Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel (34 page)

Between then and Thursday, when I would go to meet Brenda Donohue, I was on pins and needles. Or maybe it was thumbscrews and carpet tacks. Flannery showed no signs of backing away from her decision to tell all once we had her mom’s signature, but the nearer the meeting time came, the more I wanted to know if she’d told Ms. Willa anything we didn’t already know. It just seemed like the more information I had the better, in case it was Brenda who changed her mind.

Besides, it kept my mind off of not hearing from Chief, or from Sherry, or from Detective Kylie. Police cars made regular appearances on Palm Row and San Luis Street, and India told me there always seemed to be an officer in the vicinity of Second Chances. That only eased my mind a little bit.

I knew Desmond was feeling my anxiety. Thursday morning when I dropped him at school, he said, “You not gon’ walk me in again, are ya, Big Al? You fixin’ to ruin my reputation.”

“No,” I said. But I did watch until he was inside the building.

I went back to Palm Row and picked up Flannery to take her to Sacrament House so I could go see Ms. Willa without her.

“Why can’t I go to the boutique?” she said when we pulled up in front of Sacrament Two. She sounded so much like a normal, whining, fourteen-year-old girl I didn’t know whether to cry or ground her.

“It’s not even open yet. Why don’t you want to hang out with the Sisters at the House?”

She pointed to the shiny Lincoln in the driveway, parked in front of Hank’s Sportster. “Because the Gardener Guy is here?”

“Who?” I said.

“Don’t you ever watch HGTV? Oh, wait, you don’t even have a TV.”

“Why do I need one? I get all the entertainment I want from you and Clarence.”

I climbed off the bike and hung my helmet from the handlebar. When I reached for hers, she said, “When am I going to get a nickname?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You call Desmond Clarence when he’s being a pain. Why am I just Flannery?”

“It’s not because you’re never a pain,” I said. And then I reached out and touched a curl. “You had to go through a lot to get your name back. I thought you might just want to keep it.”

She just nodded, but I felt her deep longing as I followed her into the house. Hank was in the kitchen with Gigi.

“You want some breakfast, Miss Angel?” Gigi said. “I got French toast.”

“You want to turn that before it gets too brown,” Hank said to her.

Gigi flipped a piece and beamed. “Imma be Miss Julia Chiles ’fore Miss Hank gets done with me.”

I looked at Hank. “Cooking lessons?”

“She’s a natural.”

The back door banged, and from down the short hall I heard Mercedes yell, “Don’t you be slammin’ that screen door now.”

Owen scowled as he held it open for Rochelle, who had apparently been in the backyard with him. It was barely eight a.m. and the place was humming.

“Nobody’s slamming anything,” Owen said. “That wind’s kicking up like a country hoe-down—”

“Do we have a storm coming in?” I cut in.

Hank poked me in the rib. If her mouth twitched any more it was going to leave her face.

“You haven’t been watching the weather report?” Owen said to me.

“No.” Flannery looked up from the half bottle of Aunt Jemima she was using to drown her French toast. “She watches
us
.”

“They just upped it to hurricane status. It’s due to make landfall here Saturday if it keeps up.”

“Will you be in charge of battening down the hatches here?” I said.

“Already happening,” he said. “Between that and Ms. Willa I’m busier than a one-armed paper hanger.”

“Or a hill full of ants or a hive full of worker bees.”

We all looked at Flannery.

“What?” she said.

I was really starting to like that kid.

Visiting hours hadn’t officially started when I got to Ms. Willa’s hall, but my favorite blue-eyed nurse seemed relieved to see me. She beckoned me away from the nurse’s station.

“I am so glad you’re here.”

“Why? Is she okay?”

“The social worker’s in there.”

I groaned. I’d been so caught up in everything else, I hadn’t had a chance to even think about this.

“Ms. Livengood’s holding her own at the moment,” the nurse said. “But this one’s old school. She’s not leaving without a signed consent.”

There was a lot of that going on today. I thanked Blue Eyes, took a long breath, and opened the door—just in time to get a blast of Ms. Willa’s Jack Russell voice.

“I’m going to say this one more time, and then I’m going to call security!”

The broad-faced woman on the other side of the bed merely tapped her clipboard with a pen. “There is no need for that, Ms. Livengood. I’m here to help you.”

“Help me into an early grave! I know what happens to people when they go into a nursing home. They never come out!” Her eyes finally found me. “Tell her she’s wasting her time with me, Allison.”

“Could you give us a few minutes alone?” I said to the woman.

“Are you a family member?”

“Yes,” Ms. Willa said.

The woman flipped through the pages on her clipboard. “I don’t remember seeing—”

“We just need a few minutes,” I said. “Please.”

She stood up and glared at her watch. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes, Ms. Livengood, and then we need to get serious about this. Okay?”

When she left Ms. Willa bounced her fist on the rolling tray. “No, it’s not okay! Why do they have to talk to me like I’m five years old and deaf?”

I ignored that, though I’d wondered the same thing myself, and pulled the chair up to the bed.

“You don’t have to go to a nursing home,” I said.

“I know that!”

“But you can afford some pretty luxury assisted living. Some of them are like five-star hotels. You could be running the place in no time.”

“They’re telling me I’ve got failing kidneys and a dying liver, and I don’t believe a word of it. I don’t need any assistance to live.”

“Yeah, Ms. Willa, you do.”

She plucked at the sheet. “Where’s Flannery?”

“It’s not Flannery’s job to make this better. It’s yours.”

Ms. Willa scowled, but I went on.

“What are the other options?”

“Private nurses. But I don’t want to spend all my money on somebody’s salary. And I don’t trust strangers in my home.”

“You gave a fourteen-year-old runaway a key to your house. You trust who you decide to trust.” I put my hand over the fist she was balling up again. “Do you really think we’re all just going to leave you with nobody to keep tabs? Owen would probably install a metal detector at the door so the nurses wouldn’t get out with your silverware.”

Ms. Willa studied the edge of the tray with her thumbnail. “I’d want complete background checks. You can’t be too careful.”

“Absolutely.”

“I wouldn’t care what race they were, as long as they were competent and didn’t treat me like I’m in kindergarten. You know I’m open-minded that way.”

“No doubt.”

She raised a bony warning finger. “I will do all the interviews myself.”

“That goes without saying.”

There was a little more fist-bouncing, a few terrier growls from deep in her throat. Finally she said, “You can get that woman back in here. But just so she knows, I’m not signing anything until I’ve read every word. I want that lawyer of yours to double-check the documents too. Not the young one. The one you’re in love with. I don’t like the ponytail, but other than that he seems trustworthy.”

The social worker was just coming down the hall when I came out.

“She’s going to go home and have round-the-clock-nursing,” I said.

“How did you get her to agree to that?”

“I just stopped doing it all for her,” I said.

I left to the sound of Ms. Willa yipping at her as she opened the door.

Blue Eyes was on the phone so I just gave her a thumbs-up before I rounded the corner and went down the hall that ran perpendicular to Ms. Willa’s. I’d meant to check in on Maharry the last two times I was there, but something had always come up. Guilt lapped at me as I approached his room. Without Sherry, he really was alone, and he had to be going crazy with worry.

But when I poked my head in, the room was empty. I hailed a nurse coming out of another room with a tray full of pill cups.

“Has Mr. Nelson been moved?” I said.

She shook her head. “No, ma’am. He’s been released.”

“He went home?”

“No. He was transferred to a nursing home.” She began to edge away with the tray. “Beyond that I can’t really tell you.”

“I totally understand,” I said.

As I retraced my steps down the hall to the elevator, a wave that could only be loneliness washed over me. Maharry, all by himself in some strange place with no idea where his only child was. Unless she had come back and gotten him settled, the way she’d originally planned to. But then why hadn’t she at least told the Sisters?

I stepped into the elevator and jiggled my leg impatiently as I watched the floor numbers descend. I needed to get outside and make a phone call, because as soon as I got through this meeting with Brenda, I was going to go see Maharry. I knew the person who would help me find out where he was, the one person who wasn’t already up to his eyeballs in all this.

I turned my phone on en route to the parking garage, and saw that I had a voice message. The number was vaguely familiar so I took a moment to listen.

“Ms. Chamberlain,” said a crisp, I’m-in-charge-of-a-lot-of-people voice. “This is Pix Penwell. I’m an attorney for Chamberlain Enterprises, and I would like to make an appointment with you—”

“And I would not,” I said out loud and hit Delete.

I dialed Bonner’s number then and closed my eyes when I heard his voice. It was like putting on lotion. Quickly I gave him the nutshell about Maharry.

“Would you mind doing some calling around to see if you can find out what nursing home he’s in?” I said.

“I will. And I’ll go see him when I find out. I need to take Zelda anyway.”

“You still have the Zelda watch?”

“Liz does. I’m just backup. I’m happy to do this, but … I’m surprised that all happened so fast. The sale of C.A.R.S. isn’t even final yet.”

“Are you handling that?” I said.

“Yeah. I usually only do residential, but Rex asked me to.”

“It’s in good hands, then. Listen, Bonner, I know I don’t tell you this often enough—”

“I know you love me. You tell me all the time.” He laughed his soft laugh. “You just don’t usually use words.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The twenty-five minute drive to J. T.’s Seafood Shack made me feel like I was going a hundred “extra miles,” especially with the gusts trying to push Classic and me around like mean girls on the playground. I felt like I’d been soundly beaten by the time I pulled into the gravel parking lot and nearly laid the bike down in the process. Chief would have told me not to even think about riding in that weather, if I could have found him to even tell him I was going. I put that in its own pile and went on into J. T.’s.

Although the entire front of the narrow restaurant was windows, the brooding cloud cover made it dim. The only other light came from the upside-down bait pots serving as fixtures over the tables, part of the overall fishing motif. Once I saw that Brenda wasn’t there yet, I let an hourglass-shaped waitress with just about as much makeup as Flannery used to wear show me to a table.

“Honey, you want to go ahead and order?” she said.

“No, I’ll wait. She should be here any minute.” I hoped. This didn’t look promising so far.

“How ’bout I just bring you some sweet tea then?”

I was sure I’d gag on it, the way my stomach was churning, but I told her that would be great. Then I opened the menu and pretended to read it, though I really didn’t have to. The smells belting out of the kitchen told me every kind of seafood was served deep-fried with hush puppies and coleslaw. I toyed with a package of crackers and wondered what ever made me think Brenda Donohue was going to show up.

And then she was suddenly there, sliding into the booth across from me.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “I can’t stay long. I only have half an hour for lunch.”

“We could have met someplace closer to your work,” I said.

“I always come here.”

Why did that kind of question always get characters in detective novels to spill information? That was the second time it got me nada.

“Do you have the papers you need me to sign?” Brenda said.

“Here she is!”

Brenda startled as if she’d just been shot. Her relief that it was just the waitress was visible.

“Y’all ready to order?”

I looked at Brenda, who was staring a hole in the tabletop. Although she’d obviously attempted to disguise her bruises, our server had given her a double take.

“Just a sweet tea for my friend,” I said. “We won’t be having lunch.”

She opened her mouth, but I gave her bug-eyed head a shake. She winked as if we two were kindred spirits and hurried off.

When I turned back to Brenda she was digging in her purse. “I know I have a pen in here …”

I had one, but I let her continue the search. Suddenly I had the need to get a better sense of this woman who had raised Flannery, and my five-minute encounter with her in her front yard had told me nothing more than that she had sunk to the bottom of her life. If I’d learned anything in the last year, it was that a desperate woman never willingly showed you who she was. Most of the time she didn’t know.

Brenda really was a pretty woman, even with the upper quarter of her face looking like the hind end of a baboon. There was more tidiness about her today: thick curly hair tied neatly into a ponytail, flowered scrub top crisply ironed, nails trimmed and buffed. She did look like Flannery, except for the fragility in everything from her small, shaky fingers, to the nervous nibbling on those full lips. I had so many questions, but she looked as if even one query might crush her where she sat.

“I knew I had one,” she said, producing a ballpoint with advertising on it.

It might show the name of her workplace, but I gave up hope of seeing it. She rolled it between her palms as she watched me.

“Do you have the papers?”

“I do. But can we just talk for a minute first?”

“I told you, I don’t have much time.”

“Ms. Donohue, I really need to know a few things about Flannery’s past so I can help her.” I took a cautious breath. “Maybe just some things in the last year or so.”

She stopped rolling the pen. “You mean since Elgin came to live with us, don’t you?”

“Is that when things changed? Because Flannery is so well-adjusted in so many ways, and I’m sure that has to do with your parenting.”

“I raised her alone,” she said, chin up.

“So I can only assume that what she’s suffered has been at the hands of Mr. …”

“Wedgewood.” Brenda’s brow furrowed. “I’m not even sure what all she
has
suffered, Ms. Chamberlain.”

I gave her a listening nod.

“When I first met him, when she was twelve, he treated her like a princess. I scrimped and saved to make sure she got to go to gymnastics and things like that, but he bought her the best clothes and did homework with her when I was working. He was nice to everybody, actually. I thought he was wonderful the way he spent time with his grandfather every day in the nursing home before he died.” She tilted her chin again. “I never let Elgin move in with us. I don’t believe in that, especially with Flannery in the house.”

“Of course,” I said.

“And especially because she was turning boy crazy on me.” A tiny smile peeked through. “She’s such a cutie she could have any boy she wanted, and after she had gone steady with every boy in the seventh grade, she graduated to older boys.” Brenda’s eyes filled. “That was the thing. Elgin was so good with her about that. He’d stay with her when I had to work a night shift and he’d tell me how he talked to her about boys and what they think.”

“How was Flannery with that?”

“For about a year she really took to Elgin and I just didn’t hear her talk about boys at all. And then everything changed.”

I only nodded. Any minute she was going to look at her watch again, and I didn’t want to slow her down when we were just getting to what I needed to hear. “Elgin’s grandfather died … very suddenly.” She seemed to back off from that, as if it were a turn she’d avoided before. “Anyway, he didn’t leave him the money Elgin expected him to. That just seemed to twist his whole personality. He was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He would be his usual sweet self one minute, and then he’d just turn on me.” She shook her head firmly. “He didn’t hit me. Last Sunday was the first time he ever did that. But he always told me if I broke it off with him he would say …”

She stumbled on that, but I didn’t push her, much as I wanted to. It was Flannery I needed to know about in the window of time that was closing fast.

“I didn’t see him treating Flannery like that. If I had, I would have taken the consequences, but that would have hurt her even worse in the long run. She also got really distant with me, like she didn’t want to be alone in the same room with me. I thought Elgin was telling her lies about me, but when I asked her about it, she said she didn’t like the way he was treating me.” Brenda tried to smile again. “She’s always been kind of motherly with me.”

So I hadn’t been wrong there. For that matter, most of this was what I’d expected.

“He said he had to go to Jacksonville on business.”

“What business was he in?”

“Investments. He was counting on an inheritance for that and it threw him when his grandfather left everything to charity. Elgin was gone for a while, several weeks, and Flannery kept saying, ‘Are you going to break up with him?’ and when I’d say, ‘I think I should,’ she’d say, ‘You can’t.’ That didn’t make any sense to me, but every time I tried to talk to her about it, she would shut down even more. Her grades went down. She was cutting school and back-talking her teachers, and I just didn’t know what to do.”

Brenda put her small hands to her mouth. The pen rolled across the table, but I didn’t look at it. Her pain kept my gaze on her.

“He called me one Friday, at work, and he was crying on the phone and saying how sorry he was for how he had treated me and would I please take him back. I said I didn’t know, but then when he asked how Flannery was, I told him how she’d been acting out. He was so concerned, like he always was before, and he said he would look into some programs that might help her.”

My stomach lurched.

“I thought he meant group therapy or something. I didn’t know he was talking about a residential program. Her behavior wasn’t
that
bad, I didn’t think.”

The bubbly server arrived with a sweet tea for Brenda and a refill for me. I watched Brenda put on a smile for her, which faded the instant she was gone.

“So he came back,” I said.

Brenda nodded. “The next day, while I was at work. It was Saturday and Flannery was home. When I got there, the entire house was torn apart like somebody had come in and ransacked it and Elgin was in a panic. He said they had a huge fight and she ran off.”

“Did he say she tore up the place?” I said.

“Yes. He went looking for her while I stayed at the house in case she came back. He called me and said he found her in Palatka. Two policemen were asking her questions in a McDonald’s. That’s when he said if we didn’t want her to have a record, we should put her in a residential facility where she could get turned around. He said he’d pay for it.”

“Did you see her before he took her to—where was it, Huntsville?”

“She was home for two days, and she would hardly speak a word to me. I kept saying, ‘You don’t have to do this, darlin’,’ and she’d just say, ‘Yes, I do.’ That was all. So I signed the papers and Elgin took her. I wanted to go with them, but she said she didn’t want me to.” Her hands went back to her mouth where they trembled so hard I could barely stand not taking them into mine. “And now I find out she was never there at all. That she ran away from wherever he had her.” She leaned into the table. “I looked you up, Ms. Chamberlain. I know the kind of women you help. Was she …”

The words caught in her throat, and I did grab her hands. “Don’t you want to come with me and ask her that yourself?”

Her answer came without hesitation. “That isn’t safe for Flannery.”

“Because …”

“Because Elgin will follow me straight to her.”

“He’s still here?”

“I haven’t seen him, but I know he is. I can feel him.”

“Have you tried to get a restraining order? We can help you.”

“Please don’t push this. He’ll …”

“We can protect you.”

“Not from what he can do to me.” I could see her shutting down again. “I know Flannery is safe with you until I can get myself straight. I’m no good to her like this.”

“You seem pretty strong to me,” I said.

The last of her doors slammed shut. “You don’t know,” she said.

“You sure y’all don’t want anything?” I looked up at the server. “Just a basket of fries maybe?”

“Oh my gosh, what time is it?” Brenda said.

“Twelve forty-five. We serve lunch all day—”

Brenda snatched up the pen. “I need to sign right now. I have to go.”

I shook my head at the waitress and pulled the form Liz had given me out of my bag. Brenda snatched it from my hand.

“Tell me what I’m signing,” she said.

“You’re giving me temporary legal guardianship of Flannery for thirty days. I can enroll her in school, obtain medical care—”

“Fine. I know she trusts you. Just take care of her.”

She scribbled a signature where I showed her and pushed the form back at me. Before I could say another word she had stuffed the pen in her purse and slid out of the booth.

“Brenda,” I said. “How do you know Flannery trusts me?”

“Because she asked me to sign that paper,” she said, “when the last time I signed a paper, it led to something very bad.” She shook her head. “Flannery is not like me. She won’t let that happen again.”

I didn’t try to stop her as she rushed for the door. The server sidled back to the table.

“This is none of my business,” she said, “but I hope she’s not running back to the jerk who did that to her face.”

“Me, too,” I said. “Me, too.”

I got Nick Kent on the phone from Palm Row before I picked up either of the kids and asked him to set up an interview for Flannery.

“I gotta tell ya, Miss Allison, this is, like, a huge relief. I wasn’t liking the thought of taking you in for … whatever. Anyway, yeah. We can do that tomorrow.” He paused. “You know it’s going to have to be at the station.”

“As long as it’s not in an interrogation room,” I said. “I don’t want Flannery to feel like she’s a criminal.”

“You can bring cookies if you want, Miss Allison.”

I wanted to tell him I missed him. Why was I turning into a complete marshmallow?

“Who else should be there?” I said.

“Since you have a signature now, get Liz Doyle to show up. Flannery doesn’t need an attorney, but it never hurts to have somebody on board.”

“That’ll be Kade Capelli,” I said.

“That should do it. They may send somebody over from the DA’s office to observe, but they won’t be in the room. I’ll take her statement, and you can go on and adopt her.”

I sat up straight on the bistro chair. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I’m just giving you a bad time, Miss Allison,” he said. I envisioned his freckled face. “I always have this picture in my head of you picking up every person you see that can’t make it and taking them home with you.”

“Thanks, Nick. I think.”