“Leave them to it,” Kirk told the cup of coffee he’d poured, which had grown cold. He dumped out the offensive liquid, rinsed the mug and put it back in the cupboard.
“You can’t do that,” Susan used to say. “It wasn’t washed.”
“My mouth never touched it,” he’d tell her.
“But the coffee did.”
“And coffee is just what it’ll have in it the next time I use it.”
“It’s still wet,” she’d say next.
There wasn’t a lot Kirk managed to do right around the house. Of course, you couldn’t blame him much on that score. He’d never spent enough time around a house to learn.
And he’d tell her, “It’ll be dry by tomorrow morning when I need it again.”
She’d quit arguing, but her eyes would be speaking loud disapproval. And he’d bet his living trust that she’d go back afterward and wash the mug. Probably the whole cupboard of mugs in case any of the others were contaminated by his inadequate sense of what was sanitary—and acceptable.
Leaning against the counter, staring at the cell phone on the tiled island across from him, Kirk felt satisfied that, at least in this imagined exchange between him and Susan, he’d had the last word.
Gandoyne and his family were going to lose his empire if he didn’t reinvent his business practices. Aster Sealants would get an offer too good to refuse. Or if they said no, they’d lose out altogether when some young upshot fresh from Podunk College U.S.A. found a way to make the edges of an opened aluminum lid nonsharp and resealable. If Aster could do it, so would someone else.
And that someone would sell to another someone who made aluminum cans. Those two someones would get filthy rich while two old men went bankrupt.
The cell phone rang.
“Chandler.” Some habits died hard.
“Douglas’s name is on the birth certificate.”
Alexander Douglas. Susan’s new husband.
“I expected as much.”
“In the state of Arizona, that makes him the kid’s father.”
Kirk lowered the hand holding the phone. Watched the coffee in the pot. Put the phone back to his ear. “The bastard has my wife. I’ll see him in hell before he gets my son, too.”
“Arizona laws are pretty clear.”
“File whatever you have to file to get me a paternity test.”
“You aren’t thinking straight, Kirk.” Kirk knew Troy Winston only dared say the words because he couldn’t see Kirk’s face. That muscle in his jaw started to tic.
“I’ve never been thinking straighter,” he said softly. “That child is mine, and I will do whatever it takes to be a part of his life. If I have to sue, I’ll sue. Just get me that paternity test.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
Kirk was pleased as he disconnected the call—in spite of the offended tone he’d heard in the voice of his most trusted associate.
He was sorry he’d been rough on Troy. Maybe even sorry that this would rock Susan’s world. But he was going to do this.
He was determined.
And he was Kirk Chandler.
Thumb on the keypad of his cell phone, Kirk dialed the direct line to Edgar Gandoyne. It was now almost eight-thirty in Virginia. And Kirk had half an hour to get to work.
“ALL RISE.”
Valerie walked through the hall door leading from her office to the courtroom after a five-minute break, taking a deep breath as she went through the change from emotional woman to detached judge.
“You may be seated.”
The six other people in the small room sat as she took her seat on the bench. Smiling at Ashley, the court clerk who usually worked with her, Valerie checked the day’s files.
Mona, the bailiff working this morning’s schedule, announced the first case in the same clear, unemotional voice Valerie had been hearing since her first day on the bench.
As Ben White’s name was announced, Valerie glanced up, looking at the four people sitting on the dais eight feet in front of her and six feet below. Behind them was a hard wooden bench that could seat maybe four visitors. And an upholstered, sound-buffered wall.
An intimate setting for their little party.
The visitor’s bench was empty.
Ben was looking down. She waited.
A couple of seconds later the twelve-year-old boy gave a surreptitious and very hesitant glance in her direction.
She smiled at him. And forced herself to ignore the catch in her lungs. Ben might be the same size as Blake and Brian, but his life was not theirs.
He was the most important person in that room and she wanted him to know it.
Those eyes were trained in her direction for only a second, but she read the fear there.
She called for those present to introduce themselves.
Debbie Malcolm, state prosecutor on the White case, went first.
“Gordon White, father to the juvenile.” Ben’s father had been in her courtroom before.
“Leslie White, mother.” As had she.
Ben was next. He stated his name, looking at her briefly, and then lowering his eyes.
Ben’s attorney, Tyson Hunter, a public defender Valerie saw often, was next. During the difficult first minutes of this proceeding, everyone in the room, with the exception of Ben, was occupied with whatever papers were in front of them.
There wasn’t a lot of eye contact in Valerie’s working life.
With a crease in his forehead that had grown more pronounced over the months Valerie had been seeing Ben, the boy was peering at the papers in his lawyer’s hands. His papers.
The file was thick.
Valerie had a version of the same file in front of her.
Without looking at the boy again, she began with the legal protocol, turning Ben from a twelve-year-old child to a case number. For the record she asked if Ben’s biographical information was correct. His attorney stated in the affirmative, both of them going through their notes during the exchange.
Detachment was critical to her. She was about to make a decision that was going to change, one way or another, the rest of this all-American-looking boy’s life.
Debbie Malcolm, for the state, recommended, in light of the evidence before them, that Ben be detained.
Valerie had known coming into the room that this would be the recommendation.
Ben’s attorney spoke next, trying to explain away repeated truancies as no danger to the community. In great and passionate detail, he told the court about the boy’s scholastic abilities, his remarkable IQ that was blamed for a boredom that drove him from classrooms. The misdemeanors the lawyer dismissed in much the same way, managing to assert more than once that detention was for those who were a danger to the community. He believed that there were other, more beneficial ways to handle the case before them and asked for a lesser sentence.
Six months ago, Valerie would have been swayed by the arguments. They were solid. Sound. As good as anything she’d ever done during her life on the other side of the bench.
Looking at the boy’s parents, she asked, “How’s he doing at home?”
Ben’s