Read Online Breach of Duty (9780061739637) by Judith A. Jance - Free Book Online Page B

already working as a dispatcher at the Com Center. When I was on days, Jared went to day care, but when I pulled night shift, Jared and Richie were home alone. There in the hospital room I knew I couldn’t risk doing that any more—I couldn’t leave either one of the kids alone with their father. That’s when I filed for a divorce. It took two years for it to be final.”
    Sue paused and seemed to be waiting for me to say something. “I didn’t know any of this,” I said at last. “You never mentioned it.”
    She shrugged. “I was embarrassed, I guess. It’s just that Richie can be so damned charming when he wants to be—at least with outsiders. He was charming with me, too, in the beginning—just as long as he had his own way. I guess I didn’t want anyone to know that I had chosen so…well, so badly,” she finished lamely. “I thought I was smarter than that.”
    The waitress came to clear our places. “Was something wrong with the red beans and rice?” she asked, frowning as she picked up Sue’s still-heaping plate.
    â€œNo,” Sue returned. “It was fine, really. I just wasn’t as hungry as I thought I was.”
    â€œWould you like to take it home?”
    â€œI don’t think so…”
    â€œWhat about the boys?” I interrupted. “Wouldn’t one of them like it? I’ve never met a teenaged boy who didn’t have at least one hollow leg.”
    Smiling halfheartedly, Sue nodded at the waitress. “Okay,” she said. “You win. I’ll take it with me.”
    The waitress disappeared. I turned back to Sue. “Is that what’s worrying you now?” I asked. “Are you afraid that Richie might turn violent with the boys while they’re on this trip to California?”
    Her face paled. “I’ve been so pissed at the whole idea that I didn’t even think about the possibility—until just now, although God knows I should have. He’s a big guy, Beau. Six five. Two hundred and sixty pounds the last I saw him. It’s my job to protect the kids. If he were to hurt one of them, I’d never forgive myself.”
    Why is it people fall for the wrong person? Then, when the inevitable happens, they spend the rest of their lives trying to get over it. That’s what happened to me with Anne Corley, and this was much the same. Sue Danielson had never forgiven herself for that long-ago kick to the belly that had catapulted Christopher Danielson into the world some two months prior to his due date.
    â€œWhat would you do if you were in my shoes, Beau?” Sue was asking earnestly. “Would you let the boys go with him or not?”
    Having been a fatherless boy myself, I knew this territory painfully well—from the inside out. I knew how much it would have meant for me to have had the chance to spend some time with my own father just once in my life. A three-day trip to Disneyland would have been a gift beyond compare. Unfortunately, my father died long before I was even born. But I could also see the situation from Sue’s point of view. Why should she let the boys go off on a trip with a worthless yahoo who didn’t pay child support and who might very well turn violent if things didn’t go just right? On the other hand, if she kept the boys home and Richie had somehow come to his senses in the meantime, she might very well be denying her sons their one chance of ever having any kind of workable relationship with their father.
    â€œDid Jared witness that first beating?” I asked. Despite the fact that the truth had to be otherwise, I allowed Sue her pride-saving pretense that there had been only one serious episode of violence in her relationship with her former husband.
    Blood rushed back to her pale cheeks. “Yes,” she managed.
    â€œDoes he remember it?”
    â€œI don’t know. I’ve never asked