For the Children

“Actually—” he shrugged “—I think I’m trying not to tell you that.”

“But you were.”

“I was.”

“For what? You get caught jaywalking?” She was grinning. Apparently she didn’t believe him. Kirk allowed himself a second to be gratified.

“The first time was for breaking and entering.”

Her step faltered. “The first time.”

“The second was breaking and entering with robbery thrown in.”

He made light of it. But the memory made him sick.

“Oh my gosh.”

“The third time…”

“The third? Kirk! You go to jail for these things.”

Some people did. And eventually, briefly, so had he. He’d begun to wonder, mostly since his talk with Steve McDonald, whether his life might have turned out differently if his father had forced Kirk to pay his own debt to society that first time.

“The third time it was car theft.”

“You stole a car.”

His father’s Corvette. The car Kirk had driven there that day. He’d been driving it most of his adult life.

As a reminder.

“Charges were dropped on that one.”

He’d been brought in, booked. Strip-searched, required to shower where anyone could—and did—walk by. Dressed in the same blue cotton pants and T-shirt as every other juvenile locked up in detention.

And then his father had found out who’d stolen his car.

And Kirk had been taken out for a steak dinner to recuperate from his dreadful experience. While his mother had sat in a corner of the booth with silent tears trailing down her cheeks.

“The fourth time was aggravated assault.”

Valerie laughed out loud. “Now I know you’re kidding.”

Yeah. That was how it felt to him, sometimes, when he remembered.

But he knew.

Who he was. What he’d done.

“I pleaded not guilty for reasons of self-defense.” He felt compelled to finish what he’d started. It was time she knew the nature of the man.

“You’re not kidding.”

They stopped under a tree, just standing there, staring at each other through their tinted lenses. “I’m not kidding,” he admitted, his voice completely serious.

“What happened?”

“A punk football player grabbed my date in the parking lot after a dance one night. He’d had too much to drink. He kissed her, squeezed her breast. I hauled him off her. He hit me. I hit him back.”