A few nights later, Quinn and Paul left the racetrack. They'd had a lot of fun there. Paul wanted her to come over to his place.
"Come to my place," she said.
"Naw, mine's better. I've got a whole house with everything. You've got your little apartment. Neighbors close by and all that."
"Well, is that why you never want to come over? I'm glad it's not me."
"Don't be silly! It's for you to get spoiled and want to live in that house."
"You don't want me to take you for your house, do you?"
"Oh, no. But it doesn't hurt!"
When they got there, Paul went into the kitchen to make some margaritas. "See how good I am to you?" he asked.
"Joanna says that after the wedding, all that kind of thing just crashes."
Paul laughed. "Wise Joanna! Hey, turn on the Sports Channel, Quinn. See what happened with the Southern 500."
Quinn turned on the TV and read the screen. "Burton won. Second, Gordon, then Labonte," she yelled.
Her eyes went around the room and rested on the bookcase. She went over to look.
Freud, of course. William James. Psychiatric Journal. The Journal of Marriage and the Family. That was better. Several issues bound together in one book. She skimmed a list of articles in the first two, in the third, she found: "Children and Marital Conflict." She turned to the page it was on and skimmed it.
"Boys aged 6 to 12 seem to have the hardest time."
That was promising. She kept reading. "They may become aggressive and rebel against the mother. They have problems socializing, and they have academic problems. Since custody most often goes to the mother, more than half of the fathers do not see much of their children. This is not a good age for boys to lose their role models. The father may socialize with the children, but he is not there to teach or discipline the children."
"No wonder!" she thought.
She read on. Things got better after two or three years, depending on how well the child was getting along with the custodial parent and how well that parent was dealing with the divorce. There were some statistics about how many still have problems 5 years later and even 10.
"Can I borrow this?" she asked Paul as he came in with the margaritas.
"Sure, what for?"
"My problem patient. It might help."
"You're thinking of work now! Boy, I must be losing my touch!"
"Don't you ever get caught up in their problems every once in awhile?"
"Sure. Let's see." He took the book from her. "So Smith's parents had a custody battle?"
"Yes. Now, he's over the age of majority. Could it help his perspective? This stuff is knowledge. If he gets that its not just him, and all that, couldn't it help?"
"You're working on bullet wounds, not the rest," Paul said.
"I was working on medical history, that led to this," she countered.
"OK. I can think of some other stuff that might be less academic, too, than this."
"Thanks. I can go for that. I think he can handle this, too. I'm reading it OK."
"OK. Deal, as long as you drop work for the rest of the evening."
She smiled and put her arms around his neck. "Deal."
