Robards, Karen by Midnight Hour Read Free Book Online Page B

grace of God went …
    The thought was unpleasant, and she dismissed it with determination almost as soon as it appeared. There was no comparison between Jessica and this boy. Ye t.
    The sneaky little qualifier made its way into her head before Grace could completely close her mind to her own problerhs. She stifled a sigh.
    “All right.” Grace fixed the young offender with a girret - ze. “Taking a car without the owner’s permis,,a I I
    sion is stealing, Mr. Boylan, whether the owner is your stepfather or not. I want to make that perfectly clear, Nevertheless, I am going to give you one more chance. Otte more, got that? Under these conditions: You get yourself to school every day, come rain, shine, or the cormnon cold, and you stay out of trouble. Any more shoplifting, car stealing, or the like and you will be taken away from your family and remanded to an institution until you are eighteen. Do we understand each other?”
    “Uh-huh.” The kid nodded eagerly, looking relieved. His attorney poked him in the ribs with her elbow. “Uh, yes, ma’am. Uh, Your Honor.”
    “A social worker will call your school every week to
     
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    KAREN ROBARDS
    make sure you’re attending and will report any absence to me. If I see you in this courtroom again, Mr. BoyIan, I promise you, you won’t like me.”
    It was a threat she used often. Every time she did, she halfexpected a smart-alecky kid to come back with, I don’t like you now, but so far none ever had.
    “Yes, ma’am. Uh, Your Honor,” the kid said again, breaking into a wide grin. Grace pursed her lips, wondering if she was being played for a sucker. Once again her gaze went to the mother, who was shedding tears for real now and wiping them away with the backs of her hands.
    “Thank you, Your Honor,” the mother said. For a moment their gazes met.
    Grace nodded. The sense of fellow feeling the woman engendered in her was what had saved the kid from a probably well-deserved punishment. Grace didn’t know whether she felt good or bad about her unaccustomed leniency.
    At the moment she was too tired to worry about it. “Case disrru’ssed.”
    She closed her eyes briefly and rubbed her temples as the Boylan kid and his mother embraced, then left the courtroom, attorneys in tow. Her head hurt. It had been almost seven A.m. by the time they’d gotten home from the emergency room, and she’d been in court since nine, with an hour break for lunch.
    “Next case,” she said, opening her eyes.
    It was an ongoing custody dispute, a particularly ugly one in which the father, a well-to-do dentist, accused his ex-wife, and former hygienist, of being an unfit mother because (he said) she was an alcoholic and
    THE M1DN1(;H_F HOUR 53
    entvrtalned i succession of inen In then-home with their two daughters present. In retaliation, she accused him of being An unfit filther because (she said) he physically, emotionally, and sexually abused her and their daughters. Both parties had appeared before her on at least half a dozen occasions, and by this time she believed neither one. Today’s installment involved the father’s request for lowered child support because, he said, he now had custody of the children more often than was specified in the divorce decree.
    She listened to the opposing lawyers’ arguments, unimpressed.
    “Dr. Allen, I don’t find that keeping your children over Super Bowl weekend while your ex-wife was out of town justifies a reduction in child support. I therefore rule in favor of the defendant. Case dismissed.” Thank God, she was done for the day.
    The dentist spluttered angrily, while his ex-wife looked smug.
    “Just a nunute, Your Honor.” Dr. Allen’s attorney, Colin Wilkerson, was better known to her even than his client. In fact, she had made the mistake of dating him for three months in the spring and early summer, before coming to her senses. “May I approach the berich?”
    The question was moot, since he was already bearing down on her like