Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel (2 page)

The group was sorting itself into a variety of vehicles out in the parking lot of the St. John’s County Courthouse by the time I signed the paperwork under Desmond’s scrutiny. Ulysses, Stan, Rex, and the rest of the Harley Owners Group members had already roared out on their bikes, led by Hank, who was wearing what she called her Sunday-go-to-meetin’ helmet, an amusing term when delivered with her Boston accent. Five of the seven Sacrament Sisters—Jasmine, Mercedes, Ophelia, and our two newest, Gigi and Rochelle—were loading into the van, having given the motorcycles a wide berth, although ten months ago they would have ridden with Evel Knievel if it would have helped them get high. Besides Chief and Desmond there was only Owen Schatz, looking far younger than his seventy-something years next to Ms. Willa, fifteen years his senior. He had evidently refused all help transferring her from her wheelchair into his Lincoln.

“When did Owen get a new car?” Chief said.

Desmond paused, helmet halfway on. “When he started seein’ Ms. Willa.”

“‘Seeing’ her?” I said. “Like dating, you mean?”

“I don’t think they datin’. Just talkin’. There ain’t nothin’ goin’ on.” Desmond wiggled his eyebrows. “Yet.”

“Keep us posted, will you?” Chief said drily.

“Oh, please don’t,” I said. “Who are you riding with, Desmond?”

It was a pointless question. If given a choice, he was always on the back of Chief’s Road King in a heartbeat, especially since two weeks before, Chief’s orthopedist had cleared him to ride again after a five-and-a-half month recovery from a leg injury. If
I’d
had a choice, I would have been there too. As close as I could get.

But Desmond was already swinging a lanky limb over the seat of my Softail. I fought back the “emo” gathering in my throat.

“You’re not dressed to ride with that lady,” Chief said.

“What lady?” I said.

“I got my brain bucket,” Desmond said, motioning with his helmet, “and you
know
she never let me ride without every part of my body covered up even when she knows Imma get heat stroke.”

“You’ve got the wrong jacket on,” Chief said. “Here. Try this one.”

He reached into one of the studded saddlebags on his bike and produced what appeared to be ten pounds of leather. I could feel my eyebrows lifting. Granted, Desmond’s arms were growing so fast he needed new gear about every three months so his wrists didn’t stick out like poles, but I’d just gotten him a denim jacket that should last him until Thanksgiving. Okay, maybe Halloween.

But Chief unfolded a soft, muted-black garment and held it out to Desmond as he climbed off my bike. “Congratulations present,” he said.

“That is
sweet
,” Desmond said, though he, too, looked a little mystified. It was, after all, ninety-five Florida degrees, each one soaked in equal parts humidity.

Chief motioned with his chin. “What’s sweet is on the back.”

Desmond turned the jacket around, and I lost control of my emo. Just beneath a full-out screamin’ Harley Davidson emblem, the letters
D.C.
were embroidered, thick enough for even Ms. Willa to see from a hundred yards.

It was one of the few times I ever saw my boy without the perfect retort. Chief rescued him by holding out his fist. Desmond didn’t tap it. He threw his arms around Chief’s substantial chest and buried his face.

That kind of joy was still unfamiliar enough to make me wonder if it really belonged to me.

Classic II, my Red Hot Sunglo Heritage Softail, purred like a lioness beneath Desmond and me as we followed Chief. He might still walk with a slight limp, which I personally found sexy, but he rode like he and the Harley were one streamlined, bad-dude being. I’d been back on my bike six weeks longer, after my own injury, but I never hoped to handle a motorcycle with that kind of hunky confidence.

He led us away from the looks-like-any-other-town-in-America cluster of Walmart, Target, and Safeway, and toward the part of St. Augustine that is like
no
other town anywhere.

Coquina-sided Spanish-style houses cozied themselves between Greek revival–columned mansions and Victorian-era bed and breakfasts trimmed with gingerbread. Live oaks, bowed under Spanish moss, tunneled streets so narrow a Harley was about the only vehicle a person could drive comfortably on, if it weren’t for the brick pavement that threatened to jar our teeth loose. From the “sissy seat” behind me, Desmond howled his delight with every bounce, maybe with even more abandon than usual. I did a little howling myself.

As we entered the long sweeping curve of Avenida Menendez that ran along Matanzas Bay, the sunlight glared onto my visor, momentarily blotting Chief from view. Too bad, because the sight of his back pulling denim across his shoulders did it for me like no other. That and his eagle profile. And the raptor eyes that could twinkle with mischief or take my breath right out of my body with their I-know-you-Classic intensity …

Okay. I needed to concentrate. It would be bad form to dump the kid in the bay the first day I had him.

Chief continued to lead us toward our turn-off at Cadiz Street. I could almost smell the sun bleaching the pastel walls of the waterfront homes. Plantation shutters were closed, lace-bordered shades pulled down. My black pants and my own denim jacket made me feel like I was wearing a plastic garbage bag. Other women didn’t seem to sweat the way I did. Chief didn’t even sweat the way I did. Desmond had to be dying in leather, though he’d never admit it. I’d be lucky to get him to take that jacket off to go to bed.

But despite the rivulets trickling between my shoulder blades, I took a long inhale of a peace that was still as foreign to me as heart-bursting joy. Left to my own devices, I wasn’t one for
all manner of thing shall be well.
My MO was more:
When will the other shoe drop? Come on, I know it’s going to
. So whenever even my breathing was taken over, I braced myself for the Nudge, the kind that threatened to knock me off the bike if I didn’t take heed. And above the purr of the Classic and the uninhibited yowling of my kid, I heard the whisper that was not my own.

Go another mile.

Up ahead, Chief leaned easily into the left turn onto Cadiz, but I stayed on Avenida Menendez. I didn’t argue with the Nudges any more. Didn’t question them, even though I had no idea what they would eventually mean. This one would initially result in Hank having to warm the lasagna up and Ms. Willa
tsk-tsk
ing about my manners. Chief would just sit on the side porch, feet perched on the railing, waiting. Getting it.

Desmond, on the other hand, yelled, “Oh, yeah!” and clung to me like a long-armed koala bear. I had the irresistible urge to play.

We inched our way amid the trails of wilting tourists jaywalking across the Avenida just about anywhere they pleased to get to their suppers at O. C. White’s and the Santa Maria and the A1A Ale Works. A mile would take us to the fort and back, but I didn’t check the odometer. I would know when to turn back. The almost violent power that told me to go would thrust us forward until it just as firmly said
stop.
It was a sort of coerced freedom that I never tried to explain. Most people thought I was sufficiently crazed as it was.

So with Desmond calling out, “Oh, yeah!” and leaning with me as if we’d been somehow Velcroed together, I answered the whisper to
go another mile
and chugged behind the tired traffic along Castillo Drive. Finally we broke free at Orange Street and cruised past the crumbling City Gates that kept no one in or out and drove on heedless of the funky shops and pubs that beckoned visitors in search of respite from the heat and the history. I turned left on Cordova, the street tourists seldom made it to when the sun was bearing down this hard.

I teased Desmond with the throttle at the intersection, and he hollered, “That is what I am
talkin’
a
bout
!”

Grinning inside my helmet, I gave the Classic just enough gas to make Desmond yell again and let the Methodist church and Scarlett O’Hara’s pub go by in one blur. With Flagler College in sight on the right I slowed down, but Desmond was already squeezing my rib cage and croaking, “Copper, Big Al.”

I glanced in the side mirror and groaned. Blue lights flashed atop a cruiser. Its
whoop
signaled me to pull into the student parking lot.

I would have blamed God, except that the Nudge had just been to
go another mile
. God hadn’t indicated how fast.

I could feel Desmond’s skinny body flatten into my backbone. One year with me wasn’t enough to shake the aversion to law enforcement that had been ingrained in him the first twelve. I was starting to suspect it was in his DNA.

“Busted,” he said.

But as I watched the officer climb out of the cruiser, I shook my head. “Maybe not, Des,” I said. “It’s Nicholas Kent.”

“Well, shoot, we got nothin’ to worry about then.”

“Let him tell
us
that,” I said. “Which means, say a word and you lose helmet privileges indefinitely.”

As usual, that guaranteed silence.

I raised my visor and tried to look contrite as young Nick Kent stood beside me, freckled hands on his hips. He was wearing shades, but I could still see his Opie Taylor eyebrows knitted together.

“What were you thinking, Miss Allison?”

“I wasn’t, Nick. I’m sorry.”

“Do you know how fast you were going?”

Even if I’d had a clue I couldn’t have answered with Desmond death-gripping the air out of me. I could practically hear him gritting his teeth. His impression that our favorite cop was going to let us off had clearly faded.

“Forty in a thirty,” Nick said.

“Are you serious?” I said.

He nodded solemnly.

This was the point at which I expected the freckles to fold into laugh lines around his eyes, but he kept his boyish mouth stern.

“If you have to write me a ticket, I totally understand,” I said.

Nick pulled a pad out of his back pocket, and my heart turned over. He really was going to give me a citation, and any minute now Desmond would crack a molar. I’d have to add dental fees to whatever this was going to cost me.

Officer Kent scribbled briskly on the pad and tore the page off, while I peeled Desmond’s arms off so I could breathe.

“Just a warning this time,” Nick said.

I took the paper from him and gave it only a glance before I felt the grin melt across my face.

Congrats, Miss Allison,
he’d written.
BTW,
the coast is still clear.

“Thank you, officer,” I said. “I’ll be more careful from now on.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Desmond’s hand come up, fist balled to thump into Nick’s.

“You don’t gotta worry about that,” Desmond said. “Imma keep a eye on her for ya.”

“Do it,” Nick said. “I’m counting on you.”

My next sensation was Desmond’s chest puffing against my back. I sneaked a smile at Nick and crept out of the parking lot at a speed just short of falling over. Officer Nicholas Kent was one of the good guys. Staying out of the less-than-good guys’ headlights wasn’t easy for people who associated with me, and I wasn’t going to make it any harder for him. We headed to Palm Row at a respectable twenty-nine miles an hour, while Desmond rattled on about cheatin’ death again and I savored the God-joy.

It was the upside of being a prophet.

When we got to our house on Palm Row, the site of just four houses between Cordova and St. George Streets, Chief was, indeed, on the side porch, Italian soda in hand. He didn’t ask me any questions, although he did shoot me a puzzled look when Desmond barely spoke and hurled his adolescent self into the kitchen.

“I told him not to tell you something until I had a chance to,” I said. “I don’t think he trusts himself.”

“You ever going to tell me?”

“No.”

Chief’s eyes grinned. “You’re a cruel mother.”

“Somebody should have thought of that before they let me adopt him,” I said.

Chief reached out a hand, big but always surprisingly soft, and hooked it around my neck to pull me to him.