“There are still, and probably always will be, shadows in her life, but she’s happier today than I’ve ever known her.”
They were the first words Valerie had said that night that eased the ache in Kirk Chandler’s soul.
VALERIE TALKED for another half hour. And nothing she said made the light go back on in Kirk’s eyes.
“You talk about your intense determination as if it’s something dirty,” she told him, frustration creeping in. “But look at what it’s done for good.”
His gaze was blank, turned toward the windshield and the emptiness outside. “You saved my son’s life, Kirk, because you were determined enough to stand up to me. And to him.”
He nodded. And that was all.
She tried a while longer, but eventually realized she wasn’t getting anywhere.
“You know,” she said, climbing out of his car, “that determination you’re so afraid of just might kill any chance you have at a happy life, after all.” She told him the black-and-white truth, but she told him straight from the heart. “Because you’re using it to punish yourself.” She sighed in frustration. “You succeed at whatever you decide to do—and you’re succeeding at this.”
ON HIS WAY TO SCHOOL the following Monday morning, Kirk ran through the reasons he was planning to give Steve McDonald for quitting his job. He was going in early enough so the
principal would have time to call in a backup guard for Kirk’s street corner. There were always custodians eager for the chance to pick up a few extra bucks.
Then Kirk would go home and make arrangements to rent some office space for the paperwork that was now engulfing two rooms in his house. If it wasn’t the life he wanted, it was the life he was cut out for. A life he was good at.
Out of habit, he pulled the Vette up to his usual spot in the parking lot across the street from his corner. At that early hour, the street was deserted, but he could easily picture the kids who would soon be crossing there. They’d have all kinds of things to tell him; they always did. And they’d be wondering why he wasn’t there.
He didn’t like that. Deserting them without warning. It was something Alicia would have expected of him when she was alive. But not, he hoped, what his angel child believed he’d do.
Grabbing the stop sign from the trunk of his car, Kirk donned his vest and took up his post. After lunch was as good a time to quit as any. Steve would be in his office as soon as the noon meal was over. Kirk had met him there many times for a quick meal of their own. Usually something disgusting like leftover cafeteria pizza.
That was one thing he was not going to miss.
The kids were in rare form that morning, rowdier than usual for a Monday morning. Amanda Sue Bates, a young girl who’d barely spoken a word at the beginning of the year, ran up to the corner when her mother dropped her off. “Guess what, Kirk?”
“What?” He couldn’t help grinning at her. He figured the huge smile she was wearing must be hurting her face.
“I get to play Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz! They called me over the weekend!”
“That’s great, Amanda,” he said, nodding at a couple of other kids as they joined them at the corner. “Congratulations! Didn’t I tell you you’d be good at acting?”
“You said if I wanted the part badly enough I’d get it,” she reminded him.
He smiled. Amanda Sue Bates was born to be an actress, someone who could shine from behind the guise of characters other than her own shy self.
“You’ll come see me, won’t you?” she asked, hanging back as he stepped off the curb to let the children pass.
“Sure,” he told her. One school play in his lifetime couldn’t hurt.
He sensed more than saw Valerie’s Mercedes pull up across the street. Blake and Brian tumbled out and raced toward him.
“Mom took us up to the weight room on Saturday…” Brian said.
“…and Brian benched two more pounds than me,” Blake finished for him.
“And we’re both the same weight.”
“Mom told us you had a little girl that died,” Brian said. The two boys showed no hurry to cross the street and Kirk couldn’t quite make himself step off that curb.
“Her name was Alicia,” he told them.
“Blake and I think she was a lucky kid,” Brian said.