Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel (30 page)

“I guess not. I sure hope you have a plan for me because I am clueless right now.”

I imagined her blinking. “All right, two things. One, we know Flannery has been abused by this man. You are going to have to get a statement from her, and then you need to go to the police so that this will become a civil case, rather than a criminal case for Flannery. We’ve always known we would have to do that eventually if the mom didn’t sign her over.”

“I think Flannery’ll do that now,” I said. “She’s pretty much given up on her mom.”

“For the moment she has, but don’t underestimate that bond. You need to get her to talk right away while she’s still angry.”

“Okay. What’s the other thing?”

“You just have to get that signature.”

“I think we blew our chance, Liz.”

“I can give you some suggestions for ways to set that up. We can talk tomorrow. Right now I’m on my way to Sacrament House with Zelda to get her things.”

“Oh?”

“She’s going to stay with me for a few days if that’s all right with you. There’s still been no word from Sherry, and I think Zelda needs a lot of one-on-one. I’m taking tomorrow off work.”

“Do you think she’s thinking of using?”

“No, but I just don’t want her to get there.”

I sank onto the railing and let out all my air. “Talk about a big heart, Liz.”

“There’s one other thing, and I wouldn’t suggest this if I didn’t think you need to see how serious this is with Flannery.”

“What is it?”

“I’m going to send you a link to a website. You’ll see what I mean when you look at it.” She paused. “Just don’t throw your computer monitor.”

I was afraid to ask what that meant. After I hung up I looked past the Harleys to the last of the clouds that hovered on the horizon like pink-tinged battleships. If I could just escape back to the times when all we had to do was lie on our backs in the sand and make up stories about the clouds.

“Classic.”

I grabbed at the rail to keep from tumbling off into somebody’s gold Sportster. Chief steadied me with a hand around my arm.

“Off someplace?”

“Anyplace,” I said.

He perched on the railing next to me, for all the world like an eagle merely coming to rest for a moment. I wanted to lean my head against his shoulder.

“I’m not going to keep you out here,” he said. “I know you need to get back to the kids.”

“How was Desmond this weekend?”

“Not as happy as he is now. He was setting himself up for you not bringing Flannery back.”

I prayed my hands together in front of my face and blew into them. “Did Kade tell you what happened?”

“He did. Classic.”

I looked up at him.

“Please, please be careful.”

“I am.”

“Are you? Announcing to the entire chapter of HOGs that they can volunteer to be this kid’s tutors?”

“That wasn’t my idea.”

“Nudge.”

“Yep.”

He gave a slow nod. “Then I guess we have to assume that God’ll provide protection.”

It still surprised me when he said things like that. Suddenly emotion clogged my throat again. For so long I’d thought it would be God who would come between us. Not Troy.

“I missed you this weekend,” he said.

“Enough to tell me what this whole thing is really about?”

“I’m working on it, Classic.”

He looked at my lips. The longing was more palpable than the railing under us. We hung there, wanting this thing to get out of our way. We were still hanging when Stan opened the café door and said, “Kiss her already.”

I closed my eyes. When I opened them, Chief was halfway to the door.

“Hey, sorry, dude,” Stan said. “I didn’t mean to break that up.”

Chief squeezed his shoulder and disappeared inside. Stan looked sheepishly at me.

“It’s okay,” I said. “That wasn’t going anywhere anyway.”

“Huh.”

Stan strolled toward me, bottle of something in hand, and put his foot on a picnic table bench. Above his shaggy blond head the night bugs swarmed around the porch light that had just snapped on. With any luck they would drive him back inside before he asked too many questions.

“What’s up with you two?” he said. “I thought you were on your way to the altar.”

I shrugged. “Just stuff.”

“Yeah, well, don’t let stuff get in the way of a good thing.”

I felt my eyebrows rise. If I wasn’t mistaken, Stan was actually serious, which was not something I often saw.

“You can’t give up on him, Allison. He got hurt bad by his ex, but if anybody can heal that, it’s you.”

“You know her?” I said.

“Knew. Past tense, and it’ll stay that way if I have anything to say about it.”

“I had no idea.”

I nodded for him to join me on the railing. He looked warily at the door but he sat down.

“I’m not trying to pump you for information,” I said. “If you don’t feel comfortable telling me—”

“It’s okay. I don’t know that much.” He took a long haul out of the bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “All three of us were in the same HOG chapter down in Orlando. Joy was her name. Name didn’t fit her, but she was a looker. And you think Leighanne has it going on—”

“Too much information, Stan.”

“Anyway, it seemed like they had it all. Both lawyers. Nice house. Very nice house. Two Harleys.” He gave me a grin. “He and I, we didn’t talk that much about our feelings.”

“I’m shocked,” I said.

“But I knew he was happy. And then one day it all went down.” He stabbed his thumb toward the ground. “Just like that.”

I looked down at my sandals, dangling below.

“Y’know what, Stan,” I said. “Thanks for telling me this. But I don’t think you should say any more. I think I need to hear the rest from Chief.”

“Good call. Besides, I don’t know all the details. Don’t want to. All I know is that I’m glad I got him to come up here with me when I moved to St. A. This gave him a new start. And then when you came along, I thought, now he’s gonna make it.” Stan leaned his shoulder against mine before he slid off the railing. “I still think that. Like they say, you’ve come too far—”

It was a blessing he was cut off by Kade poking his head out the door. Tears were once again imminent.

“Allison,” Kade said. “You need to come in here.”

I brushed past Stan and followed Kade inside, ready for the next disaster of the day. But when he led the way back to Flannery and Desmond, neither of them appeared to be standing on a ledge.

“Tell her,” Desmond said to Flannery, jerking his head at me.

I sat on the stool next to her, although my behind barely hit the seat before she said, “I want to talk to that cop. I want to tell him everything.”

“That’s … a good thing, Flannery,” I said.

“But it has to be that friend of yours,” she said. “The one that picked me up that day.”

“Officer Kent.”

“Yes. I won’t talk to anybody else.”

“I told her Opie was cool,” Desmond said.

I nodded, even as I made my mental way through that mud. Would this put Nick in jeopardy? He said Kylie was going to be watching him, ready to pounce any time Nick colored outside the lines.

“I know I can’t go back to my mom,” Flannery was saying. “She can’t protect me. She can’t even protect herself. She doesn’t want your help, but I do, and I’ll do whatever it takes.”

I took both of her hands. “It’s going to mean two things. Telling the police, yes, and helping me talk your mom into giving me her signature.”

Her small shoulders dropped. “I know she won’t let you back in the house.”

“What about where she works?” Kade said.

“I don’t know where that is. I don’t think she works at the same nursing home now.”

I heard another piece of the puzzle drop into place in my head.

“We’ll figure it out,” I said. “The good news is that you don’t have to worry about being punished for anything you’ve been forced to do. Your statement to the police is going to ensure that.”

“Then let’s do it right now.”

Kade squatted beside her. “We’re going to have to wait until tomorrow. And so that we don’t put Officer Kent in a bad position, we’ll probably need to do it at the police station.”

She started to shake her head, but Desmond put his hand on the top of it, fingers lost in the curls. “You don’t got to do it alone, sis. Everybody you need gonna be right there with you.”

“It’s true.” I smiled at Kade. “Even your attorney.”

“I wouldn’t let you talk to anybody without me there,” Kade said.

Then we all went still and watched Flannery. She, too, was still, except for the wheel I could almost hear, turning in her head as the frightened hamsters whirled it round and round. But in that silence, surrounded by HOGs and Grand Funk Railroad and somebody’s Harley growling to life outside, I felt a longing as deep as the longing that had pulled Chief and me together on the railing. I wanted this girl to have a life. I wanted her to know the love that Desmond knew. I longed for it.

And in the longing I felt more longing, pulling and hugging and holding.

It was God’s longing for his little redhaired girl.

It was almost completely dark
when Kade, Flannery, Desmond, and I pulled up to the Palm Row house in Kade’s car. I was still a little preoccupied with the fact that the Harley I’d heard leaving the café was Chief’s Road King, when Desmond said, “What’s Mr. Schatzie doin’?”

I peered through the window on the passenger side to see Owen standing on my lawn between the lane and the side porch. He was bent at the waist, arms sprung out to either side of him like wire coat hangers, yelling something into the pyracantha bushes. They were past their due date for a trim, but that couldn’t account for his screaming something unintelligible into the foliage.

I heard Desmond’s window go down. “Hey, Mr. Schat-z
ee
!
”
he called.

Owen turned, teetering on one foot on the uneven ground. The hulking figure who burst from behind the bush knocked him the rest of the way off balance and took off like a buffalo around the side of the house and behind Miz Vernell’s. The motion sensor bulb affixed to her eave flashed on, drenching his thick back and bush of hair in light before he was swallowed up in the shadows.

Kade was already out of the car, sprinting after him. I told the kids to stay put and ran to Owen. He sat trembling in the grass, clutching his cell phone in his hand.

“I called the cops,” he said.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m just madder than a wet hen that I couldn’t stop him.”

I waited for the rest of the similes but he just shook his balding head. “I’m just no good to anybody these days.”

My arms were about to go around him when blue lights jarred the night and a siren whooped to a stop. I almost dissolved right alongside Owen when I saw that the driver was Nicholas Kent. In uniform.
Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou.

“He got away, ” Owen called to him.

His voice was creaky. Were we going to have to call yet another ambulance?

Nick said something into the radio on his shoulder and crouched beside Owen.

“Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m not hurt!” Owen barked at him. “Just go catch the son of a gun.”

“I called in backup to do that. Let me help you up and you can tell me what happened—”

Owen swatted at the freckled hand Nick offered. “I don’t need any help. I’m not that useless.”

Nick nodded patiently. I turned my attention to the car where wails were coming from the backseat. I started toward it, but the door came open and Flannery flung herself out, followed by a grasping Desmond. I caught her before she could get up any momentum. She scratched at me without really trying to get away and I managed to pull her to the front steps and make her sit between Desmond and me.

“It was him!” she said.

“Who?”

“Elgin! That was Elgin!”

“That’s her old pimp,” Desmond informed me.

“Flannery, there is no way that was Elgin. He couldn’t possibly know this is where you’re staying.”

“He has ways! He always gets what he wants! He knows!”

Everything was coming out with an exclamation point attached to it. I pulled both her frenzied hands into mine and shook them until she finally let her eyes land on my face.

“Listen to me,” I said. “I had a very close encounter with Elgin today, and that guy was not him.”

“He was big. Elgin is that big.”

“Elgin is taller.” This I knew because Elgin was Chief’s height …

Another piece snapped into place. Chief had Elgin’s build. It was no surprise, then, that Flannery could barely look at Chief.

“I saw the back of his head, Flannery,” I said. “That guy was—”

She yanked her hands from mine and pulled back until she was nearly in Desmond’s lap. He folded his arms around her.

“He knows,” she said. “Elgin knows I’m here. I can’t talk to the police now.”

“All the more reason
to
talk to them. If you think Elgin’s around here, they need to know so they can be on the lookout for him.”

“You don’t get it.”

“What don’t I get?”

“Miss Allison?”

Flannery took one look at Nick Kent standing a few feet from the bottom of the steps and she closed down everywhere at once.