Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Up at Ponte Vedra Beach.”
    “Duh tha me yo s’aying?” I said.
    His clear blue eyes danced. “Say again?”
    I swallowed, which gave me time not to repeat, Does that mean you’re staying?
    “That’s wonderful,” I said instead. “Tell me.”
    I mean, if you want to. You don’t have to. I don’t want to be pushy.
    I all but rolled my eyes at myself. Any time God wanted to intervene would be great. Except that God seldom did when it came to things I could figure out for myself if I weren’t such a basket case.
    “It doesn’t look like much now,” Kade said. “Matter of fact the bank wouldn’t finance it so I had to get a loan from my father.”
    “Great—”
    “My real father. Not my biological father.”
    I put the fork down. “You don’t have to make that distinction with me, Kade. We don’t ever even have to discuss Troy. For any reason.”
    “Good luck with that.”
    Kade abandoned his still half-full plate to the arm of one of the Adirondack chairs and perched on the edge of the porch railing, hands jammed into his pockets.
    “He’s part of the reason I’m staying,” he said.
    Early-evening shadows fell across his face and across my heart. So this had nothing to do with us having a relationship.
    “I won’t just sit around and watch him get away with what he did.”
    “You haven’t exactly been sitting around,” I said. “What about all those editorials in the paper?”
    “What about all those rebuttals? My dad’s piece in Fortune didn’t even faze anybody.” Kade looked at me, face struggling. “The DA can let him off. Everybody else can just go back to business as usual with him, but I can’t. I don’t see how you can either.”
    “All I can do is work at what I’m given to do, and I’m not getting that taking down Troy Irwin is it.”
    “How do you know this isn’t what I’m given to do?”
    “Because God doesn’t give anybody revenge as a job. Justice, yes, but—”
    “Justice. Are you serious? Justice went down the tubes when nobody forced Irwin to give a DNA sample—even though we had an eyewitness. Hey, maybe I should become a prosecutor.” Sarcasm laced his voice. “Oh, wait, I can’t do that here. I’m not a good ol’ boy.”
    I smeared my palms, now oozing sweat, across my thighs. This would be a good time to measure out the words with a teaspoon and maybe not alienate him any further.
    “I’m not trying to tell you how to feel about this,” I said. “I would just hate to see you turn into what Troy Irwin is.”
    I could almost see that sentence bristling up the back of his neck. “Because it’s in my genes?”
    “It’s not in your soul. That’s all I know.”
    I bit at my lip. If he said I knew nothing about his soul I might have to rip my own larynx out.
    “It’s not just about me,” he said finally. “What about Ophelia? Don’t you want her to have closure?”
    “That would be great. But even without it, what we really want is for her to heal, and she’s doing that—”
    “And how about the damage he’s done to West King Street?”
    “At this point I think he’s done all the harm he’s going to do down there. His investors have all pulled out.”
    “And made it worse than it was before he got his hands on it. That tattoo parlor he shut down has about six guys living in it now. The only two things left going are C.A.R.S. and that one bar.”
    “So we fix it. One person at a time.” I could hear my voice going thin, and with it my hope that this conversation could end well.
    “What makes you think Irwin will let us?” Kade said. “As long as he’s CEO of Chamberlain Enterprises and owns the majority of the stock, he can obviously still take apart everything we try to do.”
    “How do you know he hasn’t given up fighting us?” I said. “He’s obviously got the whole police department in his pocket, except for Nick Kent. But he did confess to us, Kade. He knows that we know.”
    “You don’t really believe that’s