Here So Far Away(17)

“Don’t worry about it.”

He knew something had shifted, just not why. “You don’t date cops.”

“Well . . . I’ve got a history you probably don’t want to know about.”

Excellent. Now I sounded like I had mental problems or a criminal record.

“I shouldn’t be getting involved with anyone,” Francis said. “Should stay focused on the job, settling in.”

I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t say I didn’t like him, because I did. I liked him so much that knowing he was about to disappear was almost physically painful. But I was also very, very close to throwing up.

“Here’s a parting gift,” he said, pulling a stone from his pocket and placing it in my hand. It was about the size of a peach pit, salmon pink, and slightly shimmery. “From the bottom of Lake Victoria. Kind of a good-luck charm.”

“I can’t take your luck.”

“That’s okay. It’s not that lucky.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“Maybe one day you’ll go to Kenya and watch the sun set over the lake. You can exchange it for a luckier one if you need to.” He opened the car door for me. “Meantime, if you ever want to practice chords, you know where to find me. Or whistle.”





Eight


It was nearly dawn by the time I snapped off my bedroom lamp. I slept fitfully, in little sips, until I was awakened by my alarm—which I’d set on autopilot, forgetting I didn’t have to get up—then the phone ringing, the door slamming downstairs when my parents returned home, Matthew’s voice on the stairs. “I dunno,” he said. “I went to bed before she got home.”

A harrumph from my father.

I hauled myself out of bed, unsteady on my feet. I’d never felt more exhausted, was bizarrely hungover, given how little I’d had to drink, but needed to put up a good front. I stopped by Matthew’s room, where he was curled up with a comic and the mug of hot milk my mother made him every weekend morning. “Thanks for covering for me,” I said.

“I didn’t. I went to bed early so I wouldn’t have to cover for you.”

He looked glum.

“What’s wrong, buddy?”

“I was talking to Aunt Joanna this morning. She called to say Dad forgot to bring home a bunch of pamphlets they gave him at the hospital.”

“I’m sure she can mail them.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s— Do you know Dad’s not supposed to be home now? She offered to put him up in the city because the surgeon wanted him to stay near the hospital, but he said he had to sleep in his own bed. Now Mum has to keep driving him in.”

That my father’s obtuseness would require our parents to go out of town regularly might have been welcome news twelve hours earlier, but I’d vowed as I was peeling off my muddy clothes and hiding them at the bottom of my hamper that I would never leave the safety of the house again.

“Are you really shocked that Dad’s not letting people tell him what to do? Besides, can’t blame him for not wanting to stay with Aunt Joanna and all her grandkids. She doesn’t have room for him.”

To say nothing of her youngest son, Junior-Junior, aka Randall, son of Randall Junior, grandson of Randall Senior. He was between Matthew and me in age, and already in ardent pursuit of a life of incarceration.

My parents hadn’t talked much about the game plan with Matthew and me, but we knew that if Dad returned to active duty it would be a big deal for his detachment. He would be the first officer in the region, maybe even the entire country, to do the job with a prosthetic limb, and the staff sergeant was keen to see him do it. Sergeant Paul A. Warren wouldn’t wheel away from that. His job was his whole life, other than patrolling us kids.

“Don’t think I’m going to bed early every Friday so you can stay out all night,” said Matthew.

“Trust me, old sport, you won’t have to.”

I followed him down to the kitchen. My mother was, as usual, in constant motion. Never hurrying, never stopping, like a shark. (One of those hammerheads, with the wide-set Disney eyes and upside-down smile.) She had scrambled eggs and cod-potato hash on the stove, folded laundry in the basket at her feet, a pile of pillowcases waiting on the ironing board in the corner. She must have gotten Dad up at dawn to be home before nine.

“You’re very pale, Georgie,” she said.

Dad looked up from his newspaper, antennae engaged.

“Really? Because I feel great!”

Steady.

“What did you do last night?” Dad asked.

“I went to Veinot to see if there were any help-wanted signs at the mall. For when my hours at the lighthouse go down.”

“Mall closes at nine.”

“Then I stopped off at Nat’s to loan her my jacket. And then I sat out on the porch and read. Matty was asleep by the time I got in.”

Checkable with an acceptable level of risk. Uncheckable. Uncheckable.

“You weren’t cold?”

“A little.”

“What book are you reading?”

“1984.”

“What chapter did you get to?”

What was I, an amateur? Next thing he’d be verifying the bookmark location.

“I finished it.”