and resealable. If Aster could do it, so would someone else.

And that someone would sell to another someone who made aluminum cans. Those two someones would get filthy rich while two old men went bankrupt.

The cell phone rang.

“Chandler.” Some habits died hard.

“Douglas’s name is on the birth certificate.”

Alexander Douglas. Susan’s new husband.

“I expected as much.”

“In the state of Arizona, that makes him the kid’s father.”

Kirk lowered the hand holding the phone. Watched the coffee in the pot. Put the phone back to his ear. “The bastard has my wife. I’ll see him in hell before he gets my son, too.”

“Arizona laws are pretty clear.”

“File whatever you have to file to get me a paternity test.”

“You aren’t thinking straight, Kirk.” Kirk knew Troy Winston only dared say the words because he couldn’t see Kirk’s face. That muscle in his jaw started to tic.

“I’ve never been thinking straighter,” he said softly. “That child is mine, and I will do whatever it takes to be a part of his life. If I have to sue, I’ll sue. Just get me that paternity test.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

Kirk was pleased as he disconnected the call—in spite of the offended tone he’d heard in the voice of his most trusted associate.

He was sorry he’d been rough on Troy. Maybe even sorry that this would rock Susan’s world. But he was going to do this.

He was determined.

And he was Kirk Chandler.

Thumb on the keypad of his cell phone, Kirk dialed the direct line to Edgar Gandoyne. It was now almost eight-thirty in Virginia. And Kirk had half an hour to get to work.

“ALL RISE.”

Valerie walked through the hall door leading from her office to the courtroom after a five-minute break, taking a deep breath as she went through the change from emotional woman to detached judge.

“You may be seated.”

The six other people in the small room sat as she took her seat on the bench. Smiling at Ashley, the court clerk who usually worked with her, Valerie checked the day’s files.

Mona, the bailiff working this morning’s schedule, announced the first case in the same clear, unemotional voice Valerie had been hearing since her first day on the bench.

As Ben White’s name was announced, Valerie glanced up, looking at the four people sitting on the dais eight feet in front of her and six feet below. Behind them was a hard wooden bench that could seat maybe four visitors. And an upholstered, sound-buffered wall.

An intimate setting for their little party.

The visitor’s bench was empty.

Ben was looking down. She waited.

A couple of seconds later the twelve-year-old boy gave a surreptitious and very hesitant glance in her direction.

She smiled at him. And forced herself to ignore the catch in her lungs. Ben might be the same size as Blake and Brian, but his life was not theirs.

He was the most important person in that room and she wanted him to know it.

Those eyes were trained in her direction for only a second, but she read the fear there.

She called for those present to introduce themselves.

Debbie Malcolm, state prosecutor on the White case, went first.

“Gordon White, father to the juvenile.” Ben’s father had been in her courtroom before.

“Leslie White, mother.” As had she.

Ben was next. He stated his name, looking at her briefly, and then lowering his eyes.

Ben’s attorney, Tyson Hunter, a public defender Valerie saw often, was next. During the difficult first minutes of this proceeding, everyone in the room, with the exception of Ben, was occupied with whatever papers were in front of them.

There wasn’t a lot of eye contact in Valerie’s working life.

With a crease in his forehead that had grown more pronounced over the months Valerie had been seeing Ben, the boy was peering at the papers in his lawyer’s hands. His papers.

The file was thick.

Valerie had a version of the same file in front of her.

Without looking at the boy again, she began with the legal protocol, turning Ben from a twelve-year-old child to a case number. For the record she asked if Ben’s biographical information was correct. His attorney stated in the affirmative, both of them going through their notes during the exchange.

Detachment was critical to her. She was about to make a decision that was going to change, one way or another, the rest of this all-American-looking boy’s life.

Debbie Malcolm, for the state, recommended, in light of the evidence before them, that Ben be detained.

Valerie had known coming into the room that this would be the recommendation.

Ben’s attorney spoke next, trying to explain away repeated truancies as no danger to the community. In great and passionate detail, he told the court about the boy’s scholastic abilities, his remarkable IQ that was blamed for a boredom that drove him from classrooms. The misdemeanors the lawyer dismissed in much the same way, managing to assert more than once that detention was for those who were a danger to the community. He believed that there were other, more beneficial ways to handle the case before them and asked for a lesser sentence.

Six months ago, Valerie would have been swayed by the arguments. They were solid. Sound. As good as anything she’d ever done during her life on the other side of the bench.

Looking at the boy’s parents, she asked, “How’s he doing at home?”

Ben’s father said fine.

His mother wiped away the tears that were sliding slowly down her face.

Valerie glanced at Ben. His face was impassive, which sent alarms to her nerve endings. At twelve years of age, the boy was unmoved by his mother’s anguish. Anguish that he had caused.

His mother’s statement was rife with confusion, helplessness, an engulfing desire to do what was best for her son and the honesty to admit she had no more ideas.

“Do you have anything to say?” she asked Ben, pinning him now with her most serious stare. Unless something happened in the next thirty seconds to convince her otherwise, Ben White had just sealed his fate.

“No, Your Honor.”

“Okay.” Valerie scanned the pages in front of her once more, making absolutely certain she’d seen everything—every note, date, justification, charge, recommendation and previous disposition. She was warm in her robe. Warmer than normal. She was aware of the heavy circular metal plaque on the wall behind her, almost as though it were radiating heat. Its words were emblazoned on her mind. Great Seal of the State of Arizona. 1912.

The state of Arizona had entrusted her with this decision.

“Ben, based on the number of times I’ve seen you in this court, and based on the fact that you’ve violated the terms of your intensive probation, I am going to have you detained, here at Juvenile Detention for a period of ninety days.” In spite of the sharp intake of breath she heard from the dais, Valerie continued, explaining legalities, conditions. “Do you understand what that means?”

She gazed at the boy. Not at his parents. His mother’s tears were not going to help Valerie do her job.

The boy was stone-faced, as usual. Until he opened his mouth to speak.

“No! Your Honor, no! Please don’t send me there! I’ll do everything just like you say, I promise.” With tears streaming down his face, he looked frantically over to his parents. “Please, don’t let them take me away from you….”

Basketball tryouts. Today Blake and Brian had basketball tryouts.

“Please!”

She read him the rest of the disposition.

Detention was this boy’s only hope.

She believed that.

The thought carried her from the room and down the hall to her office, but it didn’t erase the sight of that terrified face from her mind’s eye. Or stop her from imagining the next hour and the way the boy’s life was going to be drastically changed.

Ben had reason to be terrified. Juvenile detention stripped a kid not just of his freedom, but of any false pride he might retain. Her hope was that reducing Ben White to the most basic aspects of existence, he’d be able to begin again, to rebuild his life, to find a positive direction.

Her other hope was that neither of her sons ever had reason to look like that.

CHAPTER THREE

LEAH LOOKED UP from her desk outside Valerie’s office when Valerie entered their suite. “Did you detain him?”

“Yes.” She didn’t stop to chat.

In her office, hanging up her robe, Valerie concentrated on detaching herself from the image of Ben White. She couldn’t do her job if she didn’t. Nor could she be a good mother outside the job….

“What’s the little smile for?” Leah asked, walking into Valerie’s office a couple of minutes later.

She told her J.A. about the boys’ basketball tryouts that afternoon. And how their enthusiasm had completely consumed them. They just had to make that team.

“Do you know who the coach is?”

“Yeah, he’s that crossing guard I told you about.”

“The one who looks far too sexy to be a crossing guard?”

“I never said that!”

“Not in words, maybe!” Leah grinned, dropping into the chair in front of Valerie’s desk.

“What I’ve said is that it’s hard to believe someone who moves with his confidence is content standing on a street corner with a stop sign.”

“Do you have any idea how many times you’ve said it, though?”

Was she really talking about the man that much? She made a mental note to stop.

“It’s just that something about him strikes me, you know?” she said now, thoughts of the smile he’d given her that morning starting to replace the memory of the look in Ben’s eyes.

“Yeah, I know,” Leah said, her grin growing wider.

“Not like that.” Valerie picked up a pen, drew some lines on the top of a small pad of sticky notes. “He represents everything I haven’t known in a man,” she continued slowly. She and Leah had never spoken about anything like this before. “He sees the incredible value in children. He gives his time to them.”

“Isn’t that what Hal and the other male judges and probation officers and C.P.S. workers and attorneys do every day?”

“Of course.” Valerie glanced up. She couldn’t explain what made the guard different. He just was.

“So you think the boys will make the team?”

“I pray that they do.” She’d been offering up little prayers for days. “Neither of them is particularly tall or talented at handling the ball, but Brian’s a great shooter.” She chuckled. “I can vouch for that. We spent more time on the driveway this weekend than we did in the house.