For the Children

Again and again and again. It had been his first introduction to an anger that could drive him to the bitter end. And it was the last time that anger had been given a physical outlet.

“Then it was self-defense. I can’t believe they even pressed charges.”

“He was the mayor’s son.”

And had been unconscious after the first punch. With his bare hands Kirk had nearly killed an unconscious kid. He would have if his date hadn’t started screaming at the top of her lungs.

Only the fact that Kirk’s father had been the mayor’s biggest financial supporter and that the mayor’s son had been unable to recall what had happened had saved Kirk that time.

He’d eventually married his date.

“Was there a fifth time?” Valerie asked, starting to walk again.

“No.”

“Were you ever detained?”

“Only until my dad came to get me.” But it had been enough. That last time, when he’d been booked for beating up the mayor’s son, Kirk’s folks had been up in the mountains. Unreachable for four days.

Four days for him to be grabbed in the shower by some pervert, spit on by another of his fellow inmates, treated—it seemed to him at the time—as though he were no better than cow dung, forced to submit to the ignominies of a full physical, to undress and leave his regulation blue pants and prison shoes in a brown paper bag before he could walk down the secured hall to his cell each night. To use the rest room in full view of anyone who wanted to watch. And to remember.

Kirk had been plenty angry by the time his parents came to get him.

Driven by something he hadn’t understood then, he’d made their lives hell for weeks after that.

His father had given him the Corvette.

He understood now, though. Courtesy of Alicia’s death. He’d been driven by fear, by the knowledge that he couldn’t control everything in the world around him. Even though he’d been taught that was his right since the day he was born.

It had taken him years to figure out what made him resent his parents, what created the underlying anger he felt when he was with them. They’d given him a world where he could have anything he wanted, taught him that he was the lord of his existence. They’d set him no limits. Seventeen was a hard age to learn that he wasn’t always in charge, that he couldn’t control everything.

Too hard. While Kirk learned that he never wanted to be on the wrong side of the law again, he hadn’t learned the part about control. Instead, he’d spent the next seventeen years of his life proving that, on the contrary, he controlled all.

Or so he’d thought.

“You’re awfully quiet.” Her words sounded more like a question than a statement.

The court buildings no longer in sight, Kirk put a friendly arm around Valerie’s shoulders, half expecting her to call him on it—or shrug it off.

“Just remembering.” He grinned—sort of. “So how much damage did I just do?”

“To what?”

“That pedestal I’ve been put on.”

She sputtered and laughed. “You were never up on a pedestal, Mr. Chandler,” she said. “Far from it.” Sobering, she added, “And you didn’t do any damage at all.”

“Come on, Judge, I’m just another one of your juvies.”

“Hardly.” She bumped his side. For safety’s sake, he chose to believe it had been by accident. “Not a single one of my kids has a body that—”

She broke off.

“That what?”

“Nothing.”

Because he was treading dangerous ground himself, Kirk left it at that.