For the Children

“I’m only saying that my kids in court have as much potential as my kids at home. I look for ways to show them that someone cares, even if that means bringing them back into my courtroom so I can check up on them. And I enter dispositions that I think will help turn their lives around. Counseling, educational and vocational programs, that kind of thing.”

“You really care about them.”

“Of course I do,” Valerie said. “You can’t sit there looking into the eyes of a scared, lost child and not care.”

Kirk might have been able to. A few years ago. He’d certainly managed to miss the panicked looks in the eyes of the men—very often elderly men—he’d put out of business. Many of them had spent whole lifetimes building something that he’d torn down in the space of a week.

This woman, a Superior Court judge at her age, obviously hadn’t wasted a second of her life.

While he’d—

“What about the victims of the crimes these kids commit?” he asked.

“I care about them, too. One of my major considerations in whether or not to detain a child is the threat he or she poses to society. But helping the child helps society. The idea is to help them to grow into responsible, contributing citizens, rather than relegating them to life in adult prisons.”

“What did you do before your appointment to the bench?”

“Worked in the public defender’s office.”

A defense attorney. Why didn’t that surprise him?

She’d spent her life defending other people, while he’d spent his destroying them.

And through it all, she’d raised, single-handedly, two fantastic kids. While he’d squandered what chance he’d had to be a father….

Head bowed, he glanced at the woman across from him, feeling insignificant. Ashamed. The almighty and infallible Kirk Chandler, fallen.

KIRK ORDERED a second coffee. Valerie wasn’t sorry to see him do that. Sitting there with him was nice. Unusual. But nice.

It had been a long time since she’d gone out in the evening for any reason other than business. Or the twins. They were safely home in bed, probably sound asleep by now, and her usual ten o’clock exhaustion had not made its appearance.

“You saw the kid I pointed out today—Abraham Billings,” Kirk said, settling back in his chair with an ankle crossed over his knee, elbows on the arms of hi

s chair, coffee cup held loosely between his hands. “He was the kid playing center.”

“The one who got Brian’s spot.” She couldn’t resist the barb, but the words were accompanied by a smile. She couldn’t be sorry that Abraham had received this break—or that the boy was eagerly involved in such a healthy activity.

The slow grin he sent her as he nodded elicited an unexpected reaction in Valerie.

“The kid’s got real potential.”

“I thought so, too.” One of her court kids with as much potential as her kids at home. Or more…

“I’d been after him to try out for the team since the third week of school. I could tell he wanted to, but then he didn’t show up….”

Kirk’s face was drawn, his eyes filled with compassion.

For one of her kids.

“Do you know why?” She heard herself ask a question she probably shouldn’t.

Ordinarily, she would never discuss one of her kids outside the system.

But Kirk didn’t know that Abraham was one of her kids.

And if there was any way he could help her understand how to help the boy…

“Nope. He never said. But I got the feeling it had something to do with his mother.”