Unexpected Dismounts (36 page)

“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
Ir
win! 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.

“He knocked her out so she’d stop screaming. And then he dumped her off at Allison’s. Told her that was where she belonged.” Kade dropped his head and pushed out a long breath.

“Finish it, Kade,” I said.

“That’s enough, isn’t it?”

“Just finish it.”

Kade closed his eyes. “He said she belonged there with the rest of the whores.”

One last kick in the pelvis. I folded both arms against it and rocked.

“He
told
you all this?” India said to Kade.

“He did.”

“I cannot comprehend why he would tell
anybody,
but surely not the person that was being accused. I hope you recorded that conversation.”

Kade just looked at her miserably.

“Then it’ll just be his word against yours. I don’t understand any of this—I just don’t.”

I stopped rocking. “There’s DNA. Now they’ll have someone to match it to.” I nodded toward India’s hallway. “But they’ll need probable cause to even test him.”

“Oh,” India said. “Honey, Ophelia still swears it’s Kade, which now I …” She stopped and squinted at Kade. “Does he favor Troy to you, Allison? I never saw it, but I could see how
she
might. Or am I just imagining that?” India put her hand to her forehead. “I just can’t even think right now.”

“Miss Angel?”

I turned to the soft Latino voice behind me. Ophelia stood there like a waif. Her dark eyes were bright, almost feverish as she looked at Kade.

“It wasn’t him,” she said. “I thought it was, but it wasn’t.”

She came out from the behind the couch and crossed over to him. When she knelt down in front of him, he pulled himself back, but she brought her face close to his. I watched his knuckles whiten on the arms of the chair. Her hair swished between her shoulder blades as she shook her head.

“I couldn’t see it before. I was afraid to look close enough, but it’s there.”

“What’s there, honey?” India said. She glanced uneasily at me.

“Miss Angel,” Ophelia said. “
That
man didn’t have Miss Angel in
his
eyes.”

Kade’s very skin trembled. He was on an edge I couldn’t let him go over, not right now, or I was going over it with him.

“Okay,” I said. “India, help us.”

“Come here, darlin’,” India said.

Ophelia turned from Kade and went to India’s open arms. “I’m sorry,” she said—again, and yet again. “I’m sorry.”

“It was an honest mistake, honey,” India kept telling her, until I took hold of Ophelia’s chin and tilted it toward me.

“You can fix it,” I said. “India said you were remembering things?”

“
Some
things.”

“Enough that if you saw the man who hurt you, you would know him now?”

She closed her eyes.

“Ophelia.”

“I can see it,” she said.

Her face collapsed, as if she were succumbing to the picture behind her eyes.

“We want to send this man to jail,” I said, “so he never does this to anyone else. If we’re going to do that, we need to take you back to the police.”

Ophelia opened her eyes. The right one was still stained yellow, heightening the hysteria that rose in them.

“I can’t go through that again. Please. They treated me like … like what I was. Only I’m not that now.”

“No you’re not,” India said. “Allison, really?”

Ophelia started to cry. “They didn’t believe me before, Miss Angel. Why will they now?”

“Because,” I said, “we’re going to do things differently this time.”

Ulysses and Stan met us at the police station with Chief, Ulysses claiming he was sick of hauling Chief’s sorry behind all over St. Augustine. Their faces were grim, though, as they left us in the hallway to wait while Chief and Ophelia went into a room to talk to Detective Kylie. Chief insisted on a conference room, not an interrogation room. His client, he said, was the victim, not the suspect.

India wafted up and down the hall a little less frenetically than she had two nights before. Kade and I sat side by side in eggshell silence. It was as if even a thought would crack us.

After twenty minutes, Detective Kylie came for Kade. They were both back out in ten.

“You do realize the can of worms you’re opening here, don’t you?” he said to me.

“It’s not my can,” I said.

“But you’re wielding the opener.” He heaved a man-sigh I couldn’t sympathize with. “I’m going to call Mr. Irwin, and I’m going to ask him to come down here to answer a few questions. But you better prepare yourself for the backlash.” He set his teeth. “This is going to cost me big time.”

“What about what it cost that young woman in there?” I said. “And so help me, if you say it was an occupational hazard—”

“I suggest you take her out for some fresh air, Mr. Capelli,” Kylie said, “before she gets herself in trouble.”

He gave me one more warning look before he yanked open the conference room door and slammed it behind him.

“Allison?” India said.

“It’s okay,” I said, “just wait here for Ophelia, would you? I’ll be out front if you need me.”

Kade followed me through the glass doors to the front steps of the station where we’d shared that magic moment of regurgitation. There wasn’t a trace of déjà vu. I was certain this scene had never taken place before, anyplace, anytime.

I sat on the marble balustrade and pulled my jacket tight across my chest and held it there with my arms tucked into me. The air was warm and close, but I was shivering.

Kade sank with his back to me onto the top step. “Do you want me to talk?” he said. “Or do you want me to shut up?”

“I want you to tell me why you lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie.”

“You just didn’t tell me the truth, which is the kind of distinction your father makes.”

“He is not my father.”

I could almost hear his jaw muscles straining.

“That was nasty,” I said. “I’m sorry. I don’t even know how to
be
right now.… Kade, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I had to find out if I even wanted to know you. I had to find out if you had a really good reason for giving me up.”

“I would have told you if you’d asked me,” I said.

He went very still.

“I would have told you there
is
no good reason for giving up your child, unless you’re completely incapable of taking care of him, and that didn’t apply to me.”

“Then why did you?”

“Because I was young and scared and had no support.”

“He said you didn’t even tell him about me. Was he lying?”

“See, that’s the thing about Troy. He only tells enough of the truth to make himself look good, or at least like the injured one. I told him I was pregnant. He told me to get an abortion.”

Kade jerked around to look at me.

“That has to hurt,” I said. “But if we’re going to make any sense out of this, we have to be honest with each other.” I leaned back on the column. “Your turn.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Why come here now?”

Kade curved over his hands and studied them. “My mom died. My dad barely waited a year before he got married again. Don’t get me wrong, He’s a great guy. He just couldn’t do it alone. And then he was all wrapped up in her and I felt, I don’t know, adrift.”

I knew about adrift.

“So I went to the adoption agency in Boston. I thought it would be a dead end, but you left instructions, I guess, saying it was okay for them to give me your name if I ever asked.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“His name was on the original birth certificate too. I googled both of you and got all this stuff, about him, mostly. There were a couple things on you. Newspaper articles.”

“Showing me in the best possible light, I’m sure,” I said.

“I’d just passed the bar exams. I didn’t know what I was going to do next, so I took out all my savings and came down here.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Since February twentieth. I spent the first week checking him out. Pretended I was interested in investing so I could talk to his people. Hung out at the 95 Cordova. He eats lunch there about three times a week, cocktails after hours. So yeah, took me, like, two days to get him nailed.”

“And then you checked me out by going to a prostitute to get my résumé. The part about wanting to help the same kind of people I do was a nice cover.” I pulled away from the column and tilted toward him. “How do I even know
this
explanation is the complete truth?”

“You don’t, okay? So why am I even bothering?”

“Because you owe me at least that much,” I said.