CHAPTER 28
1069 Words
CHAPTER 28
It was nearly dinnertime before Detective Drisklay was done grilling Kennedy and the Lindgrens. Nick excused himself shortly after the interview started, but Sandy made him promise to take Kennedy home for the evening when everything was done. Sometimes Sandy’s sense of protectiveness was smothering, but tonight Kennedy was glad to stay far away from the subway stations.
“So I guess you’re not gonna make the flight to your aunt’s, huh?” Nick asked as they pulled out of the Providence parking garage that evening.
“No. The detective said I shouldn’t go anywhere for a few weeks. There’s gonna be tons of questions. Legal stuff. I guess I’m supposed to talk with someone from the district attorney’s office tomorrow.” She sighed. Being the victim of a high-profile crime was about as time-consuming as her pre-med studies.
“You hungry?”
Kennedy looked at the clock and tried to remember what she had eaten that day. Just a cold sandwich and fruit salad from the hospital cafeteria. “A little.”
“Yeah? ’Cause if you are, I could take you out.” Nick’s dreadlocks whipped across his face as he turned to look at her and then straightened out to focus again on the road. “I mean, not out out, just, you know. Food.”
Kennedy was exhausted, but she had to eat something before calling it a night. “Food is good.”
Twenty minutes later, they were sitting at a booth in Harvard Square eating soup out of sourdough bread bowls.
“I have to admit, clam chowder is something Boston does way better than New York.”
“Oh, yeah?” Nick wiped his face with his napkin. “Because I was just thinking it doesn’t quite measure up to Seattle’s.”
“Are you from Washington?” Kennedy asked.
“Oregon, actually, but I spent a lot of time up and down the West Coast. That was back in my quasi-homeless, semi-nomadic, living-out-of-my-van days.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Sounds ... interesting.”
He stared past her shoulder. “It was magical.”
Something about hearing an adult with dread-locks down to his waist using words like magical made Kennedy chuckle. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“Guess they don’t have much surfing in China, do they?”
“Not where we were,” she answered.
“Yeah, it’s no good here, either, but I knew that when I moved. Just one of the costs of discipleship, right?”
She couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. “Why did you end up coming out here?”
“Short answer is God got a hold of me. I was always pretty churchy, but that was just one little part of my life, you know? Like, I took math in high school because that’s what my guidance counselor told me I had to do to graduate. It didn’t mean anything to me outside the classroom walls. That’s kinda how church was to me. After college, I sort of burned out on school. My sister, well she had been going through a lot, too. Pretty taxing stuff. So I decided to take a year or two and just see what was real. Got a beat-up van, but it took me down all the way from the Oregon coast to San Diego, then all the way back up to Seattle before I finally came back home.”
He dipped a piece of sourdough into his chowder and went on talking with his mouth full.
“Well, something out there just changed me. The ocean. The waves. I don’t know. God talks to everyone in different ways, right? Sometimes he uses angels, sometimes he uses a donkey. For me, it was the coast. And I knew I wanted to spend my life helping others. Kids like me, kids who were pretty decent people but who didn’t really know Jesus.
“My friend was working at a home for troubled teens out in Vermont. Asked me to join on a Friday. By Sunday after church, I was on the road in my clunker. It got me just over the Rockies before dying. I stuck around there for a couple weeks, volunteered for a few churches, met some great people, and they helped me get fixed up and back on my way.”
Nick took a sip of his veggie juice before continuing. “So I worked at the boys home for a few years, then I met Carl. St. Margaret’s was growing faster than anyone could have guessed, and he needed help with the youth and children’s ministry there, so I settled down and became a Cambridge boy.”
Kennedy was trying to guess Nick’s age when he asked, “What about you?”
The question caught her off guard. “Me what?”
He adjusted one of his dreadlocks that had fallen in front of his eye. “I don’t know. What makes you tick? Why Harvard? Why pre-med?”
Kennedy wasn’t sure where to begin. She fidgeted with a piece of sourdough. “Well, I guess I like helping people. And Harvard had their early-admissions program, so I sort of applied on a whim, and when I got in, well ... It’s one of those offers you don’t really turn down.”
Nick didn’t say anything right away, which gave Kennedy plenty of time to think of how ignorant her answer had sounded.
“I’ve thought a little about medical missions.” Why had she added that part? Did she just want to sound more mature? Was she trying to prove that she was ministry-minded like he was?
“These bread bowls are delicious.”
Kennedy nodded, grateful Nick was changing the subject.
A few minutes later, he scooted back his chair. “Hey, thanks for joining me. That was a lot of fun.” He glanced at the time. “I still have twenty minutes in the parking meter. I could drive you back to Carl and Sandy’s now, or we could go for a little walk.”
There was something endearing and almost awkward in his expression. Was he asking her out? Or was he just being nice? A year ago, even a month ago, she probably would have been flattered. She glanced outside. The night was already dark. The howling of wind echoed in her memory. What was wrong with her? Wasn’t college supposed to be all about living in the moment, being spontaneous, enjoying new people, gaining new experiences? And she didn’t want to spend an extra twenty minutes with Nick because the dark made her nervous?
Or was there more to it than that? Reuben’s face flitted through her mind, the kind expression in his eyes as he looked at her with so much concern.
Nick frowned. “You know what? I forgot how tired you must be. What do you say we just head back to the van and I’ll take you to the Lindgrens’ now. We’re not too far.”
Kennedy tried to sigh away the heaviness in her chest. “No, it’s not that, it’s just ...” She stopped short. “It’s just, I’ve got a friend back on campus, and I really want to call and let them know I’m safe.”
“They’re probably pretty worried, right?” Nick’s voice was gentle. Subdued.
“Yeah.” Kennedy sighed, glad Nick had picked up on her use of the gender-neutral pronoun. “Yeah, if you don’t mind, I think I’m ready to head home.”
- Writer
