Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel (6 page)

Between Sacred Grounds and the Wells Fargo Building around the corner there wasn’t a whole lot of time to contemplate the Sermon on the Mount. If anything, I needed a Sermon on the
A
mount. The morning heat hadn’t picked up enough to account for the fact that I was sweating like Miss Piggy. Just the thought of dealing with money did that to me.

The ground floor of the building was occupied by the Wells Fargo Bank, spacious and high-ceilinged and reeking wealth. The first thing visible as I passed through the heavy glass doors off the sidewalk was the massive vault, trimmed in conservative brass with just the right amount of intricacy in its hardware. My father always said having the vault in the front showed the bank as an institution of integrity and trust. I’d once told him I wasn’t sure he’d have known those two things if they bit him in the behind. One of the many reasons he left me out of his will.

Chief’s office suite was on the third floor facing the long, rectangular park known as the Plaza that stretched between the two one-way streets, Cathedral Place and the “good” end of King Street. This office had a higher class factor than his previous digs. When he invited Kade in they’d needed more space as well as better visibility, although the modest sign on the door that said simply “Ellington and Capelli, Attorneys at Law” wasn’t exactly a billboard.

Inside, their secretary, Tia Davies, continued the understated tone. She was only in her early fifties, but she carried on the pre-Baby Boomer traditions of having her graying hair washed, set, teased, and sprayed into a helmet every Monday afternoon and wearing panty hose even in the summer. I could always count on Tia to have Kleenex, breath mints, and a double dose of decorum.

“Mr. Ellington is just about ready for you, Ms. Chamberlain,” she said when I entered the outer office.

She offered me coffee, which I turned down, and a tweed and leather chair, which I accepted, and looked at me with perfectly poised hazel eyes.

“I understand congratulations are in order,” she said. “You have to be so happy.”

“Do you know something I don’t, Tia?” I said.

“She’s talking about the adoption.”

Chief was framing the doorway to the back hall, making no attempt to hide a grin. The beast. Now I was sweaty
and
blotchy-faced: the perfect combination for romance.

“I knew that,” I said.

Tia nodded without moving a single hair.

“We’ll need about an hour, Tia,” Chief said.

“Yes, sir.”

It was my turn to grin. He’d told me no less than sixty times how much he wished she wouldn’t call him sir. But she would probably rather come to work without her pumps than address him as Chief. I was glad there were people like her in the world. It made up for there being people like me.

Chief led me into his office, which was as streamlined and masculine as the man himself. It was all I could do not to pull him onto the leather couch and, as India so often put it, get a little neck sugar. I made a deliberate beeline for one of the high-backed chairs in front of his desk, but he curled his fingers around my upper arm and pulled me in for a quick kiss.

“I came here to talk business, Mr. Ellington, sir,” I said.

“Just greeting my client,” he said close to my mouth.

He let me go so I could sit before my knees jellied completely. I was already saying, “So we’ve agreed I can’t be your client when it comes to my personal finances.”

“Your personal shambles,” he said.

“My point exactly. So you have any ideas?”

“I have one thought.” He was clearly all contracts and depositions again. “But I really want you to think about it before you decide.”

“Do you think I’m going to hate it?”

“Not at all. Just the opposite.”

Chief tilted his head. “Would you consider Kade?”

I stared. “Do you think he’d do it?”

“He seemed okay with it.”

“You already asked him?”

“I told him I wanted to mention it to you.”

“And he was all right with it?”

I stopped before I completely turned into a forty-three-year-old rendition of a tween with a crush on Justin Bieber.

“He believes in what you’re doing. He wants to help.” Chief leaned forward, forearms on his thighs. “I think more to the point, Classic, is whether
you
are all right with it.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “He’s going to be smack in the middle of your personal affairs.”

“You mean he’s going to know that I’m hopeless with money.”

“There’s that.”

“You could have at least pretended to argue with me there.” I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s a secret to anybody. I’ve got nothing to hide. What’s the other thing?”

“This is going to mean spending some time with him.”

“I want that. You know I want that.”

“I do. Just be aware that he’s probably going to be strictly professional about it.”

“So I shouldn’t count on a mother-son bonding experience.”

Chief’s eyes softened. “Maybe not. But who knows?”

“Certainly not me.” I sank back in the chair and felt my wet back adhere to the leather.

“I don’t suggest him just because it would give you a chance to get through some of this,” Chief said. “But if it helps …”

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll make an appointment with him. How weird is that?”

His eyes crinkled. “No weirder than anything else about your life, Classic.”

After the three-day Labor Day weekend, I was only able to get Desmond vertical and out of his room to go to school by promising I would take him to school on the Harley. Then the only obstacle was making him actually get dressed before he donned what he was now calling his D.C. jacket.

“That stays with me when we get there,” I called to him the second time I sent him back to his room to get out of the T-shirt he’d slept in.

“Ain’t nobody gonna gank it,” he called back. “Imma keep a eye on it.”

“What exactly does that mean, Clarence?”

“Nobody gonna jack it.”

“Really?”

“You got to get hip, Big Al. Means Imma make sure nobody steals it.”

“Oh. I’m not worried about that.”

I dropped the second p.b.-and-pickle sandwich into his lunch bag and surveyed him as he emerged. The shirt he’d chosen was wrinkled from spending two days in the dryer, but at least I couldn’t smell it.

“What I’m concerned about,” I said, “is the jacket becoming the focal point in every one of your classes.”

“What’s a focal point?”

“It’s the center of attention.”

He grinned. “I gotta get me one of those.”

“You
are
one of those. The jacket stays with me.”

Go another mile.

The Nudge was so out-of-nowhere I stood there, head cocked.

“I’m seein’ a ‘but,’” Desmond said. “Is it a good ‘but’ or a bad ‘but’?”

Go.

“It’s an if-you-hurry-up-we’ll-go-a-long-way-to-school but,” I said.

“Dude, Big Al, I was ready
yesterday.
”

He was out in the garage putting on his helmet before I could locate the keys and the cell phone and the list of fifty things on the pile that I had to do that day, all the while considering this latest Nudge. It was actually more like a Shove. There was an urgency to it that didn’t match just taking Desmond for a longer ride to pull him out of his school funk. It was a physical jolt I couldn’t ignore.

Desmond wasn’t about to ignore it either. When I joined him in the garage across the lane every rule had been followed, right down to the fact that he hadn’t climbed on the bike without me there.

As I threaded the Classic through the back streets, he showed the proper amount of appreciation by yelling, “Yeah, baby!” at every bump in the bricks. At the corner of Bridge and Aviles I reminded him that it was 7:00 a.m. and some people were lucky enough to still be in bed. He ratcheted his voice down to a husky whisper that still made the otherwise bold, indulged squirrels run for the magnolia trees.

Aviles was even narrower than most of the historic streets and was lined on one side with park benches and pots of impatiens. Though it hosted several small cafés on the other side, it had escaped the souvenir-shop mentality and largely remained true to the past St. Augustine was so proud of.

Most of the block we were on was taken up with the old Spanish Military Hospital, which in its day was known for amputations. The solution to every ill back then was to cut off the associated limb. When I was a carriage driver, in my life before Sacrament House and Nudges and Harleys, I used to tell my customers that no one ever went in there complaining of a headache.

The umbrellas on the tables outside La Herencia Café made it hard to see anyone who might be coming out of a doorway, so I slowed down. I could never understand how anybody could eat Mexican food at this hour of the morning, but a figure did indeed emerge from behind the red canvas and step right into our path.

The thought,
You couldn’t hear us coming, pal?
hadn’t fully formed in my head before I realized who it was. It was quickly followed by:
You had me go another mile for
this
?

There was no doubt it was Troy Irwin. The stylishly mussed hair and the high-end summer suit could have belonged to any fit middle-aged CEO with an American Express Platinum card and a Caribbean tan, but not the body language. The entitled pulling in of the chin, the hubris-filled lifting of the eyebrows, the arrogant raising of the commanding hand to stop the progress of an eight hundred–pound vehicle—that could belong to none other than Troy Allan Irwin, Esq. Only because I had Desmond with me did I not attempt to pop a wheelie in the hope that the man would wet his pants.

I stopped and dropped my feet to the ground on either side of the bike and waited for him to cross. No such good fortune. While the Classic idled indignantly under its rumbling breath, Troy strode over to my side, tucking his sunglasses into a silk-blend pocket. I was tempted to at least give the throttle a twist as he approached, but it wouldn’t have fazed him. I knew that walk. He had something to say, and he was going to say it even if I dumped the bike over on him. He wasn’t worth the damage to the paint job, or the dent in my firm resolve not to let Troy Irwin make me hate him.

“You know this dude, Big Al?” Desmond said between his teeth.

“Unfortunately,” I said.

I could feel him stiffening against my back. “You want me to take care of him for ya?”

“I think I can handle it. Just—”

“I know: let you do the talkin’.”

Troy was now standing no more than two feet away, one hand parked in his slacks pocket, the other dangling casually at his side. I had often wondered if he stood in front of a full-length mirror perfecting that pose. Half of my last cup of coffee rose in my throat.

“Good morning,” he said.

This was another of those moments when it would be good of God to put words in my head. If any were there, they were stuck in some crevice I couldn’t get to, not with Troy turning his arrogant gaze on Desmond.

“Is this your son?” he said. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

“Nor do you need to,” I said. “Listen, we’re in a hurry.”

“I can see that. You almost took me out.” He cocked a sandy eyebrow. “I guess when you have a nice young police officer kissing your feet you can get away with driving any way you want to.”

I thought I’d stopped being shocked by his shamelessness. Apparently not. All I could do was look at him with my jaw heading for my chest. He put out his hand to Desmond.

“Troy Irwin. I’m an old friend of your mother’s.”

I’d never put it together that Desmond hadn’t met Troy, and the thought of it now brought the rest of that coffee into my throat. I tilted my head back to tap my helmet against Desmond’s but he didn’t need the reminder. He looked in the opposite direction, leaving Troy with his hand stuck out.

“I see you’ve told him your side of the story,” Troy said to me.

He was still wearing the plastic smile that reminded me of something out of a Mr. Potato Head kit. So did his eyes for that matter. I wished my heart had some of that same plastic quality, but it clenched like a fist in my chest.

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “it never occurred to me to mention you to him.” I nodded toward Desmond. “He’s obviously rather good at judging people for himself.”

The synthetic smirk didn’t waver. “When I saw you coming I just wanted to congratulate you. You’ve gotten everything you wanted. I, on the other hand, have not. But I will. You know that, Ally.”

I was abruptly thrust forward, straight into my next words. “Do what you have to do, Troy. But you can’t hurt us.”

That was what I said. What I thought was,
Are you serious, God? He
can
. He so
can
!

Troy just watched me until I was very close to throwing up on his shoes. But as I watched back, I saw something in his eyes, something that bent a slat in the blinds he kept firmly pulled down over them, something that peered out in an instant of desperation before the slat snapped back into place.

I went cold. Arrogant Troy. Infuriating Troy. Even Angry Troy—those versions of the boy I grew up with didn’t push me to rage anymore.