Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel (4 page)

“You don’t really believe that’s going to stop him.”

“I haven’t heard from him in two months. Have you?”

“No.” Kade slid off the porch railing and reached for his plate. “But it’s not over with him, and I’m not letting him have the last word.” He paused en route to the door. “Congratulations on Desmond. I’m happy for you.”

As soon as the door closed behind him, I crossed to the other side of the porch and dug my fingernails into the railing he’d just left. I had sidestepped Ms. Willa when she tried to steer me to the subject of Troy, only because it was easy to imagine myself not trying to take him down financially. International business tycoons had tried, to their eternal regret. I couldn’t even get Desmond through eighth-grade algebra.

But Kade had dragged me right where I hated to be: the place where my insides twisted and my mind conjured equally contorted scenarios and my soul rebelled against everything I was supposed to be now.

I looked down at my hands, still straining to strangle the railing with sweaty palms. Ten minutes before I’d been so sure I could handle anything that landed on my pile of life, now that Desmond was mine and hope was so clear. Hope could hold up the Sisters and Sacrament House and even my shriveling bank account.

But at this point, all I could see was Troy Irwin sitting astride that hope, laughing the laugh that had long since lost its mirth and threatening to pull it down completely.

“Except you can’t,” I said. Out loud. Because there was more hope than there was Troy. There had to be.

No one ever seemed to want to leave Palm Row once invited in. I believed that was partly the spirit of Sylvia, the nanny who had raised me in that house, inherited it from my parents, and then left it to me. She’d embodied Jesus there. She’d died there. And I knew she still lived there, continually erasing the scuffs of my childhood and making room for an even holier Spirit. People cleaned up their language when they were in that living room and relished their food more in that kitchen and saw the Christ in down-and-outers who’d been given up for godless right there on that side porch.

Normally I was more than fine with that. But that night I wished the Spirit would usher the lingerers toward the door. Even after the moon nosed its glow through the trees, I still hadn’t had a moment alone with Chief, and now that I’d talked to Kade, I needed more than the resolution of a hug. I had to feel like I could get my balance again.

I piled the last of the empty baking pans into Hank’s arms and sent Desmond off to bed wearing his leather jacket with his T-shirt and boxers and was poking in the refrigerator for the piece of lasagna Hank had salvaged when a pair of arms came around me and pulled me close to a warm chest. A strong leg shut the fridge door.

“You forgot to pencil me in,” Chief said.

“Pencil?” I said. “I used a big ol’ honkin’ Magic Marker, but no one could read it.”

“You think everybody’s gone?”

“Yeah.”

His arms tightened, though I didn’t need that to leave me completely helpless. “You sure? You checked the closets?”

“Y’know what?” I said. “I don’t care if they’re all standing outside with binoculars.”

I twisted to face him and looped my arms around his neck. I wanted a kiss more than I wanted to breathe, but even more than that I wanted to watch him look at me. His eyes turned downward, searching my face as if he were discovering yet another layer under my skin. It was a prelude I never got tired of.

The only thing worth ending it for was the kiss itself, which Chief knew just when and how to bring me to. Where I wanted him to bring me was away from the careening stack of issues. Just until I could steady it once more.

He pulled back to look at me again, eyes sizzling. Yes. A subject I was clear on.

“I can’t,” I said.

“I know.”

“Then why are you asking me?”

“I’m not.”

Chief took my face in his hands and kissed my forehead and smiled with only half his mouth.

“I thought us sleeping together wasn’t up for discussion,” he said.

“It’s not.”

“Then why are we having this conversation?”

He wrapped his arms around me, lifting my feet off the floor, and nuzzled his face in my hair. When he let me go he was still wearing the semismile.

“You’ve set the boundaries, Classic. I’m not going to cross them.”

“I know you’re not.”

“So do me a favor, would you?”

“Yeah?”

He brought his face close to mine. “Quit bringing it up.”

I wriggled happily away. This was the center I was looking for. He was so grounded he was practically gravity itself.

“You want coffee?” I said.

He tilted his head at me.

“Tea?”

“What I want is to know is what’s going on with you. Today should have lifted the weight of the world off your shoulders.”

“It did.”

“I’m still seeing it in your eyes.”

I shut them. And then I felt his fingers on my chin.

“What are we doing here, Classic?”

There was no point in not looking at him. His raptor eyes were already seeing into me anyway.

“Are we in this or aren’t we?”

“We’re in.”

“To me,
in
means you don’t shut down when there’s something on your mind.”

“I hate it that you know everything,” I said.

He didn’t smile.

I sighed. “It’s Kade.”

“Keep going.”

I turned to the stove and switched on the burner under the teakettle. “I feel like one of Desmond’s little middle-school chickies when I’m around him. I don’t want whatever relationship we’re going have to be based on my desperation.”

“I’ve watched you form a bond with one son, Classic, and he was a much tougher case. You’ll work this through with Kade.”

“I don’t want to work it through.” I rummaged in the canister of tea bags. “I want to go straight to making up for the twenty-six years I’ve missed.”

“Not gonna happen that way.”

I considered a bag of Darjeeling and dropped it back in. “It’s just so painfully ironic that I have a deeper relationship with Desmond than I do with my own flesh and blood.”

“You looking for some bag in particular?”

I turned to him to find the half-smile crinkling his eyes.

“I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

“Yeah, you do.” He put his arms around me. “And you’ll find it. There’s nothing standing between you and Kade but time.”

“And Troy Irwin.”

Chief pulled back to look at me again. “That’s where this is coming from.”

“It’s like Kade’s obsessed with taking him down.”

“You can’t really blame him. Kade could be rotting in prison right now because of him.”

“I get that. But we’re talking hatred here. And what
I
hate is seeing
him
hate.”

Chief’s eyes crinkled again. “You hate hate.”

“Yeah. With everything that’s in me.”

“And that’s what I love about you.”

“You love that I hate?”

“Classic,” Chief said, “shut up, willya?”

He pulled me into a kiss, and I didn’t want it to end. Which was the very reason he set me solidly against the sink and held up one finger before he crossed the room to the door.

“Gotta go,” he said.

“I know.”

“Gotta go now.”

“Yes, you do.”

“You okay?”

“I’m better. Thank you.”

“Good. Going.”

“Yeah.”

He stopped, hand on the doorknob. “I want to take you to dinner on Friday the eighth.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“Our anniversary.”

“Our anniversary.” I did a mental index, and then realized I was doing it with my brow pinched and my mouth hanging open. Very attractive.

“You’re a hopeless romantic, Classic,” he said. “We met one year ago. Exactly.”

“Only a year?” I said. “I thought I’d been putting up with you for longer than that.”

“World
class
hopeless romantic.”

“I thought you were going.”

“I am.” But he still stood there, and his eyes grew solemn. “You and God going to have a talk?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said.

“Let me know how it goes,” he said.

I watched through the window in the kitchen door as he strode across quiet Palm Row to the garage where his Road King waited in the shadows.

“God, I love everything about him,” I said. “How about I just go another mile with
him
and you take care of the rest of it?”

I could almost feel God patting me on the head.

Silly woman.

So yeah, I took care of the “rest of it” at the customary speed of a freight train over the next two days—taking the new Sisters to various doctors’ appointments, making the weekly Costco run, arranging rides to NA meetings. So it was Thursday before I had a chance to find out what was going on down at C.A.R.S.

As I cruised the Classic down West King Street, I had to admit Kade was right. As much as I despised the places where I’d found Jasmine and Mercedes and Geneveve a year ago, at least back then some people had been making a living at Titus Tattoos and the greasy-windowed laundromat and the bar that used to sell an affordable lunch. Now all the spaces were gutted in hopeless anticipation of re-dos by investors who had turned away in disgust when the promises made by Chamberlain Enterprises had disintegrated. Yet the hookers still hawked themselves up and down the block at night, and the drug deals still went down in the back alleys. It truly was worse than it had been before Troy Irwin tried to redline it.

Except for C.A.R.S. Old Maharry was still hanging in there, keeping at least two of the Sisters working decent jobs. But according to Zelda, even that wasn’t going so well. Time to head for the proverbial horse’s mouth.

Maharry was alone in the “showroom” of Choice Auto Repair Service when I arrived, frowning at a stack of tires out of tiny eyes squinted to near extinction behind their thick glasses.

“I’m glad I caught you alone,” I said.

“Why?” he said. “You need tires?”

“Nope. The ones you put on the van are still holding up fine. It’s about Zelda.”

His face puckered. One more wrinkle and it, too, would disappear. “Who?” he said.

“Zelda. The young woman you’ve got working here?” I glanced around uneasily. Had he fired her?

“Sherry Lynn’s friend,” he said. “What about her?”

“Is she working out okay for you?”

Maharry shuffled around the stack of tires and, from what I could hear, down the next aisle. Sherry hadn’t mentioned anything about senility setting in …

“You want an answer or not?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, come over here, then.”

I followed his trail around the stack to find the old man pointing to a display of hubcaps. The shine nearly blinded me and it took me a minute to realize I had never seen sunlight coming through this window before. As a matter of fact I wasn’t sure I’d known there
was
a window.

“She did this,” Maharry said. “Imelda.”

“Zelda?”

“Whoever you came in here asking me about. She set this all up.”

I blinked. In addition to the pyramid of wire wheel covers and gunmetal rims, there were neatly printed signs declaring that the biggest sale in wheel history was taking place inside.

“This is great,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

“You tell me.”

Maharry stared at me from within the countless folds of skin as if he were waiting for me to do just that.

“I guess it depends on whether you’ve sold any,” I said.

“I have.”

“So there’s no problem.”

“Not yet.”

I crossed my arms. “Maharry, you’re going to have to work with me here. I’m not following.”

He pulled a knotted hand from behind his back and jabbed it toward me. The thought struck me that he was a far better match for Ms. Willa than Owen Schatz was.

“You mark my words,” he said. “Before you know it she’s going to want a commission on these.”

“I’m not sure Zelda even knows what a commission is.”

“See, there’s your trouble. All of you.”

Again he waited. He was as bad as Judge Atwell.

“What trouble?” I said.

“She’s made you all think she’s dumb as a post and she’s not. She’s smart, that one. Too smart.”