better part of an hour before I came to any conclusions or developed a working plan. My cell phone rang continuously and I finally had to turn it off so I could think without interruption. It seemed to me that I’d lost just about everything I’d come to Garden Beach to find. Losing Pete was probably the least of my worries. I’d also lost my partner—the person who was supposed to be watching my back had been flat on hers with my boyfriend. That hurt, but even that wasn’t my biggest loss.
Garden Beach, Florida, was a small town with a small police force. Pete and I couldn’t coexist in the same department. He was the department’s hero, the wonder cop who always got his man, or now, woman. It wouldn’t take long for Pete and Lou Ann to spread the rumor that I was unstable and that they were the two injured parties. They’d tell people about me firing my service weapon at them. My reputation, and worse, my opportunities with the force, would be dead, and even Needle Nose Robanski’s capture wouldn’t salvage that. No, if I was going to remain in law enforcement, I’d have to move on.
At 5:00 a.m., I pulled into the police department parking lot.
“I’ll be right back,” I promised Lloyd, and limped in through the rear entrance. I slowly made my way down the empty corridor to Randy’s closet of an office, stepped inside and closed the door behind me. I reached into my purse for the gun, dropped the magazine out, and left the police-issued Glock sitting empty in his top desk drawer. I grabbed my shield and felt tears stinging my eyelids as I ran my fingers over the gold-and-silver badge one last time. I dropped it into the drawer beside the gun, closed it and walked out of the office before I could change my mind.
I went into the women’s dressing room next, spun the combination to my locker and found the street clothes I’d worn in to work the night before—a pair of denim shorts, flip-flops and a worn T-shirt that said Garden Beach Police Softball League. I changed, slammed the locker shut and left before the first shift people started arriving. My ankle throbbed and I felt like shit. How had I so totally screwed up my life in such a short amount of time?
I spent the next three and a half hours with Lloyd, sitting on the beach, drinking coffee, feeding Lloyd a chicken biscuit I ordered but then couldn’t stomach and saying goodbye to my old life. I was feeling about as sorry for myself as Needle Nose was probably feeling over in the county lockup. Only, maybe Needle Nose was luckier. His future was all behind him. He could count on a trial followed by a thousand-year jail term. I had no idea what was going to happen with me.
At 9:03 a.m., I walked into the credit union and withdrew every last dime from my joint account with Pete. The grand total came to $384.96. I took the money and didn’t look back. What goes around comes around, I thought. Besides, he could always sell the clothes and few personal items I’d left behind, couldn’t he?
“Look at this, Lloyd,” I said when I got back to the car. “That’s all we had to show for ourselves, just under four hundred dollars. Ridiculous, huh?”
Lloyd looked over at me and smiled. His doggy tongue hung out the left side of his mouth, and his soft black-and-white ears drooped across his face, half hiding his eyes.
“I know it’s a small fortune to you. Hey, maybe that’s why your mama didn’t take you with her when she left. Maybe there just wasn’t enough dog-food money to go around, huh?”
I think this hurt Lloyd’s feelings because he sighed softly and turned away from me.
“Lloyd,” I said, trying to make it up to him, “both of us have been in bad spots before. You lost your mom, and I lost both my parents. You’ve probably had your share of bad love affairs and, well, we both know how my love life is going. But we can’t focus on the negative. We’ve got to be positive. Things are bound to look up.”
Lloyd didn’t seem too encouraged by this line of reasoning. He moaned, keeping his attention focused on the passing scenery.
“What I’m trying to say is, we’re survivors. We’ll get by.” My pep talk was starting to depress me, so I changed strategies. “What we need here is a little T.L.C and a fresh start. You’re going to like it where we’re going.”
I pulled the Camaro up onto A1-A and started to accelerate. Behind us, I could see the sparkling blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the sugary white sands that ran along the panhandle. It had been my oasis from the cold gray north, but no longer. I was leaving and maybe never coming back. I’d run away to Florida so I could find myself, so I could become someone else, someone I liked. What was I left with after six years of re-creating? I looked back at the ocean again. It had all been a mirage, a colorful, warm oasis that vanished when you stretched out your hand to touch it.
“Okay, Lloyd, it’s like Uncle Benny always says, ‘No matter where you go, there you are!’”
Lloyd belched.
“Okay, so he wasn’t the first to say it, he was just repeating it. That doesn’t make it any less true. I’m taking you home. We’ll go see Uncle Benny and Aunt Lucy. We could use a vacation, huh, boy? Maybe after a couple of weeks we’ll figure out where to go from there, all right? At least we left before they fired us. I could still work for another department. Maybe.”
Lloyd barked once and turned to look out the passenger-side window again. No matter where you go, there you are, I thought.
I reached over and switched on the radio. Granted, things were bleak, but that was a good thing, right? I mean, what was left to lose? What more could go wrong?
Ten miles later, Lloyd threw up his salvaged chicken-biscuit breakfast. It took another five miles to find an exit with a gas station and another thirty minutes to clean every crack and crevasse of the front passenger seat. By the time we got back on the road, I’d revised my opinion of our collective future. We were in the dismal swamp of life and sinking like elephants in quicksand. There was no happy ending and there would be no re-creating reality with pink-tinted glasses. Life just plain old sucked.
I turned the radio up and let Sheryl Crowe fill the empty space in my head. I didn’t want to think anymore. My logic was filled with more black holes than outer space, and thinking had become my biggest liability.
Lloyd must’ve agreed with me, because he didn’t say anything for the next 1,100 miles. We drove like participants in an around-the-world scavenger hunt, only stopping for gas and fast food. We slept in snatches at rest areas until at last, after twenty-eight hours on the road, we hit the familiar territory of my old hometown.
Lloyd woke up in time for our big arrival in Glenn Ford, Pennsylvania. He stretched and pulled himself up to stare out the windshield at the gray sky and billboards that advertised local businesses, whining a little and probably wishing I’d pull over and let him pee.
“Honest, Lloyd, it’s only two more miles. We’re about to cruise through midtown Glenn Ford. Look, there’s Banker’s Union. That’s where I had my first savings account!”
Lloyd was very unimpressed. When I turned onto the main drag I started the travelogue in earnest.
“Look, Lloyd, that’s Guinta’s drugstore. I used to stop in there every day on my way home from school and drink a vanilla soda.” Lloyd actually closed his eyes and shook his head softly. “Lloyd, there’s the place where they make the best hoagies! Lloyd! You’re missing small-town America. Come on, look!”
But Lloyd didn’t look and I didn’t have time to say another word. There was a loud explosion somewhere in the front of my car, and driving became difficult as the Camaro suddenly pulled hard to the right. Lloyd barked, and I gripped the wheel and with some effort
