Tara Quinn - For the Children

“Sorry, Mom.” Brian spoke for both of them.

She grinned. “It’s okay, guys. I’m glad to see you so jazzed about something.”

And she was. Overjoyed, actually. Brian had been eating all weekend. She realized this was just a temporary fix, but it seemed pretty obvious that basketball could be the thing they’d been searching for to help her son with his flagging self-esteem.

Talk of basketball continued as all three ate their ice-cream cones, filled with the strangest concoctions of vanilla ice cream and mix-ins they could come up with, stopped by the store for the week’s groceries, and then tried to focus on the boys’ homework. Brian hauled out a disgusting-looking object he’d been hiding, unbeknownst to her, wrapped in a towel under his bed.

“It’s my science project, Mom!” he’d protested when she insisted he throw it away immediately.

“What is it?” Valerie wasn’t convinced.

“A piece of bread I dipped in fabric softener. There’s another one dipped in diet soda.”

“Yeah,” Blake piped up from his spot on the living-room floor. “His theory is that one will be preserved and the other will be eaten away by the acid. Cool, huh?”

Yeah. Cool. She should’ve had girls.

“Mom?” Pen in his mouth, Blake was frowning as he looked up at her. “Dad would be really happy if he knew we were trying out for the team, huh?”

Valerie straightened the cushions on the couch. “Of course he would.”

“And he’d come watch every single game, wouldn’t he?” Brian asked, stopping on the way back to his room to return the experiment.

Blake chuckled. “Yeah, he’d be one of those dads who know every kid’s name and stats and shout from the stands like a maniac.”

It was clear the boy meant that as a compliment.

Valerie agreed with only one part. The shouting. But it wouldn’t have been from the stands in a junior-high gym.

“He wouldn’t have missed a single one,” she told the boys, leaning over to pick up some lint from the off-white carpet.

She was saved from any further sojourns down fairy-tale lane when, apparently satisfied, they returned to more immediate concerns. Algebra problems that were due in the morning.

Thomas Smith was dead. Leaving behind a memory that was mostly not bad to his sons. Valerie knew that was because the boys’ memories had become selective—the human mind protecting itself, she supposed. So wasn’t it kinder to let the myth perpetuate itself?

Or was she just weak? Choosing the easier way of pretending all had been well, rather than being honest with the boys.

Some things could remain buried forever, but there were others the boys would eventually have to know….

Not now. Not yet. They were still children. Her little boys.

And Brian was already treading such dangerous ground.

KIRK TOSSED his cell phone from one hand to the other and then back, looking down at the elegant kitchen tile again; 6:00 a.m. Arizona time meant that it was eight o’clock in Virginia. He’d put off the call all weekend. Another hour and it would be time for him to head in to work. He liked to be on the corner long before the first kid arrived at school, and there was an early choir practice that morning.

Another hour and he’d make it. He could do this—follow through on his decision to abandon his old life as CEO of Chandler Acquisitions, the career that had consumed him to the point of heartlessness. He could outlast the temptation of making a final perfect deal. He was actually gaining a measure of peace in the job his old friend, Steve McDonald, had offered him during a painfully dark night several months before. Back then he’d been slowly killing himself—with hard truths and liquor. These days, taking care of the children as he’d promised Alicia he would, he actually slept at night.

He could put down the phone; the number implanted in his memory would eventually fade, along with the rest of Friday night’s messages begging him to handle just one more deal.

Someday, maybe even his uncanny ability to remember them at all would disappear.

The Gandoyne company produced aluminum cans, specifically for food products. Aster Sealants owned the patent on a material that would seal and reseal aluminum lids. This sealant had various uses, but if it was put together with food-product storage it could make both companies wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

The caller who’d left the number was Gandoyne’s son, who had no interest in taking over the business, who was worried about his father’s health and who had heard of Kirk’s win-at-all-costs reputation. He’d gone on to say that both companies were family-owned, headed by stereotypical patriarchs intent on doing business in the same way as their fathers and their fathers before them. They refused to sell stock options. Refused to let anyone else have any say in their businesses or give up the least measure of control.

“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.