For the Children

“I think he trusts me.” He put on his seat belt.

Doing the same, Valerie ignored his hint that the conversation was over. “The people he’s with are trained to help him.”

“You know who he’s with? Where he is?”

“I know how the courts work. They wouldn’t take a child from his mother without making sure he was getting the proper counseling and care.”

“I’ve got news for you,” Kirk said, pulling out on to the highway, breaking the speed limit to get back to town, to her car. To free himself from her presence. “Courts make mistakes.”

He wasn’t sure whether he was relieved or disappointed when she didn’t argue with him. When she gave up any attempt at conversation at all.

CAREFUL NOT TO WAKE the boys, Valerie wandered around the house late that night, picking up knick-knacks, running her fingers over them, sometimes smiling, sometimes not. Remembering. The picture of the twins on their fourth birthday, both of them with faces full of birthday cake and innocent green eyes, was on a side table in her home office. Lifting it, she studied those sweet faces and felt a surge of painful memories.

She’d hired a clown for their party that year. They’d insisted on waiting for their father to get home before the show started. And ended up with a ten-minute show because the clown had obligations elsewhere and finally had to start.

A ten-minute show without their father. Thomas hadn’t come home that night.

Valerie was fairly certain that was the first time he’d been unfaithful to her. She’d told him no the night before when he’d reached for her under the covers shortly after yelling at her for spending two hundred dollars on the clown for the boys’ party the next day.

He’d left her alone—but only after squeezing her breast so hard it’d borne bruises in the shape of his fingertips.

Moving slowly, a ghostlike creature in her own house, she found herself in the kitchen, wishing she hadn’t cleaned up the mess from dinner before going out to meet Kirk for coffee. Wishing the boys had disobeyed and gotten out of bed for a snack, leaving crumbs and spilled milk behind on the counter.

Wishing she had something that needed to be done, some menial task that would give her purpose. Something mundane enough, normal enough, to pull her out of the blackness. Something to redirect the thoughts and feelings consuming her.

She ended up in the front hall, sitting on the cold tile, guarding a front door that didn’t need to be guarded. Or was she there because it was as close to escape as she could manage? She’d come in to put a note in her purse to remind her to call Brian’s doctor in the morning. He was due for his next checkup.

She’d dropped the note on the floor.

And started to cry.

“Do you even know how arrogant you are?” Kirk had railed at her. He’d been angry; she understood that. And he’d hit a mark he’d had no idea was there. A private place—a wound—Valerie had been nursing for ten years. Ever since Thomas had first ripped it open. And then again every single time he’d bruised it after that. No matter what the issue between them might be, it had always come down to the same thing. That she was too arrogant—too judgmental. And after she’d been appointed to the bench, that she passed judgment on people outside her courtroom.

“You’re always analyzing people, Val.” She could hear her dead husband’s voice as clearly as if he’d been standing there in front of her, just as he’d stood so many times before—feet spread, hands on the hips of his tailored slacks, the sides of his suit coat pressed back. You think you’re better than everyone else. Always passing judgment…”

He’d most often been referring to himself. Once, after having come home with another woman’s makeup smeared on his shirt. After he’d missed trash day, having forgotten to get the cans out of the locked gate that housed them. Always after he’d missed something with the boys—including their birth. He’d been on the golf course that afternoon.

She’d tried so hard not to judge. To be fair.

“Fair from your point of view.” Thomas had spit the words at her more times than she could count. Usually followed by accusations of her small-mindedness. Her inability to see others’ points of view.

“I’m sure Kirk would agree with that,” Valerie told the note she still held, watching as tears dripped slowly off her chin to smear the paper. Twice now they’d had serious disagreements about the lives of the children in their collective care. And twice she’d refused to budge from her position.

But how could she budge when she knew she was right? Should she be untrue to herself, to the intuition that had been guiding her throughout her life, simply to please a man she happened to like?

If she’d done a little more of that for her husband, would he still be alive? More important, would Alicia?

“It was my point of view the governor appointed to the bench,” she told the soggy note, not really even seeing it through the blur of tears. Crumpling the paper in her fist, she leaned her head against the wall, wondering how life had come to this.

“If my judgment is good enough for the people of Arizona, one would think it should be good enough for my private life, as well,” she whispered.

The words only brought more tears.

She’d had such great goals, studied hard, worked hard, giving a hundred and fifty percent, always doing what she said she would. She had a great job. Great kids. A great house.

And, suddenly, no faith in herself.

WITH THE PINK BABY ROSES covering the entire front of the headstone, Kirk could almost pretend he was in a little girl’s room. Almost.