Healing Stones

by Nancy Rue

  “Definitely.”

  He was sure she didn’t realize she was now sitting up in the chair as if she were in the presence of something she could count on.

  “He believed that God our Creator loves us, passionately, and that our hope in this world and the next is to have a deep relationship with Him—which goes beyond doing what God says in the Law. We’re allowed to have doubts and fears and unbeliefs and take those to Him. Daddy always said the Old Testament was the story of God’s relationship with His people—and that if we read it as our own individual thing with God—all the promising to stay close and the straying away and the coming back cowed but ready to be stronger—he said that was how the Bible should work for us.”

  “And that’s what you believe.”

  “I do.” She looked down for the first time since she’d arrived. “You wouldn’t know it from the way I’ve behaved, but I do believe that.”

  Sully let her be for a moment. Then he said, “Where was Daddy on the New Testament?”

  She took in a breath, as if she’d been forgetting to inhale. “He loved it. Loved Jesus connecting with people. Loved to talk about forgiveness.”

  Sully waited for her to make a connection. She didn’t.

  “Would you go to your father with this if he were still alive?” he asked.

  She jerked to attention. “You mean, tell him about my affair?”

  “Yeah.”

  She put a hand over her mouth. Sully watched panic shoot through her eyes.

  “I can’t even imagine it,” she said through her fingers. “He would be so disappointed.” She tightened her hand until her knuckles drained of color. “Why did you even ask me that? Now all I can think about is him out there in the everlasting, knowing all this hideous stuff about me.”

  “But not forgiving you?” Sully said.

  Demi stopped. Her mouth worked, but no words came.

  Ding-ding, Sully thought softly. Hold it in your mind, Demi. Let it speak to you.

  Let it shed Light.

  When she still didn’t say anything, Sully ventured into his next tender step.

  “That’s a lot to think about right now,” he said. “Especially when you can’t know how he would respond adult to adult.”

  He saw her swallow hard.

  “I don’t know what to do with it,” she said. “I don’t know what to do with any of it.”

  “Let’s sit with that for a minute,” Sully said. “I want to ask you a few questions—these are easy ones.”

  She surprised him with an attempt at a smile. “The thousand dollar questions,” she said, “as opposed to the million dollar ones.”

  Sully smiled with her and leaned on his knees. “What are you doing to take care of yourself?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you eating, getting rest?”

  She nodded and pointed to her shirt, the same Daily Bread top she’d worn to their previous session. “My new employers are feeding me—they’re my landlords too. And they’re my shoulders to cry on.”

  There was a relief. That accounted for her still putting one foot in front of the other.

  “Anything else?” Sully said. “What do you do when you’re not working and hanging out with them?”

  “I’m trying to get my family back,” she said, a little fiercely.

  “By doing what?”

  She bunched up her lips.

  “You’re going to think this is crazy,” she said.

  “Crazy is my business.”

  “I go to the Victorian Teahouse and I sit in the window and write letters to my family. Sometimes I write them at work when I have a break—but mostly I go to the tearoom.”

  “Do you get any response?”

  She actually laughed. “No. This is the insane part—I don’t actually send them. I just say what I wish I could say to them.”

  Sully could no longer hold himself back. “Ding—ding-ding-ding-ding!” he said.

  “Why did I know you couldn’t get through this whole thing without doing that?”

  “I love it! Do you know psychologists go to school for years to learn to suggest letter writing to patients? Girl, you have instincts for healing.”

  “Then why aren’t I getting any better?” she said, again, with fist-clenching fierceness. “Why isn’t my situation changing?”

  “Maybe you are getting better, but you don’t feel it yet. That happens— or maybe you’re writing to the wrong people.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t get it.”

  “Maybe this is who you need to be writing to right now.” He pointed to the pixie-haired child in the picture. “Write a letter to little Demi—tell her whatever you want to tell her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s the only one who goes far enough back with you to help you see how you got here. By the way . . .” He tapped the picture playfully. “Have you asked her what she believed about herself?”

  “No,” Demi said. “I had a hard time justifying a conversation with a snapshot when my husband has just hired a lawyer.”

  “Priorities.”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  Sully steepled his fingers under his nose. “You have two things going on here. You have to deal with the current, concrete situation— and yet in order to do that, you have to also devote some time to figuring yourself out. Where are you with God right now?”

  She looked at him as if he’d just brought in the Rockettes.

  “Are you talking to God?” Sully said. “Hiding? Shaking your fist?”

  “None of the above.” Once again, the eyes went to the lap. “As much as I’ve taught and written about God loving us and wanting a relationship with us—I can’t face Him right now. I know it’s ridiculous— but I see Him standing there in line with everybody else, ready to throw a rock.”

  She looked straight at Sully, as if she were defying him to contradict her. Sully looked straight back.

  “I can completely see why you’d feel that way,” he said. “Just because you ask for God’s forgiveness—or at least dump on Him— doesn’t mean you’re instantly going to feel better. Especially with everybody else gathering stones.”

  She tightened. Sully thought she went a bit pale.

  “Rich is doing more than gathering stones,” she said. “Or maybe a lawyer is one of them.”

  “A weapon to punish you.”

  Again the panic went through her eyes, and Sully felt a need to center her before she grabbed onto her own anxiety and let it haul her off.

  “This work we’re doing here,” he said, “isn’t theoretical stuff to explain you to yourself. Understanding is going to be so much a part of your dealing with the things you can’t control.” He softened his voice. “Like Rich consulting an attorney.”

  “If I could only do something.” She jerked her chin toward the picture Sully still had in his lap. “Besides write a letter to someone I used to be.”

  “Then do this first.” Sully disengaged from the chair and picked up the river rock from his desk. “Make a list of every person who seems to have one of these in his or her hand ready to throw it at you. Include people who aren’t even around anymore.”

  “Like my father.”

  “Or your mother. We haven’t even gotten to her yet.”

  “Uh, nor do we want to,” Demi said.

  Sully tried not to relish too much the thought of turning to the plastic lady in the photo.

  “Try making the list,” he said. “Even if it makes you cry, ticks you off, makes you want to ball the thing up and flush it down the toilet— do it.”

  “Okay, but tell me . . .” She pulled both hands straight back through her hair. “Give me a hint how this is going to help me.”

  “It’s going to help you see exactly what you’re dealing with,” Sully said. “If you’re going to win this—”

  “Here we go.”

  “You have to know your opponents. This is going to help you focus. Trust me.”

 
That trust me was an automatic addition, but he could see her reaching out to grab it and examine it.

  “I can’t even trust myself,” she said. “How can I trust you?”

  “Start with trusting God. Go through the motions if you have to. Tell Him you’re making the list for Him—you’re tattling about all the people who aren’t doing what He said we should do.”

  “You are a bizarre individual, do you know that?” she said.

  “I’ve been told that. But bizarre or not, I’m telling you the truth you have to be patient with yourself in this work.”

  “Do I have time to be patient?” she said.

  He let a grin spread across his face, and he watched her roll her eyes.

  “Okay,” she said. “Go with the game show thing. You’ve been holding back this whole time, I can tell.”

  “Truth or Consequences,” he said. “Remember that one? If you don’t tell the truth, you get the consequences right away, right?”

  “Right.” She winced. “I got that part.”

  “But when you don’t know the truth, you have to wait for the consequences—and those consequences aren’t necessarily bad.”

  “I’m looking for the truth,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “The truth I didn’t have before.”

  Even before he said it she spun her hand in the air.

  “Ding-ding-ding—”

  “Ding-ding,” she said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  One for Rich Costanas,” Sully said. “One for Christopher Costanas. One for Jayne. One for Kevin—”

  Sully dropped the last stone into the burlap sack with the others and shook his head. Why couldn’t he ever get that guy’s name straight? St. Bernard was all he could ever think of—which at least made Ethan laugh, a rare thing these days.

  And why should he laugh? St. Clair, that was his name, was making noises about asking the board for his resignation. Students were protesting in front of Huntington Hall—BACK TO THE BIBLE, their signs said. Where was it they thought Ethan Kaye had been—hell itself?

  They were like predators, those people at the college—only their manipulations were so subtle, half the town was on their side and they didn’t even know what line they’d crossed to get there. It was time to draw them out—Estes and St. Clair and the rest. Which, Sully thought as he reached into the bag of rocks and pulled out a small clam shovel, was why he’d chosen this spot. It didn’t matter where he collected rocks for his next session with Demi, or that he was digging for geoduck when the tide wasn’t at its lowest, as long as he was in front of the home of Kevin St. Sanctimonious.

  Sully leaned on the shovel and looked down Hood Canal. He liked this part of Puget Sound, so much that it was a shame it was polluted with the likes of Ethan’s nemesis. An inland fjord, the saltwater canal wound up the Olympic Peninsula like a playful necklace of funky little towns with names like Lilliwaup and Duckabush and Dosewallips. Houses teetered playfully on the edge of the shoreline, cozying up to the water at high tide, overlooking mucky flats at low.

  The tide was almost low now, which meant a few people were out digging clams and picking the oysters they’d earlier “planted” in bales of oyster seeds and put in the water.

  “Kevin didn’t do his research when he bought that house,” Ethan had told Sully. “He was so into the square footage and the granite countertops, I don’t think he stopped to think about the fact that his view was going to be a mud flat half the time.”

  Personally, Sully loved the mud. It was April luscious, squishing noisily under his rubber boots. He loved the geoduck thing. Spotting a squirt arching over the sand—running to find it before it stopped to bury itself and you lost your place—peering down to see the ring of the neck playing hide-and-seek. It was play Sully couldn’t resist. And with any luck, it would draw out the vulture.

  Sully pretended to sight a telltale squirt, loped to it, and dug. He’d learned from the slow talking, practically barnacle-covered old guy at the Hana Hana Seafood Company that sometimes you had to dig a three-foot hole to get to the overgrown clamlike animal that lived half out of its shell.

  Ethan had assured him that the longer and deeper he dug, right in front of Kevin’s place, the more likely Kevin would come out with his hackles up. Especially on a Tuesday afternoon—St. Clair’s day to work at home. Ethan predicted he’d be sitting in his turret at his computer, surveying his domain. And that he wouldn’t be happy to see Sully digging holes in “his” beach.

  Sully whistled and dug for the geoduck that wasn’t, tossing shovelfuls of wet pebble-sand in chaotic fashion.

  “I give it thirty minutes max before he’s out there,” Ethan had predicted.

  He was over by fifteen.

  Sully pretended not to be aware of the loose-limbed figure clad in khakis and a Mr. Rogers sweater until he was almost on top of him saying, “Excuse me.”

  Kevin scowled through baggy-lidded eyes. Sully had the vague thought that this man had lost all muscle tone, and yet he was only in his midforties.

  “Gorgeous afternoon, isn’t it?” Sully said. “Ya’ll don’t much get weather like this up here in April, do you?” He grinned sloppily, by design. “’Course it is only April first.”

  “You’re aware that you’re digging right in front of my home?” Kevin said.

  “That your place?” Sully shaded his eyes unnecessarily with the shovel, dripping mud near the toes of Kevin’s loafers. Who wore loafers to walk on a mud flat?

  “It is.” Kevin stepped back. “Now, this is not a private beach.”

  “Naw, I didn’t think so. Pretty hard to own a beach, isn’t it?” Sully waved the shovel toward the bundles of oyster seeds, once again sending the mud into flight. “I bet you’d like to, though. I imagine you could make yourself a nice load of cash selling oysters and clams. Not to mention these babies.” Sully peered down into the empty hole. “I love me some geoduck, sautéed in olive oil with some of those—what do you call ’em?—croutons?”

  “Look.” Kevin ran his hand over his thinning hair without touching it, disturbing not a strand. “Like I say, this isn’t a private beach, but I have a photographer coming over here this afternoon to take pictures of the place.”

  A photographer. No way it was going to be this easy. Sully had to scramble to keep from diving right at it.

  “You’re not selling?”

  Kevin shook his head impatiently. “No, of course not. Local magazine wants to do a piece on it.”

  “Now isn’t that great,” Sully said. He tried not to exaggerate his grin, but this was too much fun.

  “It will be great,” Kevin said, “if it’s not all dug up.” His mouth seemed to grow larger with the scowl, which Sully watched with fascination. “I’m just asking you to move on down the beach—if you don’t mind.”

  “Don’t mind at all.” Sully stuffed his shovel into the sack with the stones, making a point of jostling the bag so the rocks would create a clatter. “You sure got a nice place.”

  “Thank you,” Kevin said coldly, and scowled at the bag, ear cocked to the sound.

  He obviously wanted to know what else was in there. Sully almost chuckled.

  “Can I ask what you do for a living to afford digs like that?” He waited for Kevin to tell him it was none of his business, but the man’s chest rose beneath his crossed arms.

  “I’m a Christian college administrator,” he said.

  Sully whistled. Though Kevin smirked at him, he went on.

  “I’m a missionary, actually.”

  “I thought missionaries lived in hovels.”

  “I’m blessed. The kind of mission work I do pays well—though I try to give back.”

  “Oh, sure,” Sully said. “Ten percent probably.”

  “Are you a Christian?” Kevin asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  Kevin peered at him closely, drawing his eyes into a squint that strained the bags beneath them.

  “Nice to meet a fellow beli
ever. You are a believer, right? You’re more than a ‘cultural Christian’?”

  Holy crow.

  “Yes, sir,” Sully forced himself to say. “So—what’s your mission?”

  “You know anything about Covenant Christian College?”

  “I’m new here.”

  “You’ll find out more if you read the papers.” Kevin shook his head with studied rue. “It could be one of the finest faith-based institutions of learning in the country—and it will be if I have my way.”

  “What’s stopping it?” Sully said.

  “Liberals.”

  “Now, when you say liberals,” Sully said, “you mean—”

  “Liberals believe everything’s okay, as long as it’s right for you,” Kevin said. “There are no absolute truths—they use the Bible to pick and choose what they want to believe, and they live by that, instead of by the one clear truth that Jesus Christ is the only Son of God, and that the only way to eternal life is through a steadfast, unwavering belief in Him.”

  “You have people at the college who think anything goes?” Sully said. He didn’t have to work hard to sound incredulous.

  To his surprise, Kevin edged toward him as if he were about to impart another absolute truth. Sully smelled fabric softener on his sweater.

  “You would be surprised how they disguise it,” he said. “They say they’re all about letting the students explore their doubts.” He grunted. “They would let them explore their way right into hell if it were left to them.”

  “Them meaning the current administration,” Sully said.

  Kevin nodded soberly and blinked his eyes against the wind that was picking up on the canal. It struck Sully that Kevin St. Clair clearly felt angst over this. He was hurting for his faith, for those who would water it down.

  But there was fear in the man’s eyes as well. Blinding fear.

  “We’ll get them, though.” Kevin looked at Sully as if he were seeing him differently. “Sorry if I was abrupt with you earlier. I want these pictures to draw people into the article, because in my interview for it, I was able to express some of these same things. I want people to know what’s happening. That’s the way I’ve saved four other colleges.”

  Again Sully didn’t have to pretend to be surprised.