Healing Sands

by Nancy Rue

  Jake sat back and actually took a long gulp from his cup.

  “You say you never spent any time with Miguel except for soccer,” I said, voice thick. “But, Jake, you know these people.” I pressed my hand to my chest. “In here. It shows in these pictures. And I know, I know if you did hurt Miguel, you didn’t do it on purpose.”

  He stiffened, and I stopped. He was done. So, in fact, was I. We were moving into a forest of emotion neither one of us would know how to find our way out of.

  “Okay, no more.” I fished out my cell. “Let’s see what Frances has for us.”

  What Frances had was a summons to her office, delivered the instant she picked up the phone, in a taut voice I hadn’t heard her use before.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “I’ll see you in twenty minutes—alone,” she said and hung up.

  I closed the phone slowly against my cheek. Several different scenarios flipped through my head, none of them good.

  “Are you busted?” Jake said.

  I looked down to see that he already had the laptop packed up and was handing me the reader card. I started to say it was just a routine check-in, but he was studying me. He’d watched me that way even as a baby, sitting in his high chair, eyes intent as a scientist’s, as if he were gathering data from the way I heated his strained carrots and dug in the dishwasher for the little spoon. The moment I caught him deep in observation that way, his face had always softened into a shy smile, complete with sweet baby drool. He’d trusted me implicitly then. I wanted that trust again.

  “Yeah, it does sound like we’re busted,” I said. “We have to go over to the paper.”

  I reached for the laptop bag, but Jake got to it first and slung it over his shoulder. He was quiet again until we got in the car.

  “Is it because of me?” he said as I headed toward the Sun-News building.

  “I honestly don’t know,” I said. “But don’t worry about it.”

  He gave me a teenage-boy grunt.

  “What?” I said.

  “I’ve screwed everything up, and I’m not supposed to worry about it?”

  “Jake, you haven’t—”

  “Yes, I have!”

  “What’s happened with you has created its own set of problems, there’s no denying that. But this one isn’t yours to solve. The only thing you have to do is help yourself.”

  I sneaked a glance at him in the guise of looking back to change lanes. He’d crossed his chest with his arms, hands in the opposite pits. I had about ten seconds before he’d shut down again.

  “If you want to unscrew something for me, son, start talking to me about exactly what happened.”

  Jake didn’t answer, and for the first time since he’d come to stay with me, I felt the kind of frustration with him that was going to have me turning up the volume and getting in his face if I didn’t back down now.

  What was that expression Crisp used? Dang? Jake came so close, and then he ran away—like his three-year-old self on the beach, wanting so badly to put his toe into the water, but scampering away just as it raced up to his little-boy foot. I used to coax him, “It won’t hurt you, Jake! It’s fun, watch!” And Dan always scooped him into his arms and said, “When you’re ready, right, buddy?”

  A pain shot through my hands, and I realized I was squeezing the steering wheel. Jake was turned from me, forehead on the side window.

  “When you’re ready, son,” I said. “Just let me know.”

  I got him settled in my cubicle with homework and a Dr Pepper, promised myself I would stop plying him with junk beverages, and headed for Frances’s office with my laptop. I hadn’t had time to get into a snit about being summoned, but I worked myself into one by the time I stuck my head in her door.

  “Is there a problem?” I said.

  “Good morning to you too,” she said. The pop-eyes were more watery than usual.

  “I got summarily called to the principal’s office. I didn’t think you wanted to make small talk.”

  She motioned to the only chair not piled with assorted files. When I didn’t sit, she said, “I don’t appreciate your using the paper for your own personal vendetta.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, or I will lose all respect for you—and I’m already heading there.”

  “If you’re talking about the colonias story—”

  “What else would I be talking about?”

  “It isn’t a vendetta. It’s a bona fide—”

  “Don’t insult my intelligence, Ryan! You’ve already slapped me in the face by not telling me it was your son who ran over that Mexican kid. I had to find it out from some detective who called the main office to complain that the perpetrator’s mother was using her journalistic status to influence the victim’s family.” Frances’s eyes bulged farther than I’d thought possible. “I’ve given you a lot of rope because you’re supposedly the ultimate professional. I didn’t expect you to hang me with it.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just opened the laptop and turned it on. “Aren’t you going to tell me I’m wrong?” she said. “That Detective Baranovic, who until now has been a friend of the News, is lying?”

  “No.” I turned the laptop toward her. “I’m going to show you.” I clicked to the picture of the old men at the coffee shop and juxtaposed it to the man with his burned trailer. Then I set the children asleep in the car next to the one Jake had taken of the balloons in the child’s sad eyes. I went through them all, and I watched Frances’s face as she looked at the screen, begrudgingly at first, and then with distaste, and finally with the mixture of horror and compassion I had felt from the other side of the camera.

  When the series started over and she continued to study the photos, I sat on the edge of the chair.

  “Yes, I went up to El Milagro to find out what I could about the Sanchez family, thinking I might discover some piece that could be used in Jake’s defense. What I found was this story.” I tapped the top of the screen. “If anything, what I’ve learned makes things worse for my son. Elena Sanchez doesn’t even know who I am, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

  Frances looked at me over the lid of the computer. “You haven’t been wearing your press pass?”

  “Yeah, but they only know me as Ryan Alexander. I don’t even know if they know Jake’s name. And Elena Sanchez just calls me Grafa.”

  “Short for fotografa.” Frances sat back and folded her veined hands under her chin. Everything on her face pulled to a point. “I don’t like you not being totally up front with these people.”

  “Oh, come on, Frances—don’t be a hypocrite. Some of the stuff that goes on in this department is one step shy of the tabloids, and you know it.”

  She ignored that and once again tapped the computer. “But this I like. It’s over the fence, Ryan. Even without audio.”

  “I have audio. But . . . over the fence?”

  “It’s a home run.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I think you have enough here, especially if you have sound. Put it together and run it by me.”

  “I could still use a few more shots of—”

  She turned the laptop toward me and motioned with her hands to get it off her desk. “Wrap it up, Ryan. For my sake—for yours. Do we understand each other?”

  No. But I was walking out of there with my job intact and the Sanchez story still alive. At the moment, I couldn’t expect more than that.

  “Oh, and Ryan . . .”

  I turned in the doorway. Frances was squeezing the bridge of her nose with two fingers, eyes closed under bulbous lids. “If you need anything, you know, for your boy, let me know. A good lawyer . . . time off . . .”

  The starch went completely out of me.

  “My daughter got picked up on a DUI on her twenty-first birthday,” she said, “and I discovered then that as a parent, you’re the only real advocate your kid has.”

  “Yeah,” I said
. “I hear you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Sully’s session with Ryan the day before had gone well. She hadn’t stormed out or threatened to hurl projectiles. She had, in fact, seemed ready to face her pain.

  So why was he pacing around his office like a kid with ADHD? Sully stopped, his hand in the mini-sandbox, and sifted its contents through his fingers. Porphyria would say he needed to settle down and do some self-therapy. If she could talk to him right now.

  Winnie had called Sunday to report that the pacemaker replacement was a success, but the doctor wanted to keep Porphyria in the hospital until he was sure it was working properly. It was just routine. Porphyria had already been hospitalized for sixteen days. Insurance companies didn’t let you do that for “routine.” Nor was it routine for his energetic mentor to be sleeping every time he called.

  Sully forced himself to flop into a chair and stack his ankles on the desk. He was out of Frappuccinos. That wasn’t routine either. And he couldn’t blame it on Ryan Coe or his beloved Porphyria. It was this Belinda Cox thing.

  Knowing her alias was Zahira and that she was “ministering” somewhere in Mesilla left him not much further than he’d been before Sarah’s call. He’d prayed for clear guidance. He knew better than to proceed before he got it. How many times had he told a client: “If you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything yet.” Holy crow. He hated his own advice sometimes.

  In an effort to think about something else, Sully reached for Carla Korman’s file on his desk. He had to agree with the sticky note Martha had put on it: there was nothing in her background at Healing Choice or elsewhere to indicate that she would do the kinds of things people had complained of. Even the complainants couldn’t indicate it, because not one of them was reachable. He’d talked to Rusty Huff about it, but he couldn’t give Sully any more information than they already had.

  Sully picked up his recorder. “Now I know why I didn’t become a private detective instead of a therapist,” he said into it. “I stink at it.”

  Kyle stuck his head in Sully’s open doorway. “You still playing with that dinosaur?”

  “I’m pretty much hopeless.”

  “Do you have dinner plans?”

  Sully let a grin slide across his face as he dropped the recorder into his pocket. “Ethiopian food?”

  “Nah. I’ve got someplace else in mind.”

  “Then you’re on.”

  When Sully met him in his office, Kyle was simultaneously turning off his computer and sliding his arms into the sleeves of his jacket. Sully hadn’t been in there since Kyle had moved in, and he liked its inviting look—rugs and lamps and sepia photos. In one a striking young woman looked out from the frame, hair blown back from a face that was all smile and bright eyes and personality.

  “Pretty lady,” Sully said. “Girlfriend?”

  Kyle looked at the photo as if the young woman could see him loving her with his eyes, and shook his head. “That’s Hayley. My wife. You all set?”

  “Depends what you’re going to subject me to,” Sully said. He decided to postpone the questions that crowded in.

  They both folded themselves into Kyle’s Mini Cooper, which, Sully pointed out as they headed down Union, had a loose fan belt.

  “I know. I haven’t had a chance to have it fixed. I understand you’re pretty handy under the hood.”

  “I hung up my wrenches about a year and a half ago,” Sully said. “Okay, the suspense is killing me. What thing I can’t pronounce am I going to have to eat?”

  “Man, the surprise is the best part.”

  Sully was surprised when they sat down in a new steakhouse whose menu boasted nothing more exotic than a fried olive appetizer.

  “What, no sushi?” Sully said. “No Asian duck quesadilla or some dang thing?”

  “I already gave up on you,” Kyle said.

  When they’d ordered rib eyes and an order of the olives, Sully was ready to get to his questions, but Kyle dove in first.

  “You know I’ve listened to your podcasts, read all your books.”

  “You mentioned that.” More than once, to the point of overkill.

  “It makes me feel like I know more about you than I do—you’re that transparent with your work. But I realized I don’t know anything about, say, your family.”

  “I could say the same thing about you.” Sully cocked an eyebrow at him. “For instance, you’re married?”

  Kyle kept his eyes on the martini glass full of olives that their trim, raven-haired server set on the table. When she was gone, he smiled the same smile he’d given the photograph on his desk.

  “I was married. It’s still hard to think of myself any other way.” Ouch. “Divorce?” Sully said.

  “No. Hayley died in an accident eighteen months ago.”

  “Oh, man, I am so sorry.”

  “Yeah, thanks. It was a pretty tough shot.”

  Sully wiped his hands on his napkin. “You’re doing great for being only a year and a half out.”

  “I have my moments. Thank God for himself, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know what I’d do without the Lord.” Kyle toyed with a breaded olive. “I’m closer to him now than I ever was before—since the night I sat on the edge of the bathtub with a kitchen knife pressed against my wrist.” He left the olive in the glass and leaned back. “I told myself I just wanted to see if I could feel anything, but all I knew was pain. You might never have been that far down, but I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

  Sully nodded.

  “And then it was like something stopped my hand. Well, not something—I knew it was God saying, ‘I’ll take you when I want you.’” Kyle gave Sully a sheepish smile. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to put a damper on the evening.”

  “No, no, it’s okay. So you got help after that.”

  “From your books. Your radio show. The podcasts on suffering last year did more for me than anything.”

  “That’s not meant to take the place of therapy.”

  “I know. That disclaimer is all over your stuff.” Kyle’s eyes went to the server approaching with their dinners and lowered his voice. “But it worked for me, Sully. If it weren’t for you, I probably wouldn’t be here.”

  Rib eyes, baked potatoes, half-ears of corn, and enough bread for a family reunion appeared. The waitress took her time getting it all on the table, slowed down by the need to chat with Kyle, smile at Kyle, all but curl up in Kyle’s lap. Sully himself was more or less invisible. He waited until after the final, hopeful, “Can I get you anything else?” before he leaned into the table.

  “Look, Kyle, if you do need to talk—”

  “I didn’t take this job to get free therapy. I just wanted to work with the person who taught me so much about helping people in pain.”

  Kyle looked openly at Sully, eyes wet but unashamed. Sully looked back and wished Martha Fitzgerald could have heard that. Therapists could become as educated and well trained and professional as it was possible to be, and their own personal pain and recovery would still find its way into their practice. He’d tell Martha that wasn’t always a bad thing.

  “You haven’t tried your steak.” Kyle cut into his and observed it critically before he said, “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

  Sully sawed off a piece and chewed while he watched Kyle dig in. He was definitely young. People over forty didn’t attack a steak the way Kyle did. In spite of his loss, and his self-conscious gourmet status, he hadn’t yet learned to savor life’s flavors. But this new revelation had peeled off a layer that was older than his years.

  “So what about you?” Kyle said. “Where did all your gutsy wisdom come from?” He grinned as he chewed. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

  Sully grinned back and inhaled the steak and the selection of starches like he hadn’t eaten in weeks, and gave a more detailed version of his schooling in psychology at Vanderbilt under Porphyria Ghent than he shared with most people. Kyle dev
oured his meal, never taking his eyes from Sully while he talked, not shifting his gaze to the flirty server who came by every three minutes to check on him or letting it wander to the tray of decadent desserts she was hefting. He listened in that way only somebody who’d been there could do.

  Kyle finished eating before Sully and ordered coffee and flan. Sully passed. He still had a quarter of a steak to finish.

  “You’re going to get extra caramel sauce—you know that, don’t you?” Sully said when the waitress had run off happily with Kyle’s dessert order.

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed her trying to crawl into your pocket. You could probably get a neck massage. To go.”

  “Not interested. I’ve come a long way, but not that far. But speaking of pictures on desks . . .” Kyle stopped and took the coffee from the server, who now identified herself as Zoe and gave him every option for his coffee, from full-out cream to skim milk.

  Sully shifted in his seat and tried to mark out a direction. It had been awhile since he’d been with a colleague who wasn’t a mentor or didn’t need one.

  “I think you’re spot on,” Kyle said when Zoe was gone. “She’s making another whole trip to get the flan.”

  “Don’t be surprised if she puts her phone number on the check—which, by the way, I’m picking up.”

  “No way. I invited you.” Kyle sat back with his coffee and sipped in spite of the steam pouring from it.

  Sully watched him and felt something give within, a thawing of ground long hardened. “The picture on my desk,” he said. “That’s my wife and baby. Was them. I still have a hard time putting them in the past tense.”

  Kyle grimaced. “How long has it been?”

  “Fourteen and a half years,” Sully said. “And there are times when I don’t think I’m as far along as you are.”

  The flan arrived, flooded with sauce, but Kyle didn’t touch it.

  “In your podcasts, the series on suffering, you never said exactly what it was you had to deal with, but I had no idea it was something that devastating. Do you mind me asking what happened?” By now Sully was unsurprised that he didn’t, in fact, mind. As Kyle listened, Sully described his thirteen years of burying his guilt and pain and anger under a career designed to heal the hurts in people’s lives when he couldn’t face the gaping wound in his own.