by Nancy Rue
Mercedes pointed at my cheeks. “That’s the one I’m talkin’ about. All you got to do is mention his name and she go all pink.”
“You guys are using again, aren’t you?” I said. “You’re seeing things. I’m calling every one of your sponsors.”
“I ain’t got no sponsor.”
We turned to Sherry, the only female in the room besides me who wasn’t holding her sides and cracking herself up.
“Do you want one?” I said.
She twitched. I took that as a shrug.
I crossed to her and rubbed my hands up and down her legs. I could feel the bones, even swathed in blankets. “When you’re ready, we’ll get you to an NA meeting. Meanwhile, we’re just gonna love on you.”
“I done tol’ all y’all, I ain’t about no higher power—”
She ended with a curse, and Mercedes stuck out a finger to check her, but I shook my head at her as I got up.
“You might not be about the higher power,” I said, “but the higher power is about you.”
She swore again, and again I held Mercedes back.
“Don’t think I don’t appreciate what y’all are doin’ for me,” Sherry said. “I wanna stay clean. But I told you when I come here—no pushin’ God on me.”
“I think we should leave her be for now.” Geneveve sat on the arm of the chair and touched Sherry’s hair, now washed and combed into a pitiful ponytail. “Miss Angel didn’t never push nothin’ on us, and we ain’t gonna push on her. We got to let God do the pushin’.”
Even as I stared at Geneveve, her eyes came up to me—wise and knowing. And Nudged.
“Gen’s right,” I said.
“Then let’s get this party goin’ again,” Mercedes said. “’Cause this is about our Desmond. Get you a cookie, boy—get you two.”
I left them woo-hooing and cranking up the music, and was halfway down the walk when I heard the door open behind me. I turned, fully expecting to see Desmond when I turned around, loaded up with five more reasons why he was going to die of boredom. But it was Geneveve, hurrying toward me.
“You okay?” I said.
She nodded and kept coming until she was flat up against me. I folded my arms around her.
“Thank you,” she said into my jacket.
“For …”
“For trustin’ me with Desmond. You don’t know what that means to me, Miss Angel.”
I held her out in front of me. “Geneveve, you’re running this whole house. You just brought Sherry back from the dead, and I don’t think I could have done that with her. Why wouldn’t I think you could handle your own son for an evening?”
“I know. But he loves you—not me.”
“Gen—”
“I know it’s the truth, and it’s my own fault.” Her eyes were large and liquid. “But he gonna love me again—or maybe love me like he never done ’cause I never gave him nothin’ of myself. It’s gon’ happen—I know that now. So thank you for showin’ me I’m ready to start.” A tear spilled over and she wiped it with the heel of her hand. “That’s my son, Miss Angel. And I’m gon’ have him someday.”
A flicker of resentment chased through her eyes so quickly I was sure I hadn’t seen it. She kissed my cheek and hurried back into the house. Back to her son.
As for me, I hurried the other way, to Troy Irwin, who owed me, big time, for the pain that was searing through me.
The 95 Cordova, tucked deep in the opulence of the Casa Monica Hotel, touted itself as being devoted to Old World Charm, and it did appear that way, especially amid the tiny white lights that had twinkled to life and draped themselves all over the historic district while I wasn’t looking. The only thing not old-world charming about it was the price of the food. One of the last couples I’d squired around town in the carriage had raved about the special menu-for-two for only ninety-five dollars. I didn’t spend that much on groceries in a month, before Desmond came. I was sure that tonight Troy intended to pay more for what he wanted.
Especially when the maitre d’ told me Mr. Irwin was waiting for me, and led me through a showcase of antique tables and silk-covered chairs to a back alcove bathed in golden ambience. I’d grown up squirming in restaurants like this. Desmond had nothing on me when it came to childhood boredom.
Troy only got halfway up from his chair before I motioned for him to stay seated, but it was long enough for me to see that he was wearing silk blend gray trousers that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe. I was glad I’d opted for my leather Harley jacket and a black turtleneck. Surprise shot through his confident gaze.
He waited for the server to fluff my napkin onto my lap and leave before he spoke. It would never do to talk in front of the help. “Look at you,” he said. “You dating somebody with a Harley?”
“The Harley’s mine,” I said. Too bad I was still operating in a Nudge-less state. I needed one right now to keep me from overturning my water glass into the lap of those silk pants. At least he hadn’t known about the bike.
He looked at me for a long moment. When I didn’t add anything, he moved his silverware a fraction of an inch.
“Thank you for meeting me here,” he said. “I felt like we got off on the wrong foot the other day, and I know it was probably the venue. You can’t have many happy memories in that office.”
“I have none, actually.”
“Then this was a better choice.” He made another infinitesimal adjustment to the cutlery. “A place we never went to together.”
I held in a breath and with it every snarky retort that fought to come out and end this. “Look,” I said, “my wanting to meet with you again has nothing to do with what happened between you and me. This is about now.”
“Is it?” His voice was husky and decidedly un-CEO.
“What is it that you think we can accomplish by dredging up the past?” I said.
“We can get it out of the way so we can sort this thing out.”
“I got it out of the way a long time ago.”
“Are you ready for your appetizers, sir?”
Troy nodded at the server, who wafted a gold-edged charger onto the table.
“I hope you still love fried green tomatoes,” Troy said.
They didn’t look like any greasy-diner fried green tomatoes I’d ever eaten with Troy. They seemed lost in their glazed, pretentious presentation.
I barely waited for the server to simper away. “Stop trying so hard, Troy. I forgave you, all right? I don’t want to go over it. Any of it. I just came to tell you—”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“You didn’t forgive me.”
My chin came up before I could stop it. There was no point then in trying to hide the anger.
“You know absolutely nothing about my spiritual life,” I said.
“I don’t have to be a priest to see you’re still carrying around everything I did to you.”
Even as I squeezed the stem of my water glass, I felt the Nudge.
No. Come on, God. I bought a Harley. I took in prostitutes. I’ve gone to jail. Please, please, please, not this. Don’t make me do this.
Troy’s hands were flat on the tablecloth. “I want to help, Ally,” he said. “But you’re not going to let me unless we clear the air.”
“And you chose a public place so I wouldn’t scream at you the way you deserve to be screamed at.”
“When did that ever stop you before?” His smile was hopeful. “If you really want to scream at me, we’ll go someplace else.”
I pressed into the table. “I don’t want to scream at you. I don’t want to talk about this at all.”
“Because you haven’t forgiven me. I wouldn’t have forgiven me either. I should have come after you when you ran. Right? Isn’t that
what you’re thinking?”
“You know what? I am not doing this.”
I snatched my purse from the table and made my blind way back through the silk and the gilt and the filet mignons until I was out on the street where I could breathe.
DearGoddearGoddearGod, why are you making me do this? The Nudge was so strong it backed me against the front wall of the hotel. I couldn’t move when Troy pushed the glass doors open, calling my name, and I couldn’t resist when he closed his hand around my arm.
“I came after you this time,” he said. “You want to keep running from it, I’ll keep following, like I should have done before.”
I used my other hand to peel his fingers away. “You did follow me when I ran,” I said. “Coming after me was what did us in. Okay—we’ve talked about it. Are you satisfied?”
“I’m not talking about that time. I’m talking about when you left for good. I should have come after you when you left St. Augustine. I should have followed you and made it right.”
I didn’t need the Nudge to freeze me in place. He had just said the last words I ever expected to come out of his mouth. And his eyes begged me to believe him.
“I left too, after you did,” he said. “Went to school. Tried to convince myself it was all your fault.”
I found my voice. “You were already convinced of that before I ever left—which was why I left.”
A black Lincoln pulled reverently up to the curb. Troy waved it on and once more took my arm.
“Please, let’s walk,” he said.
“Fine,” I said. “We’ll walk, and we’ll talk. Just don’t touch me.”
He let go and slid his hands into the pockets of his slacks. I nodded and took off two steps ahead of him up Cordova.
“I’m not trying to clear my conscience, Ally,” he said.
“And don’t call me Ally. It’s Allison.” I quickened the pace to have an excuse for my ragged breathing.
“It was my fault. All of it. The accident—the argument in the hospital—your dad cutting you off. We could have had the life we dreamed of together if I had just come after you and told you that. If I’d just asked you to forgive me—like I’m doing now.”
We’d reached the block of Cordova that ran along the college, deserted for the evening by the students. I stopped there, and I faced him, and I let myself be Nudged straight back to the past he’d just edited.
“Is that the way you remember it?” I said. “Or is that just the story you’ve told yourself so you can sleep at night?”
“What—”
“It has to be, or why else would you have come back from Harvard and gone to work for my father—with every intention of working your way straight up to where you are now? He groomed you for this from the time you were fifteen years old, even when you were telling me that the minute we graduated from high school, you wanted us to leave the life our parents had laid out for us and go chase our dreams. We both know what that was about, Troy. That was about you doing whatever it took to get in my pants. Is this the ‘sorting this out’ you wanted to do?”
“I wanted to marry you then.”
I shoved my hair out of my face. “Aren’t you leaving out a few of the finer points? The part where you refused to marry me? The part where you blackmailed me? The part where my father stood there in his office and said I was screwing up my life like Lincolnville trailer trash and he wasn’t giving me another cent to screw it up anymore. Not then. Not ever. Because of you.”
“And I’m sorry. You have to know that.”
“No—I don’t know that. I have been back here for almost twenty years and you never looked me up. I live two blocks from your office, but you never came to me with this—and I know why you’re doing it now. It’s because you want something from me. So let me just be clear: I met you tonight to tell you I’m not selling you the lease on that house so you can tear it down and extend your little dream world down West King Street. I’m not doing it. And if you continue to fight me, I’ll fight back. Period. ”
“One has nothing to do with the other. I just wanted you to do what you’re doing right now, get this out, scream at me, hit me—”
“I’d love to belt you right in the mouth, but I’m not doing that, either.”
Troy closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were swimming.
“Do you want to know something?” he said.
“No,” I said.
“That was the thing I loved about you the most—that you never let me get away with anything.”
“I let you get away with everything.”
“I didn’t get away with it, Ally,” he said.
I looked away from him.
“I’ve just been waiting for a way to make it up to you.”
“Oh, please—”
“These women—this cause of yours—it’s something you have a passion for. And I can help.”
“And it doesn’t hurt that it helps you, too. How am I supposed to believe all this when you’re going to gain from it? And at the expense of all those people?”
“What people?”
“The people who live on West King Street. Where are they supposed to go when you tear everything down and start over?”
“You can help me with that. I’ll set up a fund for you, give you whatever you need to help them all relocate. This was the dream you had when we were kids.”
“Don’t you dare bring that up.”
“You can’t do this by yourself and you know it.”
He pulled his hands from the pockets of the pricey pants, and I waited for the shaping in the air, the peak of the pitch. But he just let them fall at his sides.
“I don’t know what else to say. I just want to help you.”
I looked away again. “Right now you can help me by leaving me alone.”
“Is that your answer?”
“No. I don’t have an answer.”
“Fair enough.” He let out a long breath and reached for my arm again. “Let me walk you back.”
“I’m fine. Go. Please.”
I folded my arms against the sound of his wing tips receding down Cordova and fading into the city of walkers. I didn’t join them, even after I knew he must be safely in his Lincoln. I just stood there, sagging under the weight of too much past. Funny how I’d carried it for so long and never known how heavy it was.
PleaseGodpleaseGodpleaseGod—please tell me where to drag it from here.
I was only Nudged to go back to my women.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
No driving Fleetwood Mac greeted me when I got to Sacrament House, and no lights shone through the windows. I didn’t even have to get inside the front door to know something had gone down in the hour and a half I’d been gone. I wiped my feet on the mat and tried to get the Troy Irwin angst off with the dirt.
I knocked and got “you might as well come on in” from a jagged-voiced Mercedes.
She, Jasmine, and Geneveve were sitting at the table in the dining alcove, where the only light on in the house framed them in a dismal circle. I didn’t see Sherry anywhere, but my first instinct was to search the place for Desmond.
“He in the kitchen,” Geneveve said. Her voice was tiny and flat.
I started to pull out a chair, but judging from the chill coming off of the three of them, I might be frozen if I actually sat down. I curled my fingers around the back of it.
“Is there a problem?”
Jasmine stared at the lazy Susan that held the saltshaker and the sugar bowl. Her eyes were tear-swollen. Mercedes glared at Geneveve and muttered under her breath.
“Did you two have a fight?” I said to Geneveve.
“Yeah,” she said. “We did.”
Mercedes whipped her head toward her. “But that ain’t w
hy—”
“Stop.” Geneveve leveled a hand at her. “Just stop.”
Jasmine bolted for the hallway, sobs more audible as she went.
Mercedes grunted. “That’s gon’ help a lot.”
“Help what?” I said. “Somebody talk to me.”
“It ain’t gon’ be me.” Mercedes shoved the chair against the wall as she got up. Her eyes drilled through the top of Geneveve’s head. “I got my orders. I’ll tell Desmond you here.”
I was pretty sure Desmond had heard the whole exchange. “Gen,” I said, “let’s go talk on the front porch.”
She shrank from my touch on her shoulder as if I’d applied hot coals to it.
“No, ma’am,” she said.
“I’m sorry?”
“I got nothin’ to say.”
I glanced toward the kitchen and lowered my voice. “Did something happen with Desmond?”
“No,” she said. “Just please take him back to your house.”
“Geneveve—”
She put both hands almost in my face and struggled out of the chair and down the hall. The door didn’t slam—that wasn’t Geneveve’s style—but the hostility was palpable.
I headed for the kitchen but Desmond met me in the doorway with his backpack already on and his helmet under his arm. Behind him Mercedes stomped through the laundry room and out the back. She did give me a door slam.
“I told you this was a bad idea,” Desmond said.
“We’ll talk,” I said. Right now I just wanted to get out of there before both of us got frostbite.
One thing was clear: I needed to calm down before I got Desmond home and interrogated him under a bare lightbulb.
“You didn’t get a ride this afternoon,” I said as we donned helmets. “So we better take one now.”
He looked momentarily surprised, but he was on the bike and ready almost before I had the thing upright. I could feel him relax with every lean as we wove through the quiet streets behind the college and avoided the too-cheerful Christmas lights. We arched north of St. George Street and took the sweeping curve that led to the Bay Front. The salty chill should have been invigorating. Desmond’s ease behind me should have been reassuring. But when we pulled into the garage on Palm Row, I was no closer to calm, and I knew it wasn’t all about whatever Desmond had done.