by Nancy Rue
Besides, I needed a minute to listen. To know exactly who the pain in my gut belonged to. I couldn’t act on it if it was anybody’s but God’s.
The fury stopped pounding in my head. The crushing pressure on my chest drew back as if it were glad to have someone else do its light work. The knot in my left side went slack and waited for further orders. Only the deep ache in my heart went on.
At the other end of the bench, the wasted freshman moaned.
“I hear you, dude,” I said.
I let the ache guide me down the street and up the steps of the Vineyard.
Desmond was at his usual table by the railing. Actually he was on the railing, holding the other guests captive with some tale. Vickie Rodriguez sat below him, eyes streaming, mouth open in a big long guffaw. Priscilla was across from her, snapping her fingers at George as he maneuvered behind her with a tray held over his head.
She appeared to be asking for the check. George appeared to be finding her invisible. I got between him and the door and pulled his face close to mine.
“I need a quiet place,” I said, and jerked my head toward Priscilla.
“Hallway,” he said. “I’ll have her there in two.”
“You’re a prince,” I said.
I ducked into the hall where Lewis had taken me the day I first met Ophelia. I set aside the image of Kade exiting her room. One ride at a time, as Chief would say.
One pain at a time.
“If you’ll just wait right in here, ma’am,” I heard George say. “I’ll fix that problem with your check.”
“I don’t understand,” Priscilla said.
And then she did. George gave her a gentle push and closed the hallway door behind her. Before she could turn away from me, I said, “You’re going to want to hear this.”
“This is inappropriate,” she said.
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said.
“The judge will hear about this.”
“Oh, I don’t think you want that, but I’ll let you decide after you hear me out.” I paused. “Unless …”
“Unless what?”
It came to me so suddenly I didn’t have time to question it.
“Unless this is cutting too far into your time with Desmond. You haven’t had that much.”
Her penciled eyebrows practically inverted. “I don’t appreciate your sarcasm.”
“I’m not being sarcastic,” I said, and I wasn’t. I was only giving her one more chance to show me something. Anything.
“There’s obviously some problem,” she said. “You might as well tell me what it is.”
There it was. Or wasn’t. The ache in my soul filled in the rest.
“Troy Irwin isn’t quite as careful as he led you to believe,” I said.
Only her eyes moved.
“He didn’t totally cover his tracks, which I think is what happens when a person thinks he’s above the law.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Then let me clarify. Troy contacted you in Africa. The man has connections, I’ll grant him that. And he paid your way here, has paid all of your expenses—rental car, attorney. I don’t know that picking a lawyer connected to Chamberlain was the wisest choice, but like I said, a person in his position gets careless when he’s used to everything going his way.”
The adamant denial in the knot of Priscilla’s lips was the most emotion she’d ever betrayed to me. I knew I was no longer guessing.
“He’s promised to support your program in Botswana,” I said. “He’ll give you enough to build—what does he like to call it?—a state-of-the-art facility, right there in Gaborone. I have no doubt he convinced you he had only the orphans’ best interests at heart, and Desmond’s, of course, but did he ever tell you what was really in it for him?”
“There is nothing in it for him.”
She tripped too late. I didn’t stop to do a victory dance.
“This is all purely to get to me, Priscilla,” I said. “To use the one thing he knows I would sacrifice everything for, so I would step aside and let him continue to build his kingdom, especially when I was starting to get support from the same well he was trying to draw from.”
“You could have had all the money you needed for your program too,” she said. “And Desmond as well.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’re so smart, you figure it out.” She took a step forward. “But I’ll lay this part out for you, Miss Chamberlain: You will never get anywhere with this little mission of yours if you pick and choose who you accept money from. I know what kind of man Troy Irwin is, but the dying orphans who are depending on me don’t care if he’s a serial killer.”
“What about my orphan?” I said. “Was the money for your orphanage the only reason you tried to adopt Desmond? Is that why you had it all planned for him to go to boarding school in London, so if you won you wouldn’t have to deal with him?”
“There was no boarding school in London,” she said. “We thought you would fold when you heard that and take Troy’s deal. We also thought you’d give in when they said you were crazy.”
“Well, now I don’t have to give in, do I?” I said. “Do you get it? You’ve committed fraud, perjury—”
“You can’t turn me in.”
“Are you serious?”
“I’ll lose tens of thousands of dollars for the orphans. If I go to jail, they’ll die.”
“You know something? I really think you see it that way.”
“Tell Troy you’ll take the deal. Keep Desmond, and retract later. I’ll have the money in an offshore account by then.”
“There is no deal anymore,” I said. “For some reason I haven’t figured out yet, Troy is buying the property we need and donating it to Sacrament House.” I shrugged “He doesn’t need you now.”
Light shot across her face as the door from the hallway opened. Her eyes were pools of fear.
“Miss Rutabagas say she got to take me home.” Desmond stopped and grinned at me. “Hey, Big Al. You got Mr. Chief’s bike? I could ride with you. Oh, wait, I don’t got my helmet, ’less you brought it—”
He was cut off by Priscilla Sanborn shoving past him to get to the door to the street. Before he could peel himself from the wall, she was swallowed up by the caterwauling crowd on St. George.
“Somethin’ I said, Big Al?” Desmond said, and then his grin faded. “She ain’t takin’ me, is she? I can’t go live with her, now, I can’t.”
“She’s not taking you anywhere, Des. We were just having a little … chat.”
“Chat nothin’. She look like you kicked her—”
I put my hand up and my phone rang at the same time.
“Where are you?” Chief said. His voice was taut.
“I’m at the Vineyard with Desmond.”
“You’re not with Kade, then.”
“No.”
“India just called. He’s outside her house, pacing up and down the sidewalk talking to himself. She thinks he might be drunk. Ophelia is hysterical. It’s a mess over there.”
“I’m on it,” I said. “If Hank can meet Vickie Rodriguez at my place and stay with Desmond—”
“I don’t wanna go home, Big Al,” Desmond said. “There is a party goin’ down here.”
“Why are you with Desmond?” Chief said.
“I’ve got to go—”
“Classic.”
I closed my eyes. “I came to talk to Priscilla.”
“You what?”
“I’ll explain it to you after I get this thing at India’s settled down.”
“And then I’m going to explain some things to you.”
There was dead air. I didn’t know which of us hung up first.
I sent Vickie on her way to Palm Row with Desmond and my house key and a minimum of explanation. I would have been amazed at how little Vickie demanded, if my stomach hadn’t been in a square knot. Kade drunk in front of India’s. How had he had time to tie one on in the half hour since he left Chief’s? He was sober as a judge then. And why India’s?
I forced myself not to conjecture as I rode up San Marco Avenue. I had to concentrate on getting there first.
It was my night for going to homes I seldom visited. India had a two-story Spanish villa, and she invited me over at least once every time I saw her, but I seldom went. Troy’s parents had lived in this neighborhood. He’d spent his teenage years here, the years when we were always at each other’s houses, although we spent more time at mine than his because my parents left us completely alone, and his were always in our faces. It hadn’t dawned on me until years later that that was because the Irwins actually gave a rip about their child.
The area had changed very little since then. It was still pretentious and closed-off and proud of its stuffy oldness. Even the tile roofs looked down snub noses at those of us who didn’t have the social wherewithal to live there. I’d hated it as a kid, and I hated it now.
I turned onto India’s block and slowed down. She had the lights on, all of them, and even though I knew she’d done it to reassure Ophelia, they made her house look open-armed and welcoming and full of places at the table. The Irwins would have been uncomfortable in her house. They would have been the misfits.
The lights served another purpose: Kade was fully illuminated, slumped on the sidewalk against a fire hydrant. My engine sound brought his face up to squint into my headlight beam, and he bent his legs to get up. He only got as far as his knees when I lurched the bike to a halt and pulled off my helmet.
“I just want to talk to you,” I said. “I promise: no yelling, no ‘son.’ Okay?”
He nodded and dropped back to his seat. I didn’t need a Breathalyzer to know he wasn’t drunk. His face was stricken with a pain you couldn’t feel unless you saw something all too clearly.
I left my helmet swinging from Chief’s handlebar and sat next to Kade on the grass. There was only room for one leaner on the hydrant, so I rested on an elbow.
“You okay?” I said.
“No,” he said.
“You want to talk about it?”
“I have to talk to Ophelia, but India won’t let me near the front door. She threatened to call the police on me.” Kade glanced over his shoulder at the house. “I could hear her screaming in there.”
“Ophelia?”
“Yeah.”
“Look, India knows I’m here now. Chief called her. So let’s just take a few minutes to talk this out and maybe we can come up with a plan.”
Kade glowered at the hands flopped over his knees, each picking at the nails of the other. “Why?” he said. “I thought you were done with me.”
“I’m sorry. You have to understand, when somebody brings up Troy Irwin, I go ballistic. Inside or out, doesn’t matter—something blows.”
“You hate him.”
“That H-word,” I said. “I try not to. There’s not much left of the real him to hate, so I guess I just hate what he does.”
“I hate him.”
That stopped me. I wasn’t even aware that Kade knew Troy until an hour ago.
“You have some kind of relationship with him?” I said.
“No. I never wanted to have anything to do with him after I found out what he was. The only reason I went to him was because I wanted to help you.”
“I don’t get why you thought anything connected with Troy Irwin could help me. There’s a lot you don’t know—probably don’t need to—but he has done things to me—”
“I know.”
I shook my head at him. “What on earth does this have to do with Ophelia?
“From the DNA test. Kent told me the DNA belongs to a close male relative. Most likely my father.”
“Your father?” I said. “I thought he was in Boston.”
“Not my adopted father.” Kade turned his stricken face to me. “My biological father.”
My hands went to my mouth.
“When Nick told me the DNA results, I went to the—to Irwin and told him I wouldn’t turn him in if he would buy the Taylor place and donate it to Sacrament House, no strings, no nothing. If he left you alone from now on, I’d keep my mouth shut.” He rocked forward. “When I saw how you reacted, I realized I was as bad as he was.”
“Kade, stop.” I pressed my hands to my lips, harder, until my teeth cut into my mouth. “You were born in 1986? Brigham and Women’s Hospital?
He nodded. There was none of the surprise that should have sprung into his eyes.
“You know, don’t you?” I said. “You know I’m your mother.”
“I do,” Kade said. “That’s why I came to St. Augustine.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Surely someone had thrown a handful of hot tacks in my face. Surely that was what happened.
Surely this boy had not told me he was my son.
But he was there, Kade was, stunning in the light from India’s house, with his clear blue Irwin eyes and his squared-off Chamberlain chin. He made it impossible to believe I hadn’t seen it in the spike of his hair, heard it in the husk of his laugh.
Or nailed that chiseled profile, just the way Ophelia had.
“Okay,” I said, “we have to put this somewhere for right now. I can’t even—”
“Please—”
“No, okay? What about Ophelia? Did you come to tell her?”
“Yeah. I couldn’t go through with the Irwin deal.”
“All right. So … how were you going to handle it?” My head was spinning to the point of nausea, and I put my hand over my mouth again.
“Are you okay?” Kade said.
I stuck the other hand up and breathed until I was halfway sure I wasn’t going to vomit into India’s azaleas. “Did you have a plan?” I said.
“No. After I left Chief’s I just lost it.”
“Well, you’d better find it.”
He blinked, hard, where my words stung. They stung me, too.
“Okay,” I said. “Ophelia. Focus.”
“I am.”
“I’m talking about me. “
The whys, the hows, the ifs were dizzying. I closed my eyes and breathed again. The wheel stopped on the what-do-we-do-now.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll get us in the door and make sure Ophelia’s coherent. Then you tell her just the basics, all right? She doesn’t need to know you made a deal or any of that.”
“I know,” he said. “I won’t tell her about you.”
I stood up and waited for Kade to join me. We walked, strides matching, arms swinging in rhythm. It had been there all along, as close and clear as my own reflection.
India opened the front door for us before we even reached the metal gate.
“Chief called,” she said. “I’ve got her calmed down for the moment, but if she sees him—” She looked at Kade. “Is this really necessary?”
“It is, India,” I said. “Trust me.”
She showed us into the living room, all Saltillo tile and Italian leather. I looked around a column for Ophelia.
“She went to wash her face,” India said.
She gestured Kade to a chair. Distracted as she was, she was still more gracious than I could hope to be on my best day. And this was definitely not my best day.
“You know what’s really strange?” India said as she tugged me onto the couch with her. “Just this evening she told me she’d started remembering things.”
“About the rape?”
“She said she remembered she was sitting on the steps
at Sacrament House and then she was leaving, walking down the front walk, when this man pulled up in a car.”
“That came back to her last night,” I said, “when we were all there. I thought she was just uncomfortable with me. ”
“That is where it happened,” Kade said.
India recoiled. I put my hand on her arm.
“He told me that,” Kade said.
“Who? Allison, what is going on?”
“He said he’d had a few drinks and he was ticked off at Allison so he drove over there to … how did he put it? Something about claiming his territory.” Kade bit off the words. “Sort of like a dog lifting his leg up and down the street, I guess.”
“I am so confused,” India said. “Who are we talking about?”
“We’re talking about Troy Irwin,” I said.
India’s eyes rounded. “Troy Irwin! Mother of Jefferson Davis! Why would Troy Irwin commit … rape?”
“He didn’t plan it,” Kade said. “He was half-drunk and mad, and he saw a chance to bring Allison down.”
I stopped breathing. Something was kicking me, hard, between my hips, again and again.
I doubled over.
“Allison! Honey, what is it?”
I could feel India’s frantic hands on my back.
“Oh my Lord, Kade! Allison—do you need an ambulance?”
I shook my head. I didn’t need paramedics. Not to tell me that Troy Irwin wasn’t seeing our sweet Ophelia when he violated her.
He was seeing me.
“I’m calling nine-one-one,” India said.
I sat up and put my arm across hers. “No, it’s okay,” I said. “It just got to me. I’m all right. Just go on, Kade.”
“You sure?” he said.
“Yes. Go.”
He gave me one more reluctant look. “He said he dragged her into the car. You know, assaulted her—”
“Then hit her in the face,” India said.