Family Man

again.

    Matt wore an expression of wary, sullen defiance when Luke walked through the door of the police station. The sight of him brought back memories. Luke recalled the night he had sat waiting in jail for his father to come and collect him. A lot of weird thoughts went through a guy's head at a time like that.
    Matt was not in a cell. He was sitting on a bench with a handful of other equally sullen young males. He leaned back against the wall, holding himself proudly aloof from the furor that was going on around him.
    Several anxious-looking mothers were fluttering around the room. Some were tight-lipped with anger, others were in tears. A few were already berating their offspring, and one or two were screaming at the two young cops who appeared to be in charge.
    Luke noticed that there were very few fathers on the scene. That annoyed him. A boy needed a man at a time like this. Where the hell were all the fathers? He supposed it was a stupid question given the current divorce rate.
    If it was his kid who was waiting here, Luke told himself, he would be damn sure he was the one who came and got him.
    On the heels of that realization came another. He would not mind having a son of his own. Or a daughter. Christ, he was thirty-six years old, and he had not yet begun a family. He had always planned on having kids someday. Where had the years gone? Luke wondered. It was as if he had been caught in some sort of limbo since Ariel's death.
    Matt glanced toward the door at that moment. His eyes met Luke's. Relief flared in his gaze for an instant, and then the expression of sullen wariness descended again. Luke understood. A man had to hand onto his pride at all costs.
    Luke nodded at one of the young cops, whose eyes looked far older than his years. As Luke crossed the room to speak to him the officer detached himself from a crying mother. He seemed relieved to be able to deal with another male for a few minutes. Luke introduced himself.
    “How serious is this?” Luke asked quietly.
    “Not as bad as it looks, although you wouldn't know it from the way the mothers are reacting.” The officer spoke just as softly. “No guns or knives. Just a bunch of small-town kids looking for trouble. I've seen a lot worse. I used to work in Seattle. Came up here to get away from the hard-core stuff.”
    “All right to take the Wade kid home?”
    “Go ahead. We've already done our best to shake 'em up a bit and throw a scare into 'em. The Wade kid's okay. He tried to play hero when one of the gate-crashers hassled a couple of the girls.”
    Luke nodded. “I'll take it from here.”
    The officer smiled quizzically. “Your son?”
    “No. His father's dead. All he's got left is a sister. I'm a friend of the family.”
    The officer eyed him thoughtfully and then nodded. “He's all yours.”
    Matt stood up uncertainly as Luke crossed the room and came to a halt in front of him.
    “Hi.” Matt's eyes slid away. “Where's Katy?”
    “Going bonkers back at the cottage,” Luke answered easily. “I figured you didn't need her coming down here and going bonkers in front of a crowd.”
    Matt blinked and raised his eyes to meet Luke's. “Yeah. Thanks.”
    “No problem. What do you say we get out of here?” He examined the darkening bruise under Matt's left eye. “You okay?”
    Matt flushed. “Yeah, I'm okay. Let's go.”
    They walked out into the night together and got into the Jag. There was a long silence in the car as Luke drove through town and turned onto the road that led back toward the Gilchrist mansion.
    “Is Katy real upset?” Matt asked finally.
    “She's a woman,” Luke said. “Of course she's upset.”
    Matt sank back into a state of deep gloom for another minute or two. “You going to yell at me?”
    “No.”
    “You going to get me fired from my job?”
    “No. It doesn't sound like you did anything wrong, Matt. You got into a situation, and you did the best you could. These things happen.”
    “One of the assholes was hitting on a girl I know. She's kind of shy. I could tell she was scared of him.”
    “I see.”
    “I didn't exactly start it, you know. Things just sort of blew up out of nowhere. One minute I'm telling this turkey to leave Jenny alone, and the next the whole damn place was in an uproar.”
    “That's the thing about that kind of fighting. It has a way of exploding into a major scene before you know what's happened.”
    “I guess.”
    “One of the things a man has to learn is how to