by Nancy Rue
“Her name is Audrey.” I lined myself up in front of him. “She needed help, and I’m helping her. Do you have a problem with that?”
He looked over his shoulder, and I saw the echo of my raised voice stir up a knot of people by the water fountain.
“Yeah, I do have a problem with it.” Rich’s with hardened into a Brooklyn wid. “What kind of influence is that on Jayne?”
“You’re not serious.”
“I don’t like her hanging out with some girl who goes and gets herself pregnant.”
I let out a dry snort that got another group shooting me a shut-up look.
“What’s so funny?” Rich said.
“She got herself pregnant?”
“Everybody’s responsible for what they do, Demitria.” Rich squinted at me. “Or haven’t you figured that out?”
I expected the anxiety and the guilt and the shame to smother me until I slunk away. It didn’t. I only felt heat blossoming from my neck.
“What do you think I’ve been doing for the past two months?” I said. “I’ve been taking responsibility.”
“For somebody else’s problems—like you always do—instead of taking care of your own business.”
“You are my business!” I said. “But you won’t let me take care of you, so what am I supposed to do? What is it you want me to do? You tell me, and I’ll do it!”
“We’re done here,” Rich said.
He stalked for the door, and I marched after him, all the way out to the red SUV with ORCHARD HEIGHTS DUTY CHIEF emblazoned on the side. I plastered myself against it.
“Move, Demitria.” Rich hissed and closed his eyes, as he’d do if one of the kids had tried his patience.
“When you’ve told me what you want from me, Rich,” I said. “What do you want?”
“I want you to feel the shame.” He jabbed his thumb into his chest. “I want you to feel, in here, what it’s been like for me.”
“You don’t think I do?”
“What I want is for you to make up for the pain you’ve put me through—and I don’t think you can do that.”
I stared and felt the full weight of what he asked fall on me.
“You want me to undo it,” I said. “Do you know how many times I’ve wished I could? You’re asking the impossible.”
“I guess I am.” Rich put his arm on top of the car and leaned, his back to me. Just as it had been for two long years. It had worked for him then, but it couldn’t now.
“You’re right.” I let my arms drop to my sides. “I can’t do the impossible. What else you got?”
He jerked his head sideways.
“What would you settle for if you couldn’t have that?” I said. “What kind of wife?”
He stood with his arm still sprawled across the roof of the fire department car. “You really want to know?” he said.
“I do.”
“I want a woman who loves me and respects me enough that she would never put herself in a position to be influenced against me by another man.”
I held back the tears. Sullivan said not to hold back, but I couldn’t cry now and drive him away.
“I know I wasn’t that woman,” I said. “But I am now. You can still have what you want.”
He didn’t answer—and the silence singed me.
“Rich, say something.”
“I can’t answer you.”
Again, I expected the prickling of anxiety, the rush of shame, the paralyzing clutch of guilt. Instead, something visceral shifted inside me that I could almost measure. The anxiety and the shame and the guilt had played themselves out, leaving space for what in that moment shaped my thoughts and let them come.
“You don’t have an answer?” I said. “Then I’ll tell you what I want.”
He turned on me. “What you want? I think you already tried to get what you want, and now you expect me to be your consolation prize.”
“Excuse me?”
“I always knew it would only be me until somebody better came along. I knew it here.” He knocked his flattened hand against the back of his head. “For a while I thought I was wrong—when you brought me out here—and then you—”
“Rich—what are you talking about?” I said. “I never—”
“You didn’t know it, Demitria. I knew it.”
The doors opened and two other firemen appeared, one with a bandage across his forehead and an eye swollen shut. I backed up, and Rich jerked open the car door and got behind the wheel.
“Mrs. Costanas,” the uninjured fireman said to me, before he busied himself getting his buddy into the backseat.
For the first time, I believed anyone who called me that name might be wrong.
I forced myself to walk-not-run back to the emergency doors. Oscar nearly plowed me down as they sighed open. Mickey ran into him.
“How’s Audrey?” Oscar said. His chin quivered, as well as every other part of him.
Mickey parked herself in front of him. “Where is she, Demi?”
“Follow me,” I said.
All the dialogue I’d planned for warning them against slicing again into their daughter’s heart was now stirred in with a shock I couldn’t get my mind around. I might have thrown poor Audrey to the wolves if Jayne hadn’t bolted from the cubicle when we were only yards away, her face glowing like Tinkerbell.
“The baby’s okay!” she said. “Some women spot at first—or even their entire pregnancy—but that’s all. And I got to see the sonogram.” She threw her long adolescent arms around me and bubbled her laughter into my neck. “It was so cool, Mom—there’s a real baby in there!”
I rocked her back and forth. On one pass, my eyes met Mickey’s. I’d never seen such longing, such yearning, not even in my own mirror.
“You go on in,” I said.
Oscar made a dive for the curtain, but Mickey grabbed his arm, barely getting her fingers across its girth. “I’m not sure she wants to see us,” she said. She looked at me with eyes that ached to feel anything but what she felt. “Would you check it out first?”
Slowly I shook my head. “I’ll go with you,” I said.
I held back the curtain and heard Audrey chirp, a sound that faded when she saw her mother.
“I heard the good news,” I said.
She tried to smile, but her eyes, on Mickey, were wary.
“Is it good news, Audrey?” I crossed to her. “For you, I mean?”
I saw her take a deep breath. “I love this baby, and I’m going to keep her and I want her to be okay.”
Oscar jockeyed his huge self around Mickey and smothered Audrey in a hug that took my breath away.
Mickey didn’t move from just inside the curtain. She folded her arms.
Folded arms. Turned backs. People operating on premises that were only walls of fear. That was all I was seeing tonight, and I was sick of them.
“Do you have any idea how she plans to pull off having a baby and having a life?” Mickey said. “When she can’t even—”
“Why don’t you ask her?” I said. “For once, why won’t you trust her to use what you’ve taught her?”
The arms folded tighter. “So far, that hasn’t been effective.”
“Oh, get over it!” I shoved my hair behind my ears and went after her, until my face was nose-to-nose with hers. “She made a mistake and now she’s taking responsibility for it—except that the people she loves don’t want to let her. They want this one mistake to define her, for the rest of her life—and it doesn’t. I know.”
I thrust an arm behind me to point in Audrey’s direction. “What she does about it today, out of love and compassion and God, makes her who she is. Now, you can either embrace that and see her through, or you can define yourselves by your mistakes.”
I pulled away in time for Nurse Ponytail to whip the curtain aside, tail in full swing.
“And if you break this young woman’s heart any more,” I said, “you are making the biggest mistake of your life.”
I b
rushed past the nurse. “It’s a little crowded in here,” I told her.
Sully went back to close the garage door and stood there for a magic moment to listen to Isabella purr . . .
Hers was a grateful sound, he decided as he eased himself into the front seat. He took a second to appreciate the tuck and roll, then let her growl softly out onto Callow Avenue. These were the murmurings of a woman transformed in to her true self, the self she was meant to be.
Man, she handled nice. The new shocks, the new tires, all new grommets on the front end made her solid and tight. He could feel every pebble in the road. She was restored, not to what she used to be, but to what she could be.
Sully stepped on it, then slowed. The transmission dropped down, responding like she was part of him. Oh, yeah.
Halfway down Callow he thought of Demi. This was all he wanted for her, too—to move, free and whole. Everything was there—the intelligence, the love, the compassion, the blooming faith. Whether Rich Costanas dealt with his own issues and saw what he had in her or not, she would become authentic. He knew that potential when he saw it—even in the darkest hour. He could always see it—
Baby, this is only temporary. It happens to a lot of women—it isn’t your fault.
It is my fault—it’s my sin.
Lynn—stop this. It’s clinical depression—you have to take the medication until your hormones—
Don’t, Sully—don’t get between me and God. I have to repent—I have to rebuild my faith.
A horn blew, and Sully mashed the brake, inches from rolling past the stop sign at Callow and Burwell Street.
He ran his finger across his upper lip and drew back sweat. Of course the car would bring back those kinds of memories. That, he told himself, was why he had to take her out tonight. Show himself he was reconciled to it. That was over, and this was a new time, a new car, a new life.
He sat back and gentled the accelerator, bringing Isabella to a purr again.
She swung to the right and Sully rotated the wheel into the slide. She righted herself onto Washington Avenue without so much as a sway.
Sully let a grin cut from earlobe to earlobe, let it split the time since he’d been this free, so he could drive straight through and into the future, the what-is-to-come—blocked only by the car that shot out of the side street to his left and across Washington.
Sully slammed on the brakes again, and Isabella pulled hard to the right. Man, he knew he should have checked those.
The other vehicle, something big and bulky and muscular, sped across the Manette Bridge to his right, taillights zigzagging in the inky blackness.
Don’t hit the brakes, baby!
Sully jammed the gas pedal to the floor and squealed after the red lights that blinked like spasms of panic.
Turn into the slide—I told you—turn into the slide—–
But the Impala screamed at him as the car went for the side in a path straight as a sword. The lights flashed one last alarm before they took flight out into the black, into the long awful silence.
Sully pumped his own brakes and lurched forward, slamming his chest against the steering wheel. His cry was lost in the deafening splash, gulped away with the lights as the Cumberland River swallowed them. Swallowed Lynn and Hannah—and his life.
From another place a horn blared, needlessly urgent in this place, where nothing was left to save.
“Hey, buddy—you all right?”
Sully heard the voice, but he couldn’t turn to it, couldn’t move— couldn’t breathe.
“Somebody call an ambulance!” the voice yelled.
Sully managed to shake his head, but words couldn’t find their way out of the chaos. His mind tilted sideways and slammed back and forth, back and forth as he struggled to stay real. A fear he couldn’t run from seized every nerve and set it up on end. He was attacking himself with his own terror.
Groping through the panic, he found the steering wheel and held on.
You’re here. This is now. Hang on.
Squeezing through pain, Sully found his voice and whispered what he told his clients: “The anxiety won’t rip you off the edge—you aren’t going mad—let it go—you can do this.”
“Call 911,” the voice said.
“No need,” Sully said.
“You’re shaking, buddy.”
“Everybody okay?” A second voice, firm and sure.
Sully let himself open his eyes. A red light twirled, but it was real. And so was the face close to his, talking in tight spurts between the teeth.
“Nobody went off the bridge, did they?” Sully said.
“You almost did,” the first voice said.
“Okay—everybody back off—let the man breathe.” The second man, close to him, took Sully’s wrist. “Deep breaths, my friend.”
He tried—tried from his gut—and spread his hands and wiped them on his thighs. His legs shook, all on their own, and he let them. “Panic attack,” Sully said. “I need a reality check.”
“You got it. What’s your name?”
“Sullivan Crisp.”
“You know where you are?”
“Manette Street Bridge?”
“Good so far. Keep breathing.”
“It’s May second.”
“All day. How you feelin’?”
“A little ridiculous.” Sully felt the tremors begin to fade. “Are we blocking the bridge?” He tried to move, but a firm hand gripped his shoulder.
“No, you got off the road on this end—see? You barely missed bouncing against the railing.” The guy looked around, let his eyes glance at the dashboard. “Hate to see you mess up this ride. ’64?”
“Yeah.”
“Fix it up yourself?”
Sully nodded and sank against the seat. His heartbeat slowed. The guy let go of his wrist and rested his hands on the open window.
“There somebody you want us to call?”
“Who’s us?” Sully said. He noticed for the first time that the guy wore a uniform.
“Kitsap Fire Department,” he said. “We happened to be heading this way when we saw you go off the road.”
“Well, thank God,” Sully said. He leaned his head back, closed his eyes. Exhaustion seeped in.
“How ’bout that phone call?” the fireman said. “I’m not thinkin’ you should drive right now.”
Sully pawed at the tuck and roll and picked up his cell phone. “I got it,” he said.
“Okay. I’ll wait.”
The man did what he himself would do if he found some poor dude on the side of the road, groping for the real out of an attack of sheer terror. Terror a person should only have to survive once.
“You want me to dial the number?”
“Got it.” Sully stiffened his fingers to stop the shaking before he pulled up Porphyria Ghent. At the first ring, he put out his hand to the fireman. “Who am I thanking?” he said.
“Name’s Rich.” The man clasped his hand with Sully’s, hard and tight. “Rich Costanas.”
CHAPTER THIRTY - THREE
All weekend I was sure Mickey would call to tell me my services were no longer required at the Daily Bread or Christopher would phone to inform me his father was filing for divorce.
Sunday night, long after even Chris would be brazen enough to invade with a call, I lay on the love seat, plucking at the threads in a hole and trying to accept the inevitable. Once again, I’d brought it on myself—only this time, no matter how many times I replayed Friday evening’s scenes in my head, I didn’t see how I could have done anything differently and still bear being in my own skin. I finally melted inside myself and slept.
My blaring phone pulled me back into consciousness, and I simultaneously pawed for it and sat up to the realization that the sun pried between the slats of the blinds and both Audrey and Jayne were gone. Fletcher Basset’s voice hauled me right off the love seat.
“Sorry to call you so early,” he said, “but I thought you’d want to know first thing so maybe we can get on
it.”
“We?” I didn’t even try to be pleasant.
“The board of trustees held a closed meeting last night. Word is it was about Ethan Kaye.”
I staggered toward the cold coffeemaker, phone tucked into my neck. “How would you know that, if it was a closed meeting?”
“That’s the scuttlebutt. I thought maybe you could find out more.”
“Why?” I said, although I was already interested enough to stop with my hand on the box of filters.
Fletcher chuckled. “Don’t try to tell me you don’t want to know.”
“I do. But why would I tell you if I did find anything out?”
“Because I can make it news, get it out there so people can make some noise about it before St. Clair and the rest of them sweep him out of there without anybody knowing.”
“They don’t have any grounds for firing Ethan,” I said. But my stomach twisted itself into a knot.
“I can help,” Fletcher said. “And so can you.”
I shoved a hand through my couch-mashed hair. “Look, my last conversation with Ethan Kaye was not so good. I don’t think he’s going to confide in me.”
“What about your friend Dr. Crisp?”
My fingers froze to my scalp. “Excuse me?”
“You and Dr. Kaye have a mutual friend.”
I heard paper rustle.
“Sullivan Crisp—he was with Kaye when he was attacked by a student.”
“He what? Wait.” I shook my head as if I could make something, anything, fall into a slot it belonged in. “You could not possibly know that I know Sullivan Crisp unless you were stalking me!”
“Listen, Demi.”
“No! Leave me alone, Bassett. Do you understand? Stay away from me, and do not call me again.”
He was still sputtering when I slapped the phone shut. The thought of the Chia-pet following me to Callow, to Sullivan’s garage, was nauseating. Only my concern for Ethan kept me from lunging to the bathroom unit for an embrace of the toilet.
A student had attacked him? Things must be completely out of control.
I shook my head again and dumped three scoops of coffee into the filter basket. If Fletcher Bassett could tail me all over Kitsap County, he certainly wasn’t above lying to me to get me to do his dirty work. This “attack” could have been a few angry words tossed across the commons.