Gone Too Far (22 page)

Early this morning, your beloved wife Mae gave up her fight. She’s been ill for so long, dear friend. Please don’t blame her for being weak. She fought for so long, but this latest flu was too much for her tired body to take.

Please know that I share your grief and pain. This sad news must be impossibly hard for you to bear, so far away from home and those of us who love you.

But you need to know that, at the end, you were there, with Mae, in spirit. Oh, how she loved you! Her last words were of you—yes, I was with her here in Tuskegee when she passed. She made me promise to watch out for Jolee, and then she said, “Take care of Walter.”

I confess that I am at a loss as how best to do that while we are a world apart, but I gave her my promise, and I will manage somehow.

I will start by telling you that Mae’s mother has come to Alabama to care for Jolee. I, too, will visit as often as I can.

I will be taking care of Mae’s burial arrangements. Don’t fret about details or payment, I’m handling all of it for now. We’ll sort it out after you get back home from the war.

Please allow yourself to weep, dear friend. Grieve deeply for your loss—and what a loss this is! I have already shed enough tears for both of us, but I beg you to feel grief and not anger at your beloved Mae’s passing. There’s no room for anger in the cockpit of any airplane. You must be cool when you fly. You must be careful and never reckless, or I will be burying you soon, as well.

Now you must become more determined than ever to live. For Jolee, and for Mae, who was taken from this world far too soon. Make your life a good, long, solid, well-lived one.

Of course, you know that if you don’t come home from this great conflict, I will take in Jolee and raise her as if she were my own daughter. Rest assured of that, my friend. But that sweet child deserves her father.

And I would hate to lose my dearest friend.

Yours in sorrow, Dot

But this summer, Florida was having a drought. Day after day after day, it didn’t rain. And it didn’t rain. And lawns dried up, and flowers didn’t bloom. Anyone caught smoking or even so much as lighting a match in a state park was subject to arrest. Barbecuing was outlawed. The entire state felt like one giant tinderbox, ready to go up in flames at any given moment.

But today, finally, it rained the way Gina was used to.

And was she on the beach to see nature’s spectacular show? No, of course she was in her rental car, coming back from the UPS office, when the storm broke, having just shipped the last of the unneeded supplies and equipment back to yacht owner Dennis Mattson’s New York base in Cold Spring Harbor.

This kind of bucket-from-the-sky rain turned nearly every driver in Tampa into either her great-aunt Lucia or her cousin Mario.

Great-aunt Lucia had been four feet eleven
before
her osteoporosis had shaved a few inches from her height. She was ninety-two years old, but she still insisted on driving Great-uncle Alfonse-may-he-rest-in-peace-the-sainted-man’s 1977 Cadillac Cruiseship through the busy streets of East Meadow, Long Island, because even though she might be old, there was nothing wrong with her vision. No, her eyes weren’t her problem. It was the fact that she was so short she had to watch the road
through
the steering wheel. And that was
with
her sitting on the pillow.

So naturally, she drove a touch . . . cautiously.

Cousin Mario, Gina’s father’s fourth youngest brother Arturo’s third son, on the other hand, could burn rubber standing still in the driveway, and did so at every opportunity. He had two speeds, motionless but gunning the engine, and wanting to go faster than the car in front of him. Gina’s father was convinced his nephew had been permanently warped by too many Mario Andretti jokes when he was a child.

Gina suspected it was the fact that Mario took after Great-aunt Lucia’s side of the family when it came to height that had turned him into a motor vehicular madman. Unlike Gina and her pack of hulking brothers, cousin Mario was petite. After he’d failed to bulk up despite joining the local gym and chugging power shakes, he’d turned to cars for his muscle.

But it was a universal truth that the Great-aunt Lucias and the Marios of the world didn’t mix well, and particularly not with the added ingredient of pouring rain.

Today when the skies opened, Gina had a Great-aunt Lucia in front of her in an oceanliner, stopped dead, and a Mario in a pickup truck about three cars back.

The smart thing for a sane driver to do in weather like this was to crawl along the road, windshield wipers flapping and slapping ineffectively, until it was possible to pull off to the right, into a parking lot, to wait until the rain let up. And the wait wouldn’t be long—it rarely rained for more than ten or fifteen minutes at this time of day.

But the Great-aunt Lucia in front of her was clearly overwhelmed.

The Mario behind Gina was sitting on his horn.

The cars in the oncoming lane of traffic were moving slowly and steadily onward. The Great-aunt Lucia inched her
Queen Mary
forward, then spotted the driveway to the Publix superstore on the left and jumped on her brakes. She put on her left blinker, dooming them all to waiting forever because there was no way in hell she was going to get across the slow stream of traffic in
this
lifetime, and there was no room to pass her on the right without going onto the sidewalk.

The rain was so thick, it almost kept Gina from seeing it happen. But the Mario was in one of those big-wheeled trucks, and his headlights were higher than the other two cars behind her. In her rearview mirror, Gina saw him shift to the right, pulling onto the sidewalk in a classic Mario move.

Just as the Great-aunt Lucia changed her mind and started to pull right instead, into the parking lot for the SwimMart.

Also a classic GAL technique—fake left, go right.

“Oh, shit!” Gina said aloud, because the Mario was clearly fooled by the Lucia’s left blinker, still going furiously. She could see that he was actually picking up speed. She leaned on her horn—but it was too late.

Mario hit his brakes, but his truck still slammed into the oceanliner, skidding into Gina’s rental car as it fishtailed, and pushing her left, directly—oh, my
God
!—into the oncoming traffic.

Metal on metal on metal on metal—how could it sound so awful? Everyone but the Mario had been going so slowly or not moving at all.

Gina’s airbag went off and her seat belt locked down. It was hard to say which was responsible for knocking the air out of her lungs—it all happened so fast.

And then, almost eerily, it was over. There was only the sound of the rain pounding on the roof and the windshield wipers fighting to keep up.

Someone hammered on Gina’s window, startling her. The airbag had already deflated, and she reached for the button that would unlock the car.

The door was yanked open.

“Are you all right?”

Gina stared up at Max Bhagat. He was dressed as Max always dressed, in a dark business suit and a white shirt, but he was soaking wet. Water streamed down his face and his hair was flattened, making him look about as unlike the impeccable, always well-groomed man as humanly possible. But it
was
definitely Max.

Her first thought was that somehow, impossibly, the accident had been worse than she’d imagined and that she’d actually been killed. And that this was heaven.

But very real water dripped off of Max’s dark hair onto her as he leaned into the car. “Are you hurt?” he asked, carefully looking her over from her Jekyll Island T-shirt to her cutoff jeans to her flip-flops and her red toenail polish.

He pushed her hair back from her face and his fingers were warm.

Oh, God, he was really here. He’d finally,
finally
come to find her, to tell her he missed her as much as she missed him, to admit that a twenty-year age difference didn’t mean all that much in the cosmic scheme of things.

It was not the coolest or most collected response, but Gina couldn’t help it. She started to cry.

“Max,” she said, and reached for him.

He was solid and warm and very, very wet. She didn’t give a damn about that or the fact that it was raining in as he half sat on the running board, because his arms were around her, holding her, and, for the first time in years, she actually felt safe.

“Hey,” he said, in his incredibly smooth, velvet-perfect, accent-free voice. She still dreamed of his voice, usually a couple times a week—sometimes more, depending on her stress levels at school or at work.

Max Bhagat had been the chief FBI negotiator when the plane Gina’d taken from Athens to Vienna had been hijacked and rerouted to the terrorist hot spot of Kazbekistan. And she’d been the chief hostage when she’d pretended to be a U.S. Senator’s daughter—a role she’d assumed to keep the other passengers from being killed by the terrorists who’d taken the plane. For four days, Max’s voice over that airliner’s radio had been her constant companion.

“Hey,” he said to her now, “you’ve got to talk to me, Gina. Are you hurt?”

“Not anymore,” she said into his shoulder.

“Did you hit your head?” Max pulled back from her slightly so that she was forced to look up at him. He was checking her pupils, his own dark brown eyes filled with concern.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

Why didn’t he kiss her? She’d been waiting for
years
for this man to kiss her. His arms were still around her and his mouth was right there, right within reach of hers. And Gina, she was done with the waiting. She’d waited far long enough, so she did what she should have done years ago. She kissed
him
.

There was a brief pause and then, “Shit, Roger, where are you? What the hell is going on? I’m supposed to call some Agent Winters lady if you so much as pass gas in my direction.”

Which was one of the things Sam had hoped to find out by calling. “You definitely should call her,” he said. “Soon as we hang up. I don’t want to get you into trouble.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time, Cuz.”

“Trust me, you don’t need trouble on this scale.”

“Yeah, well, Claire’s not too happy with you right now, and when she’s not happy with you, she’s not happy with me. And me getting arrested for aiding and abetting, well . . . Let’s just say if that happened, I’d be very cold and lonely for the rest of my life.”

Sam had to laugh. “Yeah, like she’d ever leave you. She’s loved you since tenth grade.”

“No, I’ve loved
her
since tenth grade,” Noah corrected him. “She was just hot for my body.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious,” Noah said. “I had to work to talk her into marrying me, you know. She didn’t want to do it.”

No way. All this time Sam had thought Noah was just going along for the ride. He’d gotten the girl pregnant, so now this was his life. He’d accepted it graciously, and he
seemed
happy enough, but . . . “I thought it was
her
idea. I thought you were just playing out the hand you were dealt, you know?”

“Not even close. I had to
dance
to make that wedding happen. She was like, How do we know this is real? How do we know we’re not going to meet someone in a year or two or ten that we’re
really
supposed to be with forever?”

“But that’s something no one ever knows,” Sam pointed out. “At some point, you’ve just got to go on faith.”

“Hey, I knew,” Noah told him. “I knew she was the only woman I’d ever want. I was freaking seventeen, and I
knew
.” He laughed softly. “Why do you think Grandpa gave me his blessing? After being so adamant that we
not
get married, that we were too
young
to get married, that it couldn’t possibly last?”

Not get married
. . .? “Uncle Walt told me he gave you permission because you were doing the right thing.”

“Yeah,
fuckhead
, I was doing the right thing because I was crazy in love with the girl! I told Grandpa that I knew if we didn’t get married right then, if she gave in to her parents’ pressure to have an abortion or to give the baby away, that it would be over between us, forever. I knew Claire would never recover from something like that. I knew that she’d break up with me afterward because it would be too hard, you know, being reminded and . . . Jesus, Ringo, I really wanted her to marry me. I told Grandpa I was willing to give up everything I’d ever wanted to be with her. I’d leave school, I’d take a job working for him—the lowest, dirt-eating job—just so I could support Claire and the baby. I’d work my way up, I’d do it all the hard way—GED, night school. Because all those things I thought I’d wanted? They were nothing compared to how badly I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Claire.”

“Holy shit,” Sam said. “I always thought . . .” That Noah’s marriage was a
have to
, not a
want to
.

Noah laughed. “Yeah, well, Grandpa heard what I was saying, and I guess he knew it was the real deal, too. I remember what he said when he changed his mind. He was like, ‘What right do I have to tell you you’re too young, that this relationship can’t possibly work?’ He told me that real love can win over just about any adversity. He said I wouldn’t even be alive right now if he had listened to common sense back when Grandma was trying to talk him into marrying her. The entire world said their relationship couldn’t possibly work—a black man and white woman. No,
that
wouldn’t last. Oh, yeah? Well, how about fifty years?”

“Holy shit,” Sam said. And he’d gone and married Mary Lou, because he’d thought . . .

“Look, man, this conversation isn’t helping you. This FBI agent who talked to me was very intense. They want to find you pretty damn badly. You need to think about turning yourself in. I’ll go with you, if you want. I’ll find you a lawyer, I’ll . . . I don’t know.
Damn.
Just tell me what you need me to do to help you get this mess straightened out.”

“I need to ask you a favor,” Sam said, pulling his head back from thinking about Walt. “A huge favor. You and Claire.”

“Yes,” Noah said. “We’ll do it.”

Sam laughed. “Have you been drinking? Because you can’t possibly know what I’m going to—”

“No, I have not been drinking. I had a beer when I got home, is all, and it’s about Haley,” Noah said. “Right? If you and Mary Lou are both taken into custody, we’ll take care of her. Roger, man, you didn’t even have to ask.”

Sam had to wait several moments before speaking. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “When I thought about them putting her into the foster care system—”

“Shhh,” Noah said. “Don’t go there. Claire and I already love her—we can’t wait to meet her. We’ve already talked about this, about her needing to stay here for a while. But you know, I really hope it’ll only be for a very short visit.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Me, too.” But if not . . . He couldn’t think of anyone better to raise his daughter. “Hey, Nos?”

“Yeah?”

“Fuck you,” Sam said. It was ninth graders’ code for emotions they couldn’t bring themselves to utter aloud.

But they weren’t ninth graders anymore. And Noah always had been the more mature one. “I love you, too, Ringo. Stay safe.”

Those were words Sam had heard so many times. Walter had had no problem at all saying them. In fact, he’d said it nearly every time Roger had left after a visit. “Thanks, Nos. Don’t forget to call the FBI and tell ’em everything we talked about. There are no secrets here.”

“Except where you’re calling from,” Noah pointed out.

“Ah,” Sam said, right before he cut the connection. “But I didn’t tell you that.”