Here So Far Away(55)

“Welcome back, Enforcer,” Bill said under his breath.

“Get in the car,” Francis said, his voice tight. “We can discuss this further with your parents.”

He pointed to Lisa, Keith, and Christina. “And you three. Let’s go.”





Twenty-Six


I was in the front seat, the others in the back. If Lisa and Keith said anything, I couldn’t hear it over Christina’s bawling.

Lisa was sitting in the middle. She leaned forward and tapped Francis’s shoulder. “Sorry. She’s pretty upset.”

“You don’t need to apologize for her.”

“It’s just, it might look like her family’s well off because she lives in a nice house, but she comes from very humble roots. Rough childhood, you know? Some people would say that mine was rough, but honestly, not like hers.”

Rough childhoods, my arse. Christina came from one of the few old-money families in that part of the valley. As for Lisa, her father was an insurance agent and her mother was a dentist, and they were those lovey-dovey parents who put their hands up the back of each other’s sweaters in front of their kids’ friends and said things like, I was telling Dave in the bath last night . . .

Not that Francis was going to fall for that, but since I was the only one in the car who wasn’t about to get in huge trouble, I said: “Sure, rough. You probably heard the rumor about mountain men marrying their daughters.”

“Shut up, George!” Christina screeched.

“Easy,” Francis said.

After a moment, Lisa leaned forward again and stage-whispered to me, “You know she can’t help how she is.”

Francis stopped the car about a block from Lisa’s house. “You can walk from here,” he said.

“You aren’t going to tell my parents?”

“Put on a good show.”

“Oh, I’ll be very convincing. I only had, like, five beers.”

“I meant the play.”

“Oh, right. Thank you! I will!”

“I know you will.”

Christina was next, then Keith.

As we drove on, Francis didn’t look at me, didn’t speak. It was so strange to be sitting together in upright silence, belted in, staring out the window, when under all those layers of clothes was a body I knew so well that there was no part I couldn’t describe precisely, down to the blue veins crossing the double tendon under his left wrist. If this wasn’t a police car, I might have chanced it, sliding over so that my leg, just my leg, was touching his. Just to see.

Francis took off his hat, placed it on the seat between us, and ran his hand over his chin. Freshly shaved. Jaw like a blade.

I was still furious with him, but the reasons were becoming murkier as we passed through shadows and streetlights. For wanting to talk about how hopeless this was, was that it? Or for keeping his cool when he saw me and letting everyone off?

“Were you drinking?” he asked.

“Couple slugs of Screech.”

“Do you have the bottle?”

“In my bag.”

Silence again, my mind working overtime. We were not driving in the direction of my house. Or the farmhouse, the detachment, or anywhere we’d stolen time together. At some point it occurred to me that he didn’t know where we were going, that he was just driving, thinking.

Finally, he pulled over by a wooded area on the outskirts of town. He got out of the car, walked around, and opened my door. “Bring the Screech.”

There was nothing in his posture that suggested we would be sharing a nightcap as we walked down a rough path into the woods lit by his flashlight. The snow had melted here and the ground was uneven where muddy footprints had frozen. Eventually, we came to a clearing with a crumbling brick bunker surrounded by fallen trees that had been taken out by storms. The shrill call of coyotes in the night.

The flashlight flicked off. I felt Francis behind me, his hand heavy on my back through my jacket. Down my spine and around to my belt buckle. Then he stopped. He waited until I leaned into him, sank into the heat of him, feeling upward to his bare neck, before sliding his hand into my jeans.

On the way back to the car, the bouncing light beam illuminated a large tree that had come up from the roots, its huge base like a secret entrance to another world.

An old man was walking his dog along the shoulder of the road. “Evening,” he said, looking bewildered until his eyes landed on the bottle of Screech under Francis’s arm. “She won’t be the only one you find back there tonight. Unless the coyotes get them first.”

As we pulled away from the curb, Francis said, “I had a very long conversation with a woman from the lighthouse heritage society this week. Those window locks have a remarkable history.”

“Did you have to buy a ticket?”

“I sure did.” He tightened his grip on the wheel. “George, after they gave me the medal, I felt so—”

“Ashamed.”

His voice was low and reassuring, but regret was already setting in, I could tell. It was there in the tightness of his hands, the way he kept his eyes on the road ahead.

“Yes,” he said. “Ashamed. It was easier when I was far away from you, in the city, to decide to do the right thing.”

“The right thing being to stop.”