Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel (15 page)

“It’s practically written all over your face in Sharpie. What is going on?”

I told her, and swore her to secrecy.

“And Kade is going to stay here and chaperone those two children by himself?” she said when I wound down. “I do not believe so.”

“He—”

“No, honey, he is gon’ need backup. I’ll be here and work with Flannery on those clothes I gave her to look at. That will keep her busy while Kade amuses Desmond. Now
that
I wouldn’t take on.”

“You don’t have to do that, India.”

“Why is everyone always telling what I do not have to do when I know perfectly well what Jesus wants from me?” She pushed a shopping bag into my arms. “Now, you just go up and try this on and come down and model for me. I’ll figure out what we can order out for supper.”

“Kade’s bringing pizza.”

India shuddered and waved me out of the kitchen.

When I came down fifteen minutes later, clad in an ensemble of ice blue flowing pants and tunic that admittedly was pretty stunning, India was on the phone with Hank, “ordering out.”

“Joe is out of town for the weekend,” India said to me, hand covering the phone, “so she was gon’ be alone anyway.”

There was no point in telling her a cast of thousands was unnecessary. She would probably have Bonner over there, too, if it weren’t for the fact that Liz couldn’t be around Flannery.

By then India was surveying the contents of the refrigerator. “Yes, she has sour cream,” she said into the phone. “And wait until you
see
Miss Allison. Honey, she is a dish. Chief is just going to want to eat her up with a
spoon.
”

She hung up and flipped the long silk scarf around my neck and over my shoulder. “You want some help with your hair?” she said.

“It’s going to end up under a helmet.”

India shook her marvelous head at me. “Oh ye of little faith,” she said.

CHAPTER SEVEN

In typical Florida fashion, the storm did pass, leaving the early evening air breezy and new-feeling when Chief picked me up at six. The brick streets were still slick as we left the group of people at my house who, with the exception of Desmond and Flannery, looked like they were sending their kids off to the prom.

I had never actually been to a prom, only because it was expected by my parents and Troy’s that we would go. If I recalled correctly, he and I had spent that evening in the back stairwell at Chamberlain Enterprises making out. I tried never to recall that, actually.

But as Chief and I walked hand and hand into the Cuban restaurant known simply as Columbia I thought that the senior prom magic I’d heard of might be something like this, because it mystically evaporated everything in those piles I’d been building.

The bright Spanish tile took care of my concern for Ms. Willa, and the mermaid fountain washed away the baskets Kade was facing. One brush with the indoor palms in their hand-painted pots, and In School Suspension and the floundering Second Chances were a laughing matter. The gap between Kade and me was closed by the guitar-heavy salsa music, and the complications wrought by Flannery on Desmond were at least temporarily wafted away by the sumptuous aroma of the Cuban bread carried on trays larger than my bistro table. By the time I sat across from Chief on the balcony overlooking the diners below, I felt somehow above it all. If it only lasted for an hour, so be it. I let the surreal joy fill me.

Chief ordered a selection of tapas, while I watched with fascination as the server mixed sangria at the next table over and poured it from a painted pitcher.

“You want some?” Chief said when our own server was gone.

I shook my head. “I’m intoxicated enough right now.” I felt a strange shyness. “Chief,” I said. “I love you.”

His face softened. “I can make a pretty good case for loving you more.”

Go …

Go? Really? The Whisper had all the clarity of a Nudge. But most of God’s pokes, and lately shoves, pushed me someplace I didn’t want to go. This could take me right where I wanted to be, where I longed to be.

Go …

Still I took a breath. And then several more until Chief’s brows drew together.

“It’s time for me to trust you,” I said, “with—how did you put it?” I pressed my hand to my chest. “With what’s going on in here.”

“I hoped this night would be about you and me.”

“It is. That’s what I’m talking about.”

“Then talk to me.”

The tapas arrived on a three-tiered plate, which gave me a moment to catch up to wherever God was taking me. There was no doubt that I had ceased to call the shots. This was definitely more than a Nudge. I was being pulled with an urgency I’d never felt where Chief was concerned.

“Cakes
de crangrejo
,” the server was saying, “Scallops
casmiro
,
coca de langosta
, and of course, the
al bondigas
.”

“Meatballs?” I said.

“Those are essential,” Chief said, “for dipping your bread into.”

My interest, however, was in the hard round crackers the server set beside me like an afterthought. The sight of them crowded together in the bowl made my throat thicken.

“You okay, Classic?” Chief said as the guy hurried off for more bread.

I scooped up a handful of crackers and brought them to my nose.

“All this great food and you’re into the saltines.”

“These are Sylvia crackers. She used to come here and buy them for me just to put in my soup. I haven’t had them in years.”

“Now there’s a woman I would have liked to have met. Only person I’ve ever heard you talk about who’s had any real influence over you whatsoever.”

“Until you,” I said.

Because with the smooth, powdery feel of those crackers in my palm, I could practically hear Sylvia, saying,
Oh, for crying in six or eight buckets, Allison, what do you want—a lightning bolt? Tell the man, already.

As if that weren’t enough, I heard the whisper again.
Go …

“You know about the Nudges,” I said.

“Wouldn’t have met you without them.”

“And you know that’s how I live my life now.”

“I’m privy to that, yes.”

“I know sometimes that drives you nuts.”

“Doesn’t matter now. I’m already there.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely.” Chief reached a hand around the candle in the middle of the table and curled his fingers about my wrist. “I don’t think you can tell me anything that’s going to drive me away, Classic.”

Yet another long draw of breath. Yet another
Go.

“It hasn’t been just Nudges for a while now,” I said. “I’ve discovered that I feel what God is … probably … feeling when it comes to people’s pain. And it’s taking over more and more.”

“What will you do about that?”

“It’s not like I can be cured.”

Chief shook his head. “Why would you go right there?”

“Right where?”

“To the conclusion that I think that’s somehow sick. I’m asking what you’ll do with what you’re feeling.”

“Really?” I heard the tears in my voice before I knew they were there. “That’s really what you’re saying?”

“Have I given you reason to doubt that? Haven’t I always supported you?” He gave me half the smile. “Eventually?”

“Yeah, you have.”

He nodded at the server who brought the bread, and then he leaned across the table, shutting out everything else with his shoulders. “Who could be in this community you and God have created and not know he’s real?”

I swallowed hard. “That’s all I need to hear.”

“You sure?”

I sat with it. Stroked the back of his hand and watched his eyes and waited for the whisper. And it was there.

Go. Go …

“I’m sure,” I said.

His smile was full-blown. “Then let’s eat, because we have places to go.”

“Where?”

“Surprise.”

Yeah. I was certain the senior prom I’d missed was nothing whatsoever like this.

We laughed at each other over the
casmiro
and the
langosta
and the crusty bread that never seemed to run out. We talked about my Sylvia and his first Harley and all the other things that made the world seem faultless. At one point he said to me, “You look good tonight, by the way.”

“You can thank India for that.”

He shook his head, ponytail swishing between his shoulder blades. “I beg to differ. You could be wearing a garbage bag and you would still be fabulous right now.”

I smiled. “I’ll be sure to pass that on to her. Are we doing dessert?”

“Depends.”

“On …?”

His eyebrows lifted only enough to be the single sexiest piece of body language I’d ever seen. “On how fast you want to get out of here.”

“Check, please,” I said.

His hand was in the air, hailing the server, before I got the last syllable out.
ThankyouGodthankyouGodthankyouGod.

It was all right. I knew that as we left the table and made our way down the wide staircase to the crowded dining area below. Whatever happened back in the world we had put on hold for the night, it would always be all right with Chief there believing in me. Believing in God. I wasn’t sure what to do with that kind of—what had Hank called it?—surreal security. Oh, but I could learn.

When we reached the first floor Chief said, “Do you need to powder your nose before we head out?”

“I’ve never powdered my nose in my life,” I said. “Do you need to powder yours?”

He grinned and kissed the top of my head and strolled down the hallway to the restroom with that John Wayne–halting gait that turned me to whipped butter. I sat on a low tiled wall that separated the private dining rooms from the main area and crossed my ankles, more to keep myself from doing the happy dance than out of an attempt to be a lady. Still, Ms. Willa would approve—

I was knocked from that thought by a voice jarring from the private room straight ahead of me.

“You people can
not
be serious,” the man said.

The man being Troy Irwin.

I couldn’t will myself to look away. He stood in the arched opening with his back to me but I didn’t have to see his face to know it was anger itself, hammered in stone.

But then I did see his face, in my mental vision, minus the graying temples and the mask formed by years of posturing. It was a twenty-five-years-younger-than-now face whose clear blue eyes clouded in a way I’d never seen them do before that instant. I heard the voice that matched it—adolescent, and yet so very much like the voice spewing venom from the dining room. Until that long-ago moment, I had never heard him use that voice: a voice attacking from a corner it had been backed into. I hadn’t heard it since. Until now.

“This won’t happen,” Troy said in the doorway
.
“It will
not
happen.”

The sea of other faces I could see through the opening stiffened and shifted away. I had no idea what he was referring to, but I felt it kicking me in the stomach, knocking my eighteen-year-old self off the path that had seemed so certain an hour before. I had to get out of there now before I returned the shove that had taken away so many years of my life.

I lurched to my feet but there was no time to take a step before Troy marched out of the private dining room, yanking at the bottom of his jacket, and collided with a bread-toting server. The tray twirled in the air like a runaway top and landed with an alarmed clang at my feet. A loaf slid past and bumped over the toes of Troy’s Armani’s. He kicked it aside, in the process heedlessly kneeing the waiter who dove after it.

And then he saw me.

His eyes glittered as he came close to me, so close I could feel the hot air from his nostrils. It was the second time that evening a man had closed out everything around us. This time I wanted to claw my way out.

I started again for the door, but hard fingers wrapped around my arm as Troy pressed himself to my side.

“Excellent choice,” he said into my ear. “Let’s take this outside.”

I didn’t try to wrench myself away as we strode together through the waiting diners who filled the space between us and the outside door. The only time in the last quarter of a century that Troy Irwin had laid a hand on me, it had been with this same entitled grip. I knew his ego wouldn’t allow him to have to use physical force for long, just as it hadn’t five months ago. Still, the slither of a cottonmouth across my skin couldn’t have repulsed me more than the feel of his flesh against mine. Unless it was the memory of how I had once thrilled to his touch.

As I predicted, he let go as soon as we were on the front patio, inside the shadow of a potted palm. One of his hands went to the sloped ceiling above my head. The other pulled through his hair without disturbing a strand. I could see him snapping the pieces of control into place like Legos.

I wanted to spit.

“I don’t know what you heard,” he said. “But it won’t happen.”

“I didn’t hear anything except you yelping like a junkyard dog,” I said.

He sniffed a laugh, the kind of condescending sound my father used to make, followed by me sneering and being summarily dismissed. “There it is,” he said.

“There what is?”

“Everything you were holding back the other day in front of your kid. Come on, let’s see it all.”

Why was I still standing there? I tried to get past him. He moved in without touching me until my spine hit the tile behind me. Something flashed in my head: the two of us in this same position on the back stairs of Chamberlain Enterprises at seventeen. Wanting and empowered.

“Step back,” I said.

“I will. When I’m done with you.”

The same words that had thrilled through me then were spoken now with a menace so cold it froze the sweat at my temples.

“I didn’t want to say this the other day with your boy there, but I could sue you, and our son, for defamation of character.”

“What character?” I said.

“The character that got me where I am and is going to keep me there.”

“Stay there. I don’t care.”

“You’d better start.”

“We’ve had this conversation before. You threaten me. I ignore you. What’s the point?”

Once more I attempted to get around him. Troy put himself in my path and backed me again to the wall. I could feel my face hardening.

“I’m not going to sue you,” he said.

“Good choice, because I don’t have a dime. Nothing left for you to gank.”

His brows rose as if he’d rehearsed the move. “Oh, I see you’re a tough girl now. Got the lingo down.” He pressed closer. “Unfortunately it’s too late for that. I’m not offering you any more deals.”

“You’re breaking my heart.”

“See, that’s a different story than the one you gave me the last time we spoke.”

I groped through my memory.

“You said I couldn’t hurt you. Now I’m breaking your heart. Good … because that’s exactly what I plan to do.”

A cascade of retorts slid through my mind but the look in Troy’s eyes slammed into them and sent them crashing into a pile I couldn’t get to. It was the desperation I’d seen that day on Aviles Street. Only this time it didn’t peek out from behind a bent blind. It hit me full in the face.

“You tried to take away my future a long time ago, Ally.” Troy’s voice shook at its edges. “You weren’t tough enough then and you aren’t now, no matter how tight you get with your whores and your Hell’s Angels and your little half-breed son—”

“Get—off—
me
!”

I shoved the heels of both hands into his chest and knocked him backward. He flailed against the palm just long enough for me to hurl myself past him before he grabbed for me. I pulled my arm over my head and tried to whirl away from him. In the swish of silk I heard—

Allison. You must go another mile.

I nearly smacked into the force that held me there, that made me turn and watch Troy Irwin continue to pull the long silver scarf until he held the entire thing in his hands.

“Bring it, Ally,” he said. “Show me what you’ve turned into.”