Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel (14 page)

“I jus’ asked one a my—one of the girls at school. She was cryin’ one day, and I made her tell me what was goin’ down and she said she was in some trouble with some boys that wouldn’t pay her what they owe her.” Desmond knifed the air with his hand as if he were talking to the girl in question right then. “I tol’ her she need to have some
respect
for
her
self and she need to be talkin’ to God ’cause that business she in ain’t gon’ take her nowhere she want to be.”

“We’ll come back to that,” I said. “Des, Flannery could’ve ended up a whole lot worse than she did by going wherever it was she went.”

I paused, but he didn’t offer an address. Another thing we’d come back to later.

“I know you just wanted to help her.”

“’S’what we do. I got the gift of gettin’ women to open up to me.”

“And sometimes that serves you well, and sometimes it doesn’t. This is one of the times when it didn’t.”

He set his jaw. “I kep’ her from bein’ throwed in the jail by Officer Kent.”

“As soon as she told him she lived here he would have called me anyway.” I cupped his chin before it could fall. “Here’s what should have happened, and what’s going to happen next time, so listen up.”

Desmond pulled his head away but he nodded.

“When Flannery told you about the Hot Spot, you should have brought her to me. Period. Because you didn’t, you now have to face two teachers and tell them you cut their classes without my permission, and you have to take the consequences.”

“You seriously gon’ make me do that, Big Al?”

“What other choice do I have?”

“That ain’t right. I’m tryin’ to help somebody and I’m the one gets in trouble.”

I looked him in the eye until he had to hook his gaze onto mine. “How many times have you seen that happen to me? The difference here is that you have a parent whose job it is to show you when what looks like helping really isn’t.”

“You gon’ make me tell you where that Hot Spot is?” he said.

I wanted to say,
Yes, even I have to slide bamboo shoots under your fingernails.
But my response came from that same deep patience God was giving me on loan.

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” I said. “I’m thinking if the time comes when I need to know that, I won’t have to force it out of you. You’ll know telling me is the right thing to do.”

“I’ll prob’ly forget by then. I think I already did.”

“It’s been a long time since you lied to me,” I said. “I’d almost forgotten what it sounded like.”

The Adam’s apple rose and fell so sharply I was sure he would bleed.

“Think about it,” I said. “And pray. That’s all I can say.”

The door from the kitchen swung open and Liz appeared. In spite of her damp, disheveled state, she reached for Desmond’s neck for a hug. He dodged and headed for the kitchen. The door swung back like a slap.

“Not good,” she said to me.

“Did Chief tell you what’s going on?”

She nodded. “Where is she?”

“Living room.”

“Let’s you and I talk on the porch then.”

“I’ll take Desmond back to school,” Chief said as we passed through the kitchen. “You want to write him a note or anything?”

“Absolutely not.”

His eyes crinkled. “Busted.”

“You have no idea. You might want to stay and make sure the Mosquito doesn’t put him in the stocks or something.”

“On it.”

The wind had picked up while we were inside and an eerie darkness was settling over the afternoon. Liz barely gave the glowering sky a glance and merely batted her hair from her face as she parked on the swing and motioned for me to join her.

“Do I have to turn her in to the police?” I said.

Liz craned her neck toward me. “Who?”

“Fl—”

“Stick to hypothetical questions.”

I watched Chief and Desmond cross the front lawn to Chief’s Road King. I’d seldom seen Desmond that reluctant to get on a motorcycle.

“I don’t even know what to ask, Liz,” I said. “Just give me the options.”

“If a minor of, say, fourteen were to come to you and you had reason to believe that she was a runaway and that she had been soliciting and that she had been involved in an altercation with another minor resulting in an injury, you would be obligated to report all of the above to the juvenile authorities. They would put her in custody and notify a parent or guardian. If running away were her only offense, she would probably be returned to them. With the other allegations on the books, however, she would have to appear with her parents before a juvenile judge who would determine the next step.”

“Like, put her in some kind of program.”

“No, like sentence her to incarceration for a designated period of time. She would have a juvenile record but that would remain sealed.”

“What about helping her?”

“That would be optimum but there is no such program. She’s committed several crimes.”

“And ya gotta wonder why,” I said.

All the patience I’d kept with Desmond and Flannery was whipped away with the wind. The thunder that rolled in the distance was no more ominous than the sound of my voice.

“A kid doesn’t just run away for the heck of it,” I said.

“That’s true—”

“And she doesn’t sell herself unless she’s really hungry and doesn’t know what else to do. Especially a girl like that. She’s bright. She has a better vocabulary than I do, for Pete’s sake. ”

“I’m just telling you how the system works.”

“I hate the system.”

“The system that let you keep Desmond as a foster child? That system?”

“That wasn’t the system. That was you. But what can you possibly do about this situation? You just said yourself—”

“I haven’t really said anything yet, because you won’t listen to me.”

I stared at her, my last words still hanging on my lips. “I’m sorry, Liz. I’m just losing it here.”

“I have a couple of suggestions if you want them.”

“Please.”

Behind Liz a three-pronged fork stabbed the sky and an angry clap of thunder followed it. She pushed her hair out of her face again and watched me, eyes full.

“First, it would help if you found out what was going on at home that made her think she had to run away. If there was abuse, she’ll be placed in foster care, not detention.”

“What about the other charges?”

“Have any been pressed over this catfight thing?”

“
Cat
fight? We’re talking dadgum WWE, Liz. And no. I don’t think there will be. That girl is evidently one of Foxy’s coworkers.”

“Then we won’t worry about that one.” The first fat drops of rain pelted her face. She slapped them away. “Has anyone actually witnessed your girl soliciting?”

“Jasmine and Sherry saw her with a guy in an alley.”

“Would they testify in court?”

“If somebody put a gun to their heads, yeah.”

“Then I don’t see us running into a problem there either. Not unless she’s been picked up before.”

“She says she doesn’t have a record.”

“You believe her?”

The wind snapped the border of the swing’s awning, and lightning jabbed angry tines from the sky. I took Liz by the arm and nodded toward the door. I could see the rain coming down in a sheet that was headed for us at a slant across Palm Row. We stepped inside the kitchen just before the screen door slammed at the hands of the gale behind us.

“The girl is more about lies of omission,” I said. “So, yes, I think I do believe her.”

Liz shook her hair, looking every bit like an indignant Yorkie, and tried to slide the dampness from her arms with her hands. “Just find out what you can. I’ll check the National Center website and see what I can come up with there. What’s her last name?”

“Donohue.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell, which might be a good thing. It could mean this is a first offense.”

“So running away is an offense,” I said, as I handed her a dish towel. “Sounds more like self-
de
fense to me.”

“That’s what you need to find out,” she said. “Until then, you and I did not have this conversation.”

I nodded, but she didn’t see me. She was burying her face in the towel.

Chief returned right after Liz left. I was in the living room watching Flannery sleep. When I heard him close the back door behind him I joined him in the kitchen.

“She looks even younger when she’s asleep,” I said.

“How much younger can she look? Did we just miss that because we didn’t want to see it?”

“Desmond obviously saw it or he wouldn’t have been so attracted to her. She was pretty much like his ‘women’ at school.”

Chief put my cup of now cold tea in the microwave and prodded me by the elbow to the bistro table. “He told me he’s given up the women so he can concentrate on Flannery.”

“Oh,
man.
What did you say to him?”

“I didn’t have a chance to say anything yet. He’s telling me this as we’re walking into the school, and that coach is standing right there in the office.” The corner of his mouth tweaked. “She does look like a wasp.”

“Mosquito.”

“Nah. I have her for a wasp.”

“So what happened?”

“There was some testimony from her. Said everything twice. Desmond refused to take the stand. Then the judge came out—vice principal? Looks like a Labradoodle?”

“I just know her as Vice Principal Foo-Foo. What was the verdict?”

“Guilty. The sentence is three days of ISS, whatever that is.”

“In-School Suspension,” I said. “Coach Iseley has been licking her chops to make that happen ever since the semester started. At least
she’ll
be happy to know he’s given up the women.”

Chief retrieved the tea from the microwave and set it in front of me. “Drink it this time. So I take it you aren’t happy about that?”

“I do think three days is a little excessive.”

“No, I’m talking about the women.”

“Oh. No, what I’m not happy about is Desmond wanting to concentrate on Flannery. I just got through telling him that wasn’t his job.”

“And you think that’s going to switch off his feelings?”

I let my forehead drop into my hands. “Yikes, we
are
talking about feelings, aren’t we?”

“Affairs of the heart, Classic. Complicated stuff even when you’re thirteen.”

I looked up and was surprised at the lack of crinkle around his eyes. “Could you talk to him about it? He’s obviously going to trust you more than me on this. You were a boy once, right?”

Chief moved the cup aside and smothered both of my hands with his on the tabletop. “I can talk, and he might even listen. But there is nothing logical about this. You feel what you feel, no matter what anybody tells you, or even what you tell yourself.”

I was unsure whether we were still talking about Desmond.

“You think we should just let him fall all over himself with Flannery?”

His phone rang. Chief glanced at the screen and then looked back at me. “It’s Kade, returning my call.”

I motioned for him to get it and stared into my tea.
It wasn’t complicated enough, God? Really?

Go—

“He wants to talk to you,” Chief said.

I took the phone but Kade gave me no time for hello.

“You still have to go out tonight,” he said.

“We can go another time, Kade. When things settle in—”

He actually laughed. “I don’t see that happening, ever. You think I can’t handle two kids? My younger brother and sister were like Bonnie and Clyde, but they never got a thing past me. So—you want me to bring pizza? A movie?”

“I don’t know—”

“I can always call you if it gets out of control.”

I looked at Chief who was testing my tea with his upper lip and frowning.

Kade lowered his voice to a husky whisper. “Just trust me on this. You need to go out with Chief tonight.”

“Okay,” I said.

“And don’t forget to uncover those baskets.”

“What ba—oh, yeah.”

“Later.”

I stared at the phone until Chief took it from me.

“Did you know he had younger siblings?” I said.

“He mentioned it once.” Chief caught me with his eyes. “Don’t go there.”

“Don’t go where?”

“Where you were headed.”

“How do you know where I was headed?”

“It’s just like riding a Harley, Classic.”

I couldn’t stop a grin. “Of course it is. Go ahead. Explain.”

“You can tell where a rider’s going to go by the direction her head’s pointed.”

“
What
?”

“Hello! Anybody home?”

“Come in, India,” I said, eyes still on Chief. “To be continued.”

“Over dinner,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at six.”

India gave him the customary holy kiss on his way out the door and watched through the screen as he dashed through the rain to his bike. She herself was unblemished by the storm. I had to get me one of those sunhats.

“Is he still picking you up on the Harley?” she said, floating said sunhat to the counter.

“This is supposed to pass over,” I said.

“Fabulous, because I have brought you the perfect outfit, and honey, I do mean perfect … Allison, darlin’, what is it?”

I closed my eyes. “Is it that obvious?”