The Miles Between (6 page)

“Do you think he needs milk?”

“You'd have to ask Aidan, the Cormo authority, that one. But he seems to be quite happy with the grass. He's young, but he's not a baby.”

A baby.
At least give the baby a kiss, Destiny
.

But I couldn't and didn't. He wouldn't be a baby anymore, either. My brother's in Langdon too. The one they kept with them.

“Des?”

I startle. “Oh. Did you say something?”

“Welcome back. I just asked what you think is taking them so long.”

“At least a hundred things,” I answer, “and they probably all have to do with Mira. You know how she is.”

“Let's get them.”

We get out of the car, leaving Lucky curled up on the seat counting sheep. Or does he count people? I peek through the café window and see that it's packed. We step inside and look for Aidan and Mira.

“You think Lucky will be okay out in the car?” Seth asks.

“I don't think Belle is going to run down the street and eat him, if that's what you mean.”

We spot Mira down a hallway standing between two doors marked with restroom signs. She waves wildly when she sees us, and we make our way around crowded tables. A few of the patrons turn and look at us. Our school uniforms make us look like preppy security guards. “We need to lose these clothes,” I whisper to Seth.

“You're Miss Got Bucks. Let's go shopping.”

Mira jiggles like she has ants in her pants and waves us close.

“The restroom's right there,” Seth tells her. “Why don't you use it?”

“I don't have to go!” she whispers, and points to the men's room. “Aidan's in
there
.”

Is Mira finally showing her true neuroses? She lets out a frustrated breath of air. “He's in there with the president! Didn't you hear?”

“What president?” I ask.

“
The
president!”

Seth laughs and leans back against the opposite wall. “You mean as in commander-in-chief president?”

“As in president of the United States?” I ask. “Oh, sure.”

“Yes! And his Secret Service agents too!”

“She's lost it,” Seth says, putting his arm out to open the restroom door.

“I have not!” Mira insists, grabbing his arm and stopping him. “We found out this is one of the routes he takes on his way to his presidential retreat. He adores the blueberry bread pudding here, so he makes this a pee stop. When blueberries are in season, that is.”

The restroom door opens and two men step out, both wearing dark glasses, dark suits, and dark expressions. I hear Seth draw a deep breath. They certainly look like Secret Service.

The door opens again. Aidan steps out, a tight-lipped grin smeared across his face. He leans in close to the equally tight-lipped men and whispers, “He told me to tell you he had some other business to take care of. He might be a while.”

“Thanks, son,” one of them replies. “It was a pleasure to hear your thoughts.”

Aidan nods. “Any time.” He swaggers past us and makes his way out the front door. We follow after him like a three-car train, maneuvering around tables, Mira as the caboose, pushing on my back and stepping on my heels. As soon as we burst through the door, Aidan's tight lips disappear and he jumps into the air hooting.
“I peed next to the president of the United States! Side by side! He asked me a question!”

Mira's and Seth's questions tumble over each other, leaving no room for Aidan to answer.

“How could you pee?”

“What did he ask you?”

“What's he like?”

“Were you nervous?”

“What did you say?”

Aidan's eyes are wide as he speaks, his voice free of its usual reserve as he recounts his moment of glory. “I had no choice. I had to pee. I think the Secret Service guys saw it in my eyes and didn't want an incident that would make the evening news. They let me right on through. It wasn't until I unzipped that I realized who I was next to. He said he was on his vacation, and I remembered he'd been criticized for taking time off and that's when I told him my theory.”

“Your theory?”

“Remember? I mentioned it this morning before I was cut off.” He shoots me a stiff look. “That vacation time should be mandatory. Six weeks minimum.”

“How did he respond to that?” Seth asks.

“He nodded. And then he said, Hm. Just like that. Hm. Seemed like he was really thinking it over. And then he asked me my name. He zipped up, shook my hand, and said, Thank you, Aidan.”

Mira grimaces. “Without washing first?”

“Yes. Washing,
then shaking
,” Aidan clarifies. “He acted like what I had to say was really important. He listened. He
really
listened. To me. It wasn't just lip service, like I get at school. What I said mattered—at least to him it did.”

Seth and Mira are exuberant, asking more questions, Mira giving him a spontaneous hug and then blushing crimson when she realizes what she has done. Aidan turns the attention to me.

“You haven't said anything, Des. What do you think?”

I don't want to spoil his moment, and I know Aidan doesn't like to think of such things, but since he asked, I must tell him. “I was just thinking, what are the chances?”

 

 

 

C
HANCE WEAVES THROUGH OUR LIVES
. For some it is made of a golden thread. Will and Caroline Faraday had seemed destined for happiness. That is what Aunt Edie had told me. Many times. It was like a story she read from a book over and over again. She wanted me to understand and know my parents. To understand her only sister.

They married young, “without two nickels to rub together,” as Aunt Edie put it. But they had endless amounts of hope for the future. Will was a pilot, and Caroline was good with numbers, and they began a courier business with a rented plane and an office on the kitchen table of their apartment. They took any and every job they could, and soon they owned the plane, plus two more. From then on, it seemed like everything they
touched turned to gold. Within a few years their small courier service had grown into a national, then international shipping business. They ventured out into other businesses, which also prospered. Their company entered the ranks of the Fortune 500 by the time they were both twenty-eight years old. Through it all, they remained best friends and wildly in love. But for all their happiness, they knew they were missing something. They wanted a family. Will was an only child and had always dreamed of a houseful of children. Aunt Edie was much older than her sister, so Caroline grew up as an only child as well and longed for a large family. “When you were born, their happiness seemed complete. The world revolved only around you, Destiny.”

I remember those years. I remember them well. Seven years. They are all I have. Because, as Aunt Edie puts it, “It wasn't until your mother became pregnant with Gavin that things began to unravel. One thing just seemed to lead to another.”

It was usually about this point in her story that she would begin wiping at her eyes and telling me how sorry she was for everything I had been through. And it was always then that I would ask for one more chance. One more chance to be a good girl. One more chance to make
them love me enough to keep me with them—the way they kept Gavin.

I only brought it up for a few visits because it just made Aunt Edie cry more. After that I would remain silent while she talked, and I would think about chance and the order of it, rather than the randomness, and wonder why some chances stacked up to make everything right, and some stacked up to make everything wrong.

 

 

 

W
E FINALLY LEAVE
the hilly lane to Drivby behind us, and Seth presses the pedal to the floor to gain some distance on the road. I am well aware that I have only eight miles left to my designated nineteen before I must hand the floor over to Aidan, and I still have a few more things to say. Especially now.

He and Mira are chattering in the back seat. I turn and join their chatter. “Isn't it odd, Aidan, how you just mentioned being president this morning?”

His smile dims. “Yes, I thought of it too.”

“I forgot about that,” Seth says. “Very weird.”

Aidan frowns. “Just say it, Des. Get it out of your system, and let's move on.”

Mira says it for me, though much more enthusiastically than I ever could. “That's a freakish coincidence!”

I smile. Some things come so easy. “Nothing much to add,” I say.

“But you will,” Aidan replies.

When he's right, he's right. “I guess you're just one of those one-in-a-million people who gets an audience with the president and gets to speak his mind on exactly the subject that he had just been raving about.”

“I wasn't raving.”

“Debatable. But since we're on the subject of presidents and coincidences anyway—do you know about the ones with Kennedy and Lincoln?”

Aidan sighs.

“I want to hear,” Seth says, eyeing Aidan in the rearview mirror.

“They were both assassinated,” Mira offers.

“Yes, Mira. But there's more. In 1846 Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress and in 1946, exactly one hundred years later, so was Kennedy! Then in 1860 Lincoln was elected president and a hundred years later in 1960, Kennedy was too.”

Seth and Mira both inhale on cue. Aidan says, “Interesting.”

“That's just the beginning,” I say. “Both were succeeded to office by Southerners named Johnson, and both of
those Johnsons were born exactly one hundred years apart.”

More gasps and amazement. “Lincoln died on a Friday and so did—”

“Kennedy?” Mira says in disbelief.

“That's right. More?”

Seth and Mira offer a loud, “Yes!” Aidan nods.

“Lincoln was shot while sitting next to his wife in a theater built by John Ford, and Kennedy was shot while sitting next to his wife in a car built by Henry Ford. Oh! And the type of car Kennedy rode in was a Lincoln!”

“Okay! Okay!” Aidan says. “Lots of strange similarities! It's hard to explain.”

“Thank you, Aidan.” I turn back around in my seat. “That's all I wanted to hear.”

“Hard, but not impossible,” he adds. “Coincidences happen all the time. And there's the Law of Truly Large Numbers. Ever hear of that?”

I should have known that Aidan, of all people, would bring that up. “I've heard.”

“I haven't,” Mira says.

Aidan clears his throat. “Given enough time and a large enough sample, any outrageous thing is likely to happen. The odds are actually in favor of it. That's the theory.”

“There were only a hundred years and nineteen presidents from Lincoln to Kennedy,” I say. “That seems like a pretty small sample to me.”

“But overall, throughout all of time—”

“Right. I know. Give a million monkeys . . .”

“Give them what?” Mira asks.

I rub my temples. “Give them five minutes with Aidan and they'll all have migraines.”

“I don't know if Aidan getting to pee next to the president was completely random or if some force was at work, but either way, I'm glad it turned out the way it did,” Seth says. “He told the president something important.”

Mira leans forward so she is nearly speaking right into my ear. “And we're all just once removed from Aidan's claim to fame. That kind of makes us important too.”

The momentum. It is there again, in their voices, and I am suddenly ashamed that I didn't just let Aidan have his moment of glory without having to hammer my point home with him. Everyone deserves a day. One day. Seth is right. For Aidan it doesn't matter how or why it happened, only that it did. A kindergarten rebel redeemed. I relinquish the remainder of my nineteen miles. “It was important, Aidan. And also right that you were there to talk to him. However it happened.”

He is silent for a moment and then says thanks in a voice that is soft and humble and doesn't sound like Aidan at all. And then, almost to himself, he adds, “Interesting, though, that the number nineteen came up again. Nineteen presidents from Lincoln to Kennedy. Yes. Interesting.”

I settle back into my seat, silent. I hadn't even thought of that.

 

 

 

A
S WE TRAVEL NORTH
, the hills even out and the vistas become more expansive. Mira becomes our spotter and points to the groves that are on fire with the golds, reds, and burgundies of autumn. We can see them easily without her help, but her enthusiasm sparks our own, and I find myself looking forward to her outbursts.

Lucky sleeps on the seat between Seth and me. He has finished the grass Seth brought along and taken a chunk out of the middle of the seat as well. I see Seth wince when he notices the hole and exposed foam and then his furtive glance at me to see if I noticed. I cannot feign horror as I should because it is only a car, and not even mine, so when I only shrug, I imagine that Seth chalks it up to my much-rumored miswired brain. Small actions can carry large interpretations.

We make good time, and I estimate we are only another half hour from Langdon. By now we have all missed two classes at Hedgebrook. Four absentee slips have arrived at the dean's office. The infirmary has been checked, as well as our rooms. As a last measure, they are probably sweeping through the library, the dining hall, and behind the old carriage house, where occasional subversives carry on their expellable activities in the old livestock pen. Four missing students may even be cause to call the constable, but Mrs. Wicket will hold off on that as long as possible. She is not one to overreact, though the headmaster is. He is quick to remind all transgressors that there is a long waiting list to get into Hedgebrook and our spots can be filled at a moment's notice. It is comforting to know we are so easily replaceable when so many things are not.