No Safe Place by Richard North Patterson Page B

driven by a silent contempt for both parents, the need to be nothing like them. From an early age, Jamie was too successful for Michael Kilcannon to disparage. Because of Jamie’s size and his attainments, the father came to observe a sort of resentful truce with his older son: Michael received praise in public, was reminded in private of his own inadequacy. But Jamie did not raise his hand, or his voice, to help his mother.
    When Jamie left for Princeton on a full scholarship, he would not let his parents drive him there.
    Jamie did well at college, played defensive halfback on the football team, became involved in campus politics. His much younger brother dimly imagined classmates thinking that Jamie did this easily. But Kerry knew that as he fearfully waited for his father to climb the stairs, he would sometimes hear his brother, through the thin wall between their bedrooms, practicing his speeches, testing phrases, pauses …
    Kerry never forgot the Christmas vacation of Jamie’s second year away.
    Jamie was running for something. He practiced a speech late into the night; sleepless, Kerry listened to his brother’s muffled voice.
    Michael Kilcannon came home.
    Hearing his father’s footsteps, Kerry wondered whether Michael would open the door or go to his mother’s bedroom. He sat up in bed, expectant, as Michael’s footsteps passed.
    Amoment later, Mary Kilcannon cried out in pain.
    The only sign that Jamie had heard was the silence on the other side of the wall. Tears ran down Kerry’s face.
    No, he would never be his brother James.

TWO
    He did not have to worry: at Sacred Heart School, no one mistook him for Jamie.
    Kerry was short, slight, and a recalcitrant student. Reluctantly, he submitted to such rudimentary discipline as learning to walk in a straight line, to keep silent between classes, to respond to the hand bell that ended recess. Once, he smashed a bee with a ruler; instantly, Sister Mary Catherine swatted the back of his head. “That was one of God’s helpless creatures,” she rebuked him.
    Ears ringing, Kerry wanted to say,
So am I.
But the nun’s words stayed with him: though he fought often, it was never against anyone weaker than he was.
    His rage seemed close to suicidal; Kerry Kilcannon challenged only boys who were bigger, older, and without mercy. All it took was some offense to Kerry or another smaller boy, and Kerry would throw a punch. More often than not, he would absorb a beating that did not end until someone stopped it—Kerry was awkward, unskilled, and to quit felt like death to him. By the time he was twelve, his fistfights were so frequent, so violent, that he hovered on the edge of expulsion.
    Then he fought the bully Johnny Quinn.
    Johnny had “borrowed” the prized new bike of Timmy Scanlon, a nine-year-old Kerry liked. Laughing, Johnny returned the bike, covered with mud.
    When Timmy began crying, Kerry punched Johnny Quinn in the nose.
    The fight went on for an hour, cheered by avid boys. Kerry took a savage beating. Blind with pain, blood pouring from his
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    nose and mouth and a cut at the edge of his eye, Kerry passed out at last.
    When he awoke, the first thing Kerry saw was his mother, crying. “Why?” she kept saying. “Why?” Even if he could have spoken, there was nothing Kerry could tell her.
    He had suffered a chipped tooth and a broken nose, and the two stitches at the corner of his eye left a scar.
    Michael Kilcannon took a rough pride in his son’s combat-iveness; Kerry had distinguished himself at little else.
    In desperation, Mary turned to Kerry’s godfather.
    When Father Roarke, the principal, called Kerry to his office, Liam Dunn was there.
    The two men looked at each other, then at Kerry. “Hello, Kerry,” said Liam.
    Kerry was surprised. Though Liam always asked after him and never forgot his birthday or his name day, his selection as Kerry’s godfather had been more for the prestige it conferred. Liam had long ceased to be his father’s