Healing Stones

by Nancy Rue

“He’s reacting—that’s all I can say without seeing him.”

  Demi made a hissing noise that didn’t fit her. “Like that’s going to happen.”

  “We’d make a lot more progress. You could pray about asking him.”

  She jammed her hair behind her ears. “I’m still having a lot of trouble going to God. I told Audrey—I’ve told you about her—”

  Sully nodded.

  “I told her to throw herself at God’s feet and ask for forgiveness.” She looked wryly at Sully. “But can I do that?”

  “What makes you any different from anybody else who’s separated from God?”

  Her face softened. “You are one of Ethan Kaye’s, aren’t you?”

  “What gave it away?”

  “He always refers to sin as separation from God.”

  “Yeah.” Sully grinned. “Ethan used to say whenever one of those dyed-in-the-wool legalists started to talk about ‘see-yun,’ it was sure to be about policing genitalia.”

  Demi spattered out a laugh.

  “He’s cleaned up his act now that he’s an administrator. Unfortunately, some people don’t think he’s cleaned it up enough.”

  “I haven’t helped. Which brings us back to my ‘separation from God.’” Demi tilted her head. “It does seem less final when you put it that way—like it’s only a temporary separation and you can always go back. At least, I used to think that.”

  “Until?”

  She looked at him.

  “So—let me get this straight,” Sully said. “Your Audrey can sleep with a guy, feel horrible about it, and go to God for forgiveness. Then she gets to go and leave her life of sin.”

  “Right.”

  “But you can’t. Why is that?”

  She closed her eyes. “I’m an adult. I should know better.”

  “You are, and you did.”

  “But I did it anyway.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you think it’s because Rich was ignoring me and I couldn’t help him and we weren’t having sex.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I still think those are just excuses.”

  “Let’s call them symptoms,” Sully said, “of a marriage that was already in trouble. You tried to fix it.”

  “I did try.”

  “Running to another man wasn’t your first response to being shut out.”

  “It was never my response! Zach found me—I didn’t chase him.” She curled her lip. “Does that sound like I’m blaming him? I do take responsibility.”

  “Responsibility? You’re practically a martyr. Go ahead and put some of it on him.”

  Demi nodded absently. “I did try with Rich.”

  “Now bear with me when I ask you this,” Sully said, “because I’m going to sound like a shrink.”

  “Ten bucks says you’re going to sound like a game show host.”

  “When you tried and he didn’t respond, how did you feel?”

  Demi’s mouth twitched. “You do sound like a shrink.” She leaned her head back. “It made me feel like a failure as a wife—as a woman.”

  “And failure is never an option for you, is it?”

  “I can’t remember ever failing before this.”

  Sully saw her swallow.

  “When I do it, I do it big-time.”

  “It’s not like you’ve shot the pope.”

  “I can’t minimize this.”

  “No, but you can keep it in perspective. You failed to meet Rich’s needs—but you were able to meet somebody else’s.”

  “Now you’re going to ask me how that felt.”

  Sully nodded.

  She put her hands to her temples and pulled at the corners of her eyes.

  “It’s okay to cry in here, Demi,” he said.

  “I feel stupid for crying over something that was wrong to begin with!”

  “You felt good because someone needed you. Feelings themselves are not wrong.”

  “It’s what you do with them.”

  “Which we’ve already established.”

  She was obviously determined to go down the guilt path to its inevitable dead end.

  “All right,” she said. “It felt good to have Zach need me and tell me I was good for him.”

  “Good?”

  “Amazing.” Her mouth crumpled. “It’s sickening now, but that feeling of being wanted and needed after so long was irresistible.”

  Exactly the word Sully himself would have used. He held back a ding-ding-ding.

  “So that was something you needed.” Sully picked carefully through the possible phrasing. “And not only needed, but felt like you were entitled to, in order to be—”

  “Be what?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Give me a second.” She cupped her face in her palms.

  Sully had to hand it to her—she would do anything to put this back together.

  “Okay—here’s all I know,” she said, bringing her head up. “If I’m not providing what somebody needs, what am I worth? Basically, I’m no good if I can’t do that.” She closed her eyes. “Please don’t buzz me.”

  “I’m not going to buzz you,” Sully said, “because I think that’s the right answer.”

  Her eyes sprang open.

  “To you, it was the right answer. To me—and to God—it’s a false premise.” Sully leaned forward, palms rubbing together. “And I think it’s the one we’ve been looking for.”

  She stared at him. A light, the tiniest pinpoint, came into her eyes. “Then where’s my ding-ding-ding?” she said.

  “Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding!”

  She sat up straight in the bowl-chair. “So—do you think Rich will get this? Understand why I did what I did?”

  “I think you have to understand it first. We’re going to work with it.”

  “But it’s a start, right? I could go to him and try to explain.”

  “You could,” Sully said slowly.

  “You don’t think I should.”

  “I think you have to consider that any reunion with Rich is going to have to be on more honest terms than your marriage was before. You going back to him is not necessarily going to pull him out of his depression over 9/11, for instance. How are you going to handle it if he continues to shut you out?”

  She glared. “That hope was short-lived.”

  “Demi—this isn’t a black-or-white thing. There is hope for you. You can work on this need to be all things to all people. And if Rich takes you back, that can help your marriage. But if you go back under the same circumstances, without dealing with your own premise, what’s to say it’s going to be any different?”

  “It has to be,” Demi said. “Because I’m not the same.”

  “And what about Rich?”

  “I don’t know.” She turned her face away.

  This was as far as he was going to pull her today. He could see her fighting back tears, and he couldn’t let her leave that way. “You know what?” he said.

  “Probably not.”

  “I think what you’re doing with Jayne means God wants to use you.” He waited until she looked at him. “No matter what.”

  “I have to go,” she said.

  He saw her shoulders shaking before she got to her Jeep.

  The phone woke him up the next morning. He had to claw his way out of an entangling dream to get to it—something about Demitria driving Isabella and screaming Where are the brakes? I can’t find the brake pedal!

  He was going to have to get on those so he could get some sleep.

  Meanwhile, the cell phone continued to chirp insistently while he rammed through the trailer, dumping over piles of clothes and peering under stacks of papers. By the time he located it between the cushions of the dinette booth, whoever it was had given up.

  Who the Sam Hill was calling him in the middle of the night anyway?

  He squinted at the phone screen. Eight AM. Those dreams really did have his timetable scrambled up.

  Sully smeared h
is hand over his face and pushed a few buttons on the phone. Porphyria had called. What was it about No, I’m not coming for the anniversary this year that she didn’t get?

  He slid the phone across the table and tucked himself into the booth, feet hanging out to the flat excuse for a couch. He felt vacuum-packed into this place. Porphyria’s calling him constantly to say he could still book a flight and be at her lodge in the Smokies on May 6 didn’t help. She wasn’t as subtle as she used to be, but she was just as insistent.

  “You can run yourself ragged solving other people’s problems,” she’d told him, “but you cannot hide from your own.”

  Sully churned restlessly from the booth, stood up, banged his head on the tin can ceiling. Okay, no, he’d never get over Lynn. There had been a oneness with her, an Everything is us. You didn’t get over love like that. You just learned to live without it.

  When the phone rang again, Sully made sure it wasn’t Porphyria before he picked it up.

  “So you are alive,” Ethan Kaye said.

  “I’ll take Famous Quotes for $200. Rumors of my death have been grossly exaggerated.”

  “Who was Mark Twain? Are you okay?”

  “For somebody who hasn’t had a cup of coffee yet, yeah, I’m good.”

  “I have information,” Ethan said. “Nothing that really helps us— elimination maybe.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I did a little snooping—actually, I talked to my secretary.”

  Sully pictured the plumpish platinum blonde in Ethan’s office who all but pressed a glass to the door when he and Sully were conferencing.

  “She says Wyatt Estes wasn’t aware Tatum Farris was dating Van Dillon, because he wouldn’t have met with family approval.”

  Sully snickered. “You want to tell me how your secretary knows that?”

  “I have no idea, and I don’t want to know—but you can take it to the bank. Gina has the 411 on everybody.”

  “I love it when you talk college,” Sully said. He moved gingerly toward the coffeepot.

  “I don’t know where that leaves us. We’ve ruled out every possible photographer, and I’ll tell you, Sully, I don’t think it was a total amateur who took those pictures.”

  “So maybe we give up on finding the shutterbug and go at this from another angle.”

  “Do you have one?” Ethan’s voice was suddenly weary.

  “Not yet,” Sully said. He abandoned the coffeepot. “But I think I know where I can find one.”

  Eight-thirty was too early for pink champagne cake. Anytime was too early for pink champagne cake. But a cup of coffee with three sugars and two creams would go good about now.

  He’d never been to McGavock’s Bakery before noon. It was a different place, with men in hammer-swinging jeans and flannel shirts crowding the counter, vying for donuts, and harried-looking women placing orders for baked goods.

  “I need that Saturday—for Easter,” one of them barked at Tatum.

  She kept her unruffled expression in place and moved nothing but her pen, a myriad of pastries, and her earrings.

  Sully took a seat at his table and watched her do a silent, intricate dance behind the counter with an older woman who also took orders and passed out free hot cross buns.

  “Traditional Easter treat,” she told each customer.

  Sully hadn’t even remembered Sunday was Easter. He wondered if Demi remembered. Holidays could be brutal in her situation.

  “He actually emerges before noon.”

  He looked up to see Tatum standing beside him, steaming mug in hand. She put it on the table. It swam with cream.

  “Y’all are busy in the mornings.”

  “That’s how we stay in business.” She let a smile pass briefly through her eyes. “You don’t think your eating us out of pink champagne cake pays the bills, do you?”

  Sully grinned.

  “You want a piece right now?”

  “How about a hot cross bun?” Sully said quickly.

  “They’re gross,” she said. “But okay.”

  When she returned, she’d taken off her hairnet, and the highlights fell into their assigned rows. “You don’t mind if I join you, do you? I’ve been here since four. I need a break.”

  “I gotta ask you something,” he said.

  “You want to know why a girl like me is working full-time in a has-been bakery.”

  “You’re good.”

  “No—you’re just obvious. You’ve basically been asking me that for weeks.”

  Sully gave her half a smile.

  “I was in college,” she said. “But I dropped out.” She fiddled with a silver hoop earring she could have used for a bracelet. “It was so bad that I wanted nothing to do with the academic world. I didn’t even want a job where I had to read or write.” She looked around coldly. “This is perfect.”

  Sully chewed on a piece of bun. She was right, it was gross—but the longevity of its bulk in his mouth gave him an excuse to think through his next question.

  “So that’s why you didn’t go into the family business,” he said.

  “I don’t want to be identified with them in any way.”

  “That’s pretty common for your age.”

  “My age has nothing to do with it. I want to be authentic, you know what I mean? Anything that smells like hypocrisy, get it away from me. Which is why I left CCC.”

  Sully slurped at his coffee. “There’s no love lost between you and that place, is there?”

  “Seriously. You expect a secular school to claim to be all about truth and wisdom and excellence and actually be all about money and prestige. Call me naïve, but I thought a Christian college would be different.”

  “And it isn’t?”

  “It’s the biggest bunch of hypocrites I’ve ever seen. I could tell you stories.”

  Sully forced himself not to say, Please do.

  “I won’t, though, not with my uncle being a major donor. I do have some integrity.”

  Dang that integrity.

  “But yeah, there’s stuff going on over there that you would not believe. And I’m not just talking about the administration—although don’t get me started on them.”

  He tried not to look like an eager hound dog, though he could feel himself practically drooling. “Students are a mess, are they?” he said.

  “The students are only a mess because they’re confused. I’m talking about the faculty.” Tatum gave him a long look and then shook her head. “You are one of those people complete strangers talk to about their sex lives on airplanes, aren’t you?”

  Sully choked. “I can’t say that I’ve ever had that happen.”

  “I bet I could tell you everything I know about CCC, and you’d never say a word to anybody—but I can’t take that chance. Besides, it wouldn’t do any good. I’ll probably always be a little bitter.” She gave him a sardonic smile as she scooped up his plate. “Did I not tell you those things were gross?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY - FIVE

  I knew Sullivan Crisp didn’t want me to do it. And the startling thing was, I cared that he didn’t want me to do it.

  But not as much as I cared about getting Rich back. Which was why the day after our session, I let myself into the house with a letter in my pocket, made as much noise as possible clamoring up the stairs, and pushed open our bedroom door.

  The room was a cave until I yanked the blinds up and let the light of a rare sunny day stream in. The sight it revealed was dismal, the odor worse. I’d smelled subways in New York that were sweeter than this.

  I was working the window open when Rich stirred, his breathing still carrying the faint echo of a snore. The Rich I knew could come out of REM already shouting coherent orders to twenty firefighters and pulling on fifty pounds of equipment without missing a Velcro strip.

  This Rich was red-eyed and disoriented, as if he’d been roused from the dead. I glanced at the bedside table and spotted a half-empty prescription bottle. Not that I hadn’t thought of sleeping pi
lls myself, but it jarred me. Rich wouldn’t take so much as a Tylenol for a bruising headache.

  I decided not to let his obvious stupor stop me. I sat on the edge of the bed—blocking his way out.

  “What are you doing, Demitria?” he said. The words were fuzz.

  “Saving our marriage.”

  He looked at me through swollen slits. “I told you I can’t talk about this yet.”

  “You don’t have to talk,” I said. “I’m going to talk.”

  He half growled.

  “I have something I want to say to you.” I pulled the letter out of my pocket and unfolded it. “I want you to listen all the way through. You can say whatever you want to me when I’m done, but please hear me out.”

  He opened his mouth, but I plunged forward, reading as fast as I could.

  “Dear Rich, I know it’s hard for you to believe that I truly am sorry for what I’ve done to you and to the kids. If I were that sorry, why did I do it in the first place, right?”

  He grunted.

  “I think I can answer that question now—the why—but I’m not sure you’ll believe that either. I know what the pain is like, Rich, and I know how hard it is to keep your perspective in the face of it. So maybe it would help to look back—to before this happened—before 9/11— before there even was a ‘why.’”

  Rich ripped the covers off and dumped his feet to the floor.

  “Don’t go—please,” I said.

  “I’m not going anywhere.” His voice thickened, but the sleep had disappeared from it. He went to the window, his back to me.

  I read on.

  “What I’m remembering is the first months of us. When you told me even my toes were beautiful. When you were so proud that I was in college, even though you teased me about not having any mechanical sense. When you made me physically go through what I would do if my building caught on fire—the most endearing thing I could think of.”

  I glanced up at him. His head hung between his shoulders, and he rubbed the windowsill with his thumbs.

  “I took cooking lessons from your mama, and I pumped your papa for your kid stories so I didn’t have to feel left out of everything that had happened to you pre-me. I knew I wanted to be part of your family, part of you. That, and the fact that you were a gifted kisser.”

  “Demitria,” Rich said.