The Girl in the Mirror (Sand & Fog #3)

by Susan Ward

  Krystal: No. The counselor’s coming soon. No time.

  Counselor? That’s her excuse for not to seeing me today? I want to be there with her during the counseling. I can’t know how she’s doing, what she needs if I’m not even allowed in a freaking room with my wife.

  I search for a nonthreatening way to get her to open up to me. Something neutral. Not pushing. Just a way in to be with her as she goes through this.

  Me: R u all right, babe? Maybe I should see the counselor with you?

  Krystal: No. I’m doing fine. Ready to go home tomorrow. U get discharged, too, right?

  I ignore the emotionally leveling parts of that response, and focus on the positive. Home tomorrow—my mood lifts. Maybe whatever this is we’ve been doing will end and I’ll have my wife back again.

  Me: They couldn’t keep me here if you left. Babe, I miss you. It’s been hell not being with you. Can I come down to your room after the counselor leaves? I need to see you. I love you.

  I wait and wait, but there’s no reply.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  “Jacob”

  Three months later

  “Come on, babe. Two more steps and we’ll a call it a day.”

  Tremors run her arms as Krystal holds herself between the bars. Her chin lifts—a look I’ve seen a thousand times in the last three years—only since the hospital it’s obstinate and not determined.

  “I can’t.” She relaxes her weight all on one leg. “You push me too hard.”

  I gnaw at my lower lip to keep silent and rub the sweat from my brow against my shoulder. My gaze fixes on her walking brace. The bone has healed. The brace is for support. The physical therapy instructions are clear. Add steps, build. Two steps; she can do this. She won’t walk again unless she keeps trying and building.

  Cautiously moving my hands forward—slowly, Jacob, slowly, so she doesn’t freak out—I verify that she’s put the brace on correctly, because she should be able to do ten steps instead of eight today, but when my fingers accidently touch the bare skin of her thigh, her legs move back from me.

  “I want to go to the house. I’m tired, Jacob.”

  I adjust on my haunches so I can see her face. “No. Two steps then we go back to the house. Come on, babe. Do it for me. I want to walk on the beach with you. Dance with my wife again. If you stick with the program Dr. Simons put together, you’ll walk again.”

  “Who cares? There’s no point.” She hops away to sit in her wheelchair.

  No point.

  I swallow down the hurt from that.

  My gaze roams the dance studio. Alan converted it into a state-of-the-art physical therapy center. Her therapists come to her, but she won’t let them help her. She quits and everyone lets her.

  My jaw tightens. “No point? What do you want to do? Stay how we are now?”

  Her crystal blue eyes flash. “We’re not anything, Jacob. I’m the cripple. You mean how I am?”

  Another sharp cut and it takes everything I have not to respond.

  I get it.

  How hurt she is, how those men broke her, and I know this is ninety percent about that and not the damage to her leg, but fuck, this isn’t only about her. I’m going through this, too.

  If she’s not good, we’re not good. In the two and half months at home we’ve drifted farther apart not closer.

  I turn on my heels to face her. “You’re not a cripple, Krystal. That leg is fine. It needs you to work it back up, the same way as after a dance injury. That surgeon did an incredible job putting your femur back together. Your leg can carry you if you work it back into shape.” My gaze fixes on hers. “And when it can’t, I’ll carry you. But, babe, it’s time you start carrying yourself sometimes.”

  Her lip quivers and red crowds her face before she looks away. “I’m tired. I want to go back to the house.”

  I run my palms up the top of her thighs. Her body curls up and retracts—fuck, I did that without thinking—and the change in her eyes brings a lump to my throat.

  I put space between us. “You can quit tonight if you want to, but I think you should try again to do ten steps. You only have two more to go. You can do it if you try.”

  That she ignores.

  Fine, Krystal.

  Maybe tomorrow.

  I wheel her to the door, shut off the lights, and then out onto the walkway from studio to patio. I shouldn’t have let up that quickly. I should have pushed harder for her to stay and finish her therapy. She doesn’t need me giving her an out. Not with how everyone in her family coddles her. They need to stop coddling her. Or better still, stop getting in my way.

  They love her.

  I understand that.

  But when they stand between her getting stronger and more self-sufficient, they are standing between me getting my wife back.

  They forget that I love her, too. We’ve been through so much together. New York. Her career. Her eating disorder—no small demon to cure. It was her and me facing everything together, right up until Alberto Ramos stepped into our lives to fuck it over.

  I could love her through this. Getting that leg strong enough to walk again. Getting herself strong enough to let me touch her again without flinching.

  Fuck…I just want to be able to hold my wife.

  Doesn’t anyone get that?

  No, probably not, with how the family run defense to stop me the second she gets frazzled. God, they make me feel like a prick when I don’t indulge her every meltdown. And worse, they can’t see through her sunny smile—she isn’t coping any better being with her family, though she’s got them snowed.

  They can’t see she’s struggling emotionally, or how overwhelmed she is surrounded by them every second of the day. I’m all for support systems, when it’s constructive, but to smother her in a way that validates her giving up isn’t good.

  They need to be tough on her, instead of feeding this downward spiral that gets worse every day. Internally, she’s iron. Even now in how she refuses to help herself and the different façades she puts on for each of us not to see how hard even simple things are for her, like being with her family—and me.

  Fuck, I don’t know if I should push or ease back. She hides how she’s feeling extremely well, and I can’t tell if I’m pushing her in the right way or the wrong way. I don’t want to hurt her in how I’m trying to help her. That could be potentially more destructive to us than Juarez.

  The right course is not always obvious.

  Rehabilitation of the body is hard.

  Emotional rehabilitation after what Krystal’s been through, I don’t doubt, will be a long, arduous process.

  She can overcome both.

  I know this woman.

  I don’t doubt it—I can’t doubt it and hang on every day—but I do know people don’t help themselves if those who love them work not to let them. That was a mistake I made with Jane. I can’t do it with Krystal. If I let her stay in the morass she’ll be lost to me forever. And damn it, her family enables her, overly helpful, only not in the way she—hell, the way we—need them to be.

  At the patio doors, I ask, “Where do you want to go now?”

  Her gaze lowers to her hands. “I don’t care. You can dump me anywhere if you need a break from me tonight. I know this can’t be fun for you, Jacob. Physical therapy. And wheeling me around this house.”

  I crouch down in front of her so we’re at eye level. “No, it’s not fun, but it’s still where I want to be. I love you. Nothing else matters and I want to be where you are.”

  Those heart-crushing blue eyes peek up at me. “If you were where I am, there’d be no one to push the chair.”

  A joke, but it stings a little.

  I make a face. “You don’t need the chair. You should be on crutches at this stage. Dr. Simons thinks so. And that wasn’t an answer.” I take one of the crutches resting against the house. “Why don’t we try this tonight? You did great in the
rapy. You can do this, Krystal. Please, try.”

  Her mouth puckers as she looks away. “I’m exhausted, Jacob. Why do you keep pushing? I’m ready to go to bed.”

  Bed? It’s not even 7:30 p.m. She’s quitting early on everything today.

  “Your family’s having movie night. Why don’t we hang out with them for a little while?”

  “No, I’m not up for that tonight. I need sleep. Carry me to our bedroom, Jacob.”

  Exhaling, I debate the carry me request, then I set the crutch back against the wall.

  After undoing the footrests and moving them out of the way, I stay perfectly still.

  “I’m going to pick you up now.”

  I wait as she does whatever mental gymnastics that permit me to touch her when she wants me to carry her.

  Once she nods, I carefully lift her into my chest. Her head close to my shoulder floods me with the scent of her. I want to kiss her so desperately—the top of her head, nothing more—but we’re not there and I’m starting to fear we won’t ever be.

  Inside our room, I set her on the bed. “Do you need me to help you with anything?”

  Krystal shakes her head. “I can do the rest myself, Jacob. Go watch movies with my family. I’m probably going to fall asleep the second my head hits the pillow.”

  “We could watch a movie in here together before you fall asleep.”

  “No, not tonight.”

  “Undo the brace, babe. I want to take a look at that leg before you go to bed.”

  As she unhooks it, the Velcro makes that crackle-rip sound. I study the twelve-inch scar along the top of the creamy flesh of her thigh. No raw spots from the brace. Looks good. Every day it looks better. With laser treatments, it won’t even show. The flesh from the staples and stitches has faded to pink, but other than the scar her leg is as perfect as ever.

  “Night, Krystal.”

  She holds her pajamas, waiting for me to leave before she’ll undress.

  Closing the door behind me, I let out a frustrated breath, and decide not to join the family in the theater. They smother me, too—in the wrong ways.

  Instead, I go out the front and walk. I pass one of the new security guys from the dozen Alan hired after Juarez, and exchanging a fast nod, I continue to the back of the property.

  In the distance, I can see the ocean. I sit on the grass and stare out. The world is quiet and peaceful here. I thought things would get better for us once we left the hospital, but if anything I’m more scared than ever we’re not making it through this.

  “I was an alcoholic when I married Chrissie’s mother and drunk through most of my marriage to Lena,” says a voice from behind me. “I hit bottom by year eight and couldn’t climb out, and there I stayed.”

  I turn to see Jack Packer standing two feet away, silver hair in a ponytail, watching me alertly.

  Interesting way to start a conversation. I’m not sure what to reply.

  He smiles. “Do you know how I got sober?”

  “No, sir, I don’t.”

  He points at the spot of ground beside me, and it takes me a moment to realize he’s asking if he can sit down. I nod.

  He settles on the grass beside me. “I went to jail.”

  I don’t have a clue why he’s telling me this. It sounds like a serious conversation and guy-nothing talk rolled into one weird heart-to-heart with a man I hardly know.

  I can tell he’s waiting for some kind of response. “That probably was a rough way to get sober.”

  Rough?

  Stupid, Jake.

  “No, it was the only way I could get sober,” he says thoughtfully. “I couldn’t climb out from the abyss surrounded by my family. The pressure of failing them. The pressure of failing myself. It’s a lot to carry when you can’t even deal with your own shit. I could never have done it at home. Worse, I would have used them as an excuse not to face my issues forever.”

  My body covers in prickles.

  Oh fuck, it’s like he’s been reading my mind all evening.

  “Family is a wonderful thing,” he continues sagely. “It doesn’t mean that you should go through everything in your life with them. There’s such a thing as too many cooks in the kitchen. Even when the cooks love you. And I’d say you’ve got too many cooks for a hundred kitchens right now for you and my granddaughter to work through what you need to work through. Linda and I are packing up in the morning and getting out of your hair. We’ve been here too long. Now you just have to figure out how to get rid of the rest of the cooks in your kitchen.”

  He says it so quietly, so simply, that I almost miss it and then it shoots through my body what he’s telling me.

  “I’m not hiding what I’m feeling very well, am I?”

  Jack shakes his head, his lips scrunched up together. “No, son, you’re not. And if I can see it, so can Krystal. And that’s not good.”

  I stare down at the ocean, sorting through everything he’s trying to tell me, and trying to escape the unwanted hurt from him telling me this isn’t good for Krystal.

  “I don’t know what to do, how to help her,” I say, my voice ragged. “Sometimes I want to grab her and run from here. Not forever. Long enough for us to work through some of our issues. But they’re a great family. They love her. It doesn’t seem right to shut them out after all they’ve done for us.”

  His blue eyes meet mine directly. “It’s only shutting them out if you do it that way. It’s not the decisions you make for you and Krystal that determine if they’re hurtful. It’s how you do them, son. And in this circumstance, follow your gut, Jake. If you love my granddaughter—and I know you do—it won’t steer you wrong, and Alan will understand you’re doing what you need to do.”

  A tense quiet surrounds us.

  I stare, stunned.

  Did Jack Parker really tell me to leave here with Krystal or am I hearing what I want to hear?

  “Follow my gut, huh?”

  Jack nods. “Only advice I have for a man in how he should make decisions for his family. By the way, it’s the same advice I gave to Alan once and that worked out OK.”

  I make a short laugh.

  He pats my shoulder. “Let’s go. I’m playing cards with Dillon and Brayden. Why don’t you join us?”

  He stands and I spring onto my feet. “No, sir, I can’t. I should go back to Krystal—”

  “No, no yet,” he says firmly. “You need some time for yourself. To decompress a little. Be alone with your thoughts, have a little fun, and sort through everything while you”—he grins—“lose some money to me. Maybe I can win back what I lost to Dillon.”

  I shake my head, laughing. “I hope you didn’t lose a lot.”

  “Nah, we don’t play for high stakes.”

  “Good. I couldn’t buy in if it was high stakes.”

  Jack studies me, amused. “Of all your problems, money isn’t one of them. That part of the family you should get used to.”

  My nerves are taut again. “No, that’s not the kind of man I am. My family, my responsibility.”

  Jack smiles and fixes his intense blue eyes on me. “Wouldn’t have expected you to say anything else. You and Krystal are your family. Remember that and it’s going to be all right, Jake.”

  All right?

  How can he say that?

  And fuck, why am out of nowhere feeling more hopeful for the first time in weeks?

  * * *

  I lean back in my chair. It’s after 2:00 a.m., and Brayden and Jack cut out hours ago. I should have left with them. But Jack was right. I needed this.

  “Fucker, you’re cleaning me out.”

  Dillon laughs as he rakes in the pot.

  “When you’re hot, you’re hot. What can I say? Can’t fight Lady Luck, Jake. You should have left with the skinflints.”

  I smirk and reach for my beer. “Skinflints? You mean the ones who still have money in their pockets.”

  My gaze roams the guest co
ttage—though cottage is an understatement. Dillon’s house on Alan’s property is a beautiful home.

  Probably more than I’ll be able to provide Krystal.

  My mood dips.

  Dillon makes a gun out of his finger and shoots the TV again. I turn to see the picture of Alberto Ramos on the screen. My stomach churns. Why the hell is that on? All night that fucking TV has been on, muted, with a twenty-four-hour news channel.

  Dillon holds the cards out to me to cut. “Graham is one smart motherfucker. He’s got high-level contacts all through the government and he knows how to make the system work for him. He’s got some kind of fucking pull. Three months, and the US and Mexican governments can’t stop patting themselves on the back for their successful joint operation to take down the Ramos Cartel. Fucking politicians. Won’t help so they can deny if things go bad, but first in for the press op and the credit. Same old, same old. Never changes. Fuckers.”

  I do a sloppy cut and he takes the cards back from me.

  “I noticed Alan hired a lot of new guys after Juarez. Should I be worried?”

  Dillon deals out the cards on the table. “Worried? Worried about what?”

  He sounds genuinely dismissive of my question, but my anxiety hasn’t eased up since LA.

  “Blowback. The cartel doing something. To Krystal. Any of us. Should I be worried for my family?”

  Chuckling, he scoops up his cards and starts to sort them. “Jake, they ain’t coming. Like I said, Carson is a brilliant motherfucker. No loose ends. Watch the news. The US Government did it. And every associate of Ramos in Juarez is dead. The second team in Guadalajara took care of Alberto in his sleep. Bullet to the head. Bullet through the heart. Mark my words, that one was the fucking CIA. I would have loved to have been the one to take care of him. No fast kill. I’d have taken my time with Alberto Ramos.”

  His reassurance doesn’t quite do it for me, and the mention of Ramos kicks up everything in me again.

  “So you think we’re good?”

  He tosses down a card. “We’re better than good. We’re fucking ghosts. We don’t exist. Three months. Nothing. Ain’t happening. We’re good.”