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Unlike his brother, who was still ten pounds under his ideal weight.
“No,” Kirk said. “But I’ve seen him rubbing it a few times, and the other day I think he was sick before practice.”
“You think he was?” She sat up straight, scared to death. “You don’t know?”
“I thought I heard him getting sick. He swears he wasn’t.”
“Did you ask Brian about it?”
“He was already out on the court.”
“Maybe it was just something he ate.” God, she hoped so. She could handle anything—anything—so long as her boys were healthy. Brian’s recent troubles had put the rest of her life very firmly in perspective.
“Maybe.”
With narrowed eyes, Kirk watched her.
“What?”
“Tell me about your husband.”
“He was killed in a car accident two years ago.”
An expression of sorrow crossed Kirk’s face during a long moment of silence.
“What did he do?” he asked softly.
Grateful to him for not trying to find words where there were none, she answered, “He was an attorney.”
“You met at work?” He was holding his cup, but not sipping from it.
“We met in law school.”
“What was his specialty?”
“Family law.” The quintessential irony.
“Yet he wasn’t around much for his own family?”
The man had a good memory.
Sitting back, Valerie held her cup between both hands. She took a sip more for the comfort of having something to do than because she wanted anything to swallow. The Coffee House was relatively busy even after nine o’clock at night, but sitting in their alcove, Valerie felt separated from the rest of the world.
“We graduated from law school with dreams of changing the world.”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
She chuckled, but without humor. “One would like to think so.”
He grinned. “Too idealistic, huh?”
“Law school is about the most cutthroat place I’ve ever been,” she told him, remembering the experience of that first year. “They only give so many seats. The schedule is so arduous, you have no life outside your studies. You deal with it or you’re out.” He watched her, the interest in his eyes compelling. “You’re in all the same classes with all the same people getting all the same assignments,” she continued. “Students would check books out of the library and purposely not return them so that a fellow student couldn’t complete an assignment.”
“Sounds charming.”
His droll tone elicited a real grin.
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t take long to figure out who’s decent folk. And to align yourself with them.”
