The Between Read Free Page A

help Danitra move out of the rehab center before he could listen to Dede practice her speech as he’d promised that afternoon. Now he’d missed the real thing too.
    “Uh-oh,” he said. Uh-oh was an understatement. “I bet it was good, though.”
    “Of course it was. She got a standing ovation.” Hilton gazed intently at the group posing for pictures, and Dede suddenly shifted her head and saw him. Not daring a smile, Hilton raised his hand to greet her. Dede’s face remained unchanged, unreadable. I’m sorry, he mouthed to her. Her eyes returned to the camera, and she managed an insincere smile for the picture. With her mother on vacation in the Bahamas, Hilton remembered, he would have been especially missed today. Hilton knew he was most certainly, without a doubt, in big trouble.
    “I’ve got an idea,” Kaya said, close to his ear. “Say your car broke down. She’ll believe that. It’s always broken.” “Thanks a lot. I’m glad we raised you to be honest.” “You’d better have some excuse, Dad. She wanted you here.” Sorry, dear, Hilton rehearsed in his mind ruefully, I would have been here for your shining moment, but I was getting a hard-on for one of my junkie clients.
    Once Dede joined them, Hilton won a reprieve from her solemn dark eyes in the stream of well-wishers who wanted to shake her hand, who remembered her from when she was only so tall, who’d contributed to her campaign and were so happy to finally see a sister in there. In these situations, Hilton envied Dede for her liquid smile and easy enthusiasm. She lost herself in the warmth of other people in a way he could not, grasping their shoulders, hugging them, taking telephone numbers with relish.
    Dede maintained her gracious dignity while allowing an infectious playfulness to peek through. She had a peal of laughter he could usually hear from across the room. Maybe that was the African in her; Dede’s mother was Ghanaian and equally effusive. Dede’s nature spilled into her campaign, a clean race that found her victorious, despite their bare-bones finances, over an older white man with a recognized name. By the end, Kaya and Jamil were scrawling campaign signs with colored markers.
    Hilton held Dede’s hand while she spoke to one person after another, brushing her knuckle gently with his thumb; this was half an involuntary impulse to remind her admirers that he’d had the good sense to choose her, half a silent apology. A black Metro-Dade police officer they’d both known for years, dressed smartly in his brown-and-beige uniform, kissed Dede’s cheek, then gave Hilton a soul shake. Curtis was a vice sergeant who often steered homeless addicts to Hilton’s Miami New Day center with his finesse for ignoring county paperwork. He’d brought Danitra after finding her asleep with a needle in one arm and her baby in the other, beneath the Interstate 95 overpass.
    “Watch it, Hil, or I’m ’a take this lady right from under your nose. You know how they like the uniform, right?”
    “Look here, you can try,” Hilton said.
    “Curtis, you’d better go get a plate of food and stop being foolish,” Dede dismissed him.
    Curt pursed his lips grimly beneath his moustache. He leaned closer to Dede, his voice free of mirth. “You let me know if you change your mind and decide to file a report on that thing. I’ll make sure it gets looked after.”
    “Hold up. What thing?” Hilton asked.
    Dede blinked rapidly and squeezed Hilton’s fingers hard. She was looking toward Kaya and Jamil, whose heads were bent hungrily over their food. “Not now,” she said. “I’ll let you know, Curt.”
    As an afterthought, Curtis pointed to Hilton. “How’s that girl with the baby doing? Danitra?”
    “She’s great. In fact, that’s where I was today, man. I got held up moving her into The Terraces.”
    Hilton was so distracted by his concern over the secret Curtis and Dede shared, wondering what would be so pressing that she would consider