For the Children

Leah she said her name was.

Kirk told her it was nice to meet her, though he wasn’t really thinking about her at all. He was too busy trying not to remember.

He concentrated on the Christmas decorations, the tree in the lobby, the pictures on the walls.

He’d been in the building many times. But never in the judges’ chambers.

Silently following the girl with braids sticking out in all directions, Kirk couldn’t quite stop himself from taking a couple of extra-big steps. Just because he could. No shackles on his feet this time around.

And then he caught a glimpse of Valerie. He’d expected her to be in her office waiting for him. Not coming out that door he’d only seen from the other side. The private back door of Courtroom One that led to the bench. Or, in this case, away from it.

“Hi.” She smiled at him, looked down and then back up.

She wasn’t sure if they were friends anymore or not.

He wasn’t sure, either.

“Hi.”

He fell into silent step beside her. Waiting for privacy before he said what he’d come to say. And probably stalling.

Kirk didn’t eat crow often, or well.

“How was your weekend?”

She looked intimidating in that robe.

Not that Kirk was intimidated. At all. He’d outgrown that a long time ago. Still, she no longer seemed like the woman he’d snapped at in his Corvette several nights before.

And not at all like the woman he’d kissed….

“Good. We put up our tree.”

Christmas, a time he celebrated—when it was over.

He should have put on something besides jeans. And tennis shoes.

She led the way to her inner office, thanking Leah and closing the door behind them. Efficiently removing and hanging her robe in the closet, she took the high-backed leather chair behind her desk, motioning him to one of the chairs in front.

“What’s up?”

Kirk declined the chair. This was a standing moment. A hands-in-the-pockets-of-his-jeans moment.

He’d never felt less like a valuable human being than he did right then. Especially compared to her. Here she was changing lives, saving kids.

And he’d spent the first fifteen years of his adult life ruining other people. And deserting his kid.

“I came to apologize.”

He wasn’t planning to tell her about Saturday evening, the hour it had taken him to talk Abraham into going back to foster care after he’d found him hitchhiking on the freeway exit. If he hadn’t gone to see the boy…

Alicia had probably had something to do with that.

Valerie wasn’t saying anything, just looking at the pen she was flipping between her thumb and forefinger, a frown on what he could see of her downcast face.

“I had no business calling you God.”

“You