For the Children

After the string of cusswords, the boy spent fifteen minutes talking about all the things going undone in his mother’s life.

“Don’t you think she’s old enough to take care of herself?” Kirk asked, chomping on a double burger and fries as though he ate in his car parked in the back of a hotel lot every night of the week.

Abraham’s tanned, perfect features turned toward him, and Kirk had trouble swallowing the bite of food he’d just chewed. Those big brown eyes had never looked so completely sincere.

“Not my mom, Coach,” he said. “She’s one of those women who are too sweet for their own good. She always believes the best is going to happen. She’ll forget to pay the electric bill because she figures no one’s really going to turn off the power when it’s a single mom and her kid living in a trailer. Especially since she ‘most always pays it.”’

“You paid it, didn’t you?” Kirk read between the lines.

“Sometimes.”

“And the other bills, too?”

“Mostly. She kept her money in a little chest under my bed and I’d take it and buy money orders to pay for stuff.”

Abraham didn’t seem to be very hungry. He held his hamburger in one hand and picked at his fries.

“She can’t live alone, Coach. She’s afraid when she’s alone. She’ll go crazy and invite some jerk to stay with her because she won’t think she has any other choice.”

Kirk wondered if anyone had ever wrung that woman’s neck.

As if by mutual agreement, they shied away from uncomfortable conversation and tended to their food for several minutes.

“If they don’t let me go back there, Coach, I’m running,” he said suddenly, his voice as filled with determination as any judge’s had ever been.

“Whoa, buddy, remember what we talked about? Think of your future.”

“What future?” The brown eyes were sullen again, staring out into the early darkness that had fallen. December in Phoenix meant it was dark by five. A fact that had gone unnoticed by Kirk for most of his adult life. As had the blue skies and sunshine that characterized Arizona days.

He opened his mouth to give Abraham an answer.

“Forget it,” Abraham said before Kirk got out the first word. “I’m supposed to take care of my mom. I’ve known that for a long time. If I can’t even do that, what good am I?”

Kirk had a ready answer for that one. “You’re—”

“There’s no point in my being here,” Abraham interrupted, his voice bitter. “There’s nothing for me to do, and everyone else just wants to tell me what I’m thinking and feeling, and telling me they understand when they don’t know a damn thing.”

Kirk nodded. He had a feeling the boy was more right than wrong about that.

“There were problems at home, Abraham,” he said, looking inside for the intuitive sense that had guided him through years of successful negotiations. “You were pretty badly beat up.”

“I fell—”

“Don’t give me that line of bull,” Kirk warned before Abraham could compromise himself with another lie. “I’m guessing one of your mother’s friends did it to you.”

His stomach came close to rejecting the dinner he’d just eaten when Abraham’s silence acknowledged the truth of Kirk’s words.

“Did he do anything else?” Kirk wanted to avoid the path he was taking, but knew he couldn’t. “Before he hit you?”

“No!” There was too much vehemence in the boy’s voice. More than mere offense at the question.

“Did he try?”

The boy turned, and while Kirk couldn’t be sure, he suspected there was a hint of moisture in the boy’s eyes. “So what if he did?”

“So nothing as long as he didn’t succeed,” Kirk said, his blood boiling with a need to find the bastard and squeeze the breath from his body.

“He didn’t.” Abraham was staring at the floor and Kirk could tell the boy wasn’t being completely honest. But because he was fairly certain from Abraham’s tone that the man hadn’t done more than try, he didn’t know, at that moment, how much it mattered that Abraham talk about it.