by Nancy Rue
He hadn’t, he remembered as he cruised through the Web site. A small group of them went that last year he was working on his master’s. Right—the three couples had scraped together enough to rent a cabin for two or three days of spring break.
He couldn’t shake loose the names of the couple from Ukraine, but he did remember them all in front of a fireplace. Tom stoked the fire, and Lynn whispered to Sully that he was making it too hot. If he could remember that detail, come on, there had to be more.
Sully got up from the computer and paced the room that became too small. There was something . . .
Lynn talking. Lynn saying . . .
“I’m the only one here without a college degree.”
It was like picking one tiny hole in a water balloon. That was all it took for the whole thing to burst out.
“And your point is?” Anna had said.
Everyone else followed suit. Nobody cared. But Lynn wouldn’t let it go. It came up in every conversation after that.
When it was time to eat, she wouldn’t let anyone else cook. Shooed Anna and—what was that woman’s name? Ursula? Chased them out of the kitchen like a hen. Said smart women shouldn’t waste time at the stove.
When they sat down to eat, she talked about what novels were selling at Davis-Kidd, the bookstore she managed, while the rest of them discussed Paul Tillich. She was the first one to point out how much more sophisticated their reading material was.
They had all hiked the short trail from the top of the plateau down to the base of the gorge to get access to the waterfall’s plunge pool, and they’d watched in awe as the water shook a boulder loose and sent it tumbling like a small toy.
“I can’t believe I ever wasted a moment wondering whether the resurrection actually happened,” Sully could hear himself saying. “If God can move that rock, why couldn’t He move the stone away from the tomb?”
“You have wondered that, Sully?” his Ukrainian friend said.
Clyde, was it? His accent had sharpened with somewhat judgmental surprise, Sully remembered now. The guy was in the ministry track, and he and Sully had several friendly debates about what should be questioned and what should be left alone.
“Of course he has,” Tom said. “He wonders if Mary was actually a virgin. Why shouldn’t he wonder that?”
A discussion had ensued, during which Lynn insisted on giving him a neck rub. Later, when they were alone, she asked Sully if he was upset because his friends had given him a hard time. No, he was upset because she fawned over him in front of his fellow scholars. He didn’t tell her that, did he?
Sully stopped in front of the computer and stared at the picture. They’d been standing on the plateau during that conversation, watching a raccoon fish below in a patch of moonlight. It was a romantic venue where he should have taken her up on that neck rub, told her he didn’t care if she read Danielle Steele instead of systematic theology. Did he do that?
He scratched his hand through his hair. It stabbed at him that he couldn’t remember what he did. Was she that inconsequential to him at that point? Was that why she didn’t want to live? Anna said he was all she had cared about.
“Come on, man,” he said out loud. “You’re going to drive yourself crazy.”
When he knocked the laptop sideways at the tap on the door, he was convinced he was losing his grip.
He tried not to look too terribly insane as he opened the door. “I hope I’m not interrupting,” Lucia said, making an obvious effort to look him in the eye. “It sounded like you were on the phone.”
“You’re fine,” he said.
“I don’t know about that,” she said. “But I want to be.”
He watched her throat work, and he knew he was seeing a woman swallow her pride.
“Will you please help me?” she said.
Sully nodded, enough times to get control of his voice. Still, it was thick when he said, “I’ll meet you tonight.”
Sullivan was out by the river early, face in his hands. I knew he was praying, but it always looked so desperate to me somehow. Maybe that was how you were supposed to do it—like you actually believed you’d get an answer.
Bethany had been asleep for an hour. I had worn her out, not only buying everything that even remotely suggested a princess, but by making her try on school uniforms and pick out supplies and listen to me trying to convince her that this thing called school was special. When I tucked her in, I told her there were only three more wake-ups before she got to go be a big first grader—and come home every day.
I had a few minutes before I was supposed to meet with Sullivan, and I had to get through them without changing my mind.
I went resolutely into Sonia’s office to get my Sullivan Crisp folder, still next to three envelopes I’d separated from the rest, now staring at me accusingly. They were the hate mail, the kind of letters Sonia told Deidre Schmacker she never received. Either she had never gotten anything like them before the plane crash or she had out-and-out lied, and frankly I didn’t know which to believe. At least I only had two options to choose from: tell Special Agent Schmacker, or don’t.
At the corner of the desk, I’d left a nest of things people had sent Sonia—coupons for the Christian bookstore, a vial of water from the Jordan River, a jar of burn ointment. They were at once touching and absurd, and I decided I could throw them away without feeling guilty. Just as I was about to dump them into the wastebasket, I saw a crayoned drawing at the bottom. Interesting. All the rest of Bethany’s artwork hung on the refrigerator, the deep freeze, the washer, and any other large appliance I could attach a magnet to.
I lifted it out and studied it. It was one of Bethany’s better efforts, embellished with detail I could imagine going on while her pink tongue worked at the corner of her mouth.
The figure drawn in peach crayon was obviously female, with a mass of black curls and eyelash-fringed blue eyes that took up half the face’s circle. She wore black, but she didn’t look funereal. The bright red lips were drawn as a heart-shaped smile.
I held it out to get the long view. Sonia? No. Sonia’s hair wasn’t curly. And the only person around here who wore black was me.
“Can I draw you?” Bethany had said to me.
I eased the wrinkles out of the paper and pawed through the drawer for a thumbtack. I was still hunting when the doorbell rang. I picked up the drawing and my Sullivan folder and glanced at my watch as I made my way to the foyer. Who the Sam Hill was dropping in at eight PM?
You shouldn’t talk to strangers, Bethany had told me, and the man on the doorstep definitely fell into that category. He was stocky and pockmarked, with skin the color of a Florida sunburn. He all but breathed fire.
“I need to talk to Lucia Coffey,” he said, “like, now.”
Sullivan chose that moment to lope up onto the porch. He gave the man, whose fists were now doubled, a long survey and eased his way between us.
“What’s this about? You look a little worked up, my friend.”
The guy shoved his fists into the pockets of a pair of dress slacks that rode below his protruding belly.
“Look, I’m fired up,” he said, “but I’m not here to make trouble. I just need to talk to Lucia Coffey.” He looked past Sullivan at me. “I’m Patrick Fargason.”
“Are you Sonia’s accountant?” I said.
“Yeah. And I got something to say.”
Although he looked more like WWE in a necktie than a CPA, I nodded at Sullivan, who stepped aside and let the man pass, but his eyes never left him.
“This is private,” the man said.
“I’d rather he stayed,” I said.
Sullivan, to my relief, didn’t look like he was going anywhere anyway.
“Is there something wrong with Sonia’s finances?” I said.
“Yeah, and I’ve already turned that over to her lawyer. There’s money missing—and don’t start in on me. I had nothing to do with it. If I had, I wouldn’t have pointed it out to him, now, would I?” Hi
s face went a deeper red, if that was possible.
“I wasn’t accusing you of anything,” I said.
“No, you people are too busy focusing on my brother.”
“Your brother?” I felt my face knot up. “Who’s your brother?”
“What, are you new?”
“As a matter of fact, I am. I had nothing to do with my sister’s business until her accident.”
He jerked his neck. “Oh. Then maybe you don’t know.” Some of the redness slid from his face. “Hudson Fargason,” he said. “He was Sonia’s chef.”
I exchanged glances with Sullivan.
“The FBI’s at my brother’s door, accusing him of having something to do with her ‘accident.’ ” Patrick made quotation marks with his fingers. “The biggest explosion he ever made was lighting a baked Alaska, but they won’t leave him alone. He got fired from Fleming’s because they harassed him on the job. Lost the best gig in town, all because of that—”
“Lucia, do you mind?” Sullivan said.
“Go for it,” I said.
He folded his arms as if he and Patrick were about to discuss the upcoming NFL season. “Exactly what do you want Lucia to do? It’s not like she has a whole lot of influence with the FBI.”
“She has influence with her sister, doesn’t she?” Patrick bulleted his eyes into me. “I want you to tell her to back off on the accusations.”
“O-oh. I see where you’re coming from. But Lucia can tell you that’s not what’s going on.”
I shook my head. “Sonia told them Hudson had no reason to hurt her. She said she—” I pawed through my memory. “She said she accepted him when no one else did.”
Patrick hissed. “Accepted him my backside. She fired him because he was gay.”
I blinked at him.
“She hates homosexuals. She says it on her CDs. No, wait, she doesn’t hate them, she hates their ‘sin.’ ” The quotation mark fingers came out again. “You’ll never convince me she didn’t find out and fire him because of it. How would that make her look, having a chef who was a sinner?”
Patrick jabbed a finger toward me, and Sullivan edged forward.
“She ruined my brother’s life,” he said. “He lives to cook, and now, because of this whole investigation thing, he can’t get a job flipping burgers at Hardee’s in this town.” He drove his index finger through the air again. “She’ll pay for this. Everything she ever preached about is gonna come right back in her face.” He gave the hard laugh again. “What’s left of it.”
“You need to leave,” I said.
“Going. Like I said, I got everything up-to-date, all the bills paid and the accounts balanced.” He laughed harshly. “Except for the $350,000 that’s missing. As of today, I quit. I’ve turned everything over to her lawyer—if you want to know more, contact him.”
“No,” I said. “I want nothing to do with it.”
But as he made his bristly way out the door, I felt deeper into it than ever.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Do you need a minute?” Sully said. “That was pretty disturbing.”
Lucia gripped the arms of the Adirondack like it was about to take flight with her in it. “It’s just so surreal. It’s like something you see on CNN.”
“It is something you see on CNN. But I know what you mean. I’m starting to feel like Cato Kaelin.”
“Who? Oh—you mean O. J. Simpson’s houseguest?” She shook her head. “I don’t know what that makes me.”
“It makes you somebody who has a right to be pretty shaken up by this whole thing. You want to process it a little?”
“No.” Lucia pressed the ever-present folder to her chest. “I want to talk about what you saw last night, in the kitchen, before I chicken out.”
A lump for her formed in Sully’s throat.
“What you saw . . .” she said. “I go for weeks without doing it, and then something happens, and I have to eat until I don’t feel anything but sick and gross and disgusting. Which is why I look the way I do, but I don’t care about that—what I care about is that when I look at Bethany, I see me, and I don’t want her to live this way.”
Lucia breathed hard, and Sully let her catch up to herself while he assembled his next words like the precise instruments they had to be. She was so close to getting it, but the part she didn’t want to see could cut her open if he weren’t careful.
“Do you want you to live this way?” he said.
She didn’t look at him. “I said I didn’t care about the way I look.”
“It’s not about how you look; it’s about how you live. Do you want to live this way, Lucia?”
He waited, chest aching. It was up to her, and to watch her decide was excruciating. If she couldn’t go there, they were done.
“I hate it,” she said.
“You hate what?”
“I hate my life.”
Sully hardly dared to breathe. “Ding-ding-ding, Lucia,” he whispered.
She looked at him, blue eyes startled.
“Now we can begin.”
Lucia gave a tiny, frightened nod. She’d taken a huge step into a land where she couldn’t yet trust the ground, Sully knew. He had to make it safe for her.
“Usually I try to let a person I’m working with find all the answers for herself,” he said, “but I’m going to tell you one thing that I think is true, and you can tell me if you agree.”
“Okay,” she said. She looked away.
“You have buried some things, some very hard things, deep inside you where you won’t have to feel them. How am I doing so far?”
She nodded again.
“But they aren’t dead things. They’re still alive, and because you’ve buried them alive, you have to feed them.”
“Because if I don’t, they come out and scream at me.”
“Ding-ding again,” Sully said softly. “That screaming, what does it feel like for you?”
“Like I’m going to explode. Like if I don’t get myself numb, I’m going to burst open and land like confetti all over the place.”
“And how do you get numb?”
She finally looked at him. “I eat,” she said.
Sully let himself grin. “If I ding you any more, I’m going to wear out my bell.”
“I don’t feel like much of a winner.”
“Why not? These are great insights. You’re wonderful at this.”
“Because I know you’re going to tell me I need to dig up what’s buried in there, and I don’t want to do that.”
“Nobody wants to do it, any more than they want to have an appendectomy. It’s painful.”
“That’s comforting.”
“But I’ll promise you something.” Sully put his hand on his chest. “I will try my hardest to keep it from hurting any more than it has to. We’re not going to just dig things up and let them scream at you. We’re going to find out what they have to say, and then we’ll know what to do with them so you don’t have to keep stuffing them down and feeding them.”
Sully leaned back and let her sit with that. She didn’t sit for long.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s get started.”
She had the first flicker of hope in her eyes, and Sully hated to chance snuffing it out. But one more thing had to be said.
He tilted forward again. “I want you to promise yourself something, too, Lucia.”
“What?” she said.
“I want you to promise yourself that you will do this for yourself— not just for Bethany, but for Lucia. Whatever you do for the I we talked about last time will become part of the we—you and Bethany and whoever else you love in your life. Can you promise yourself that?”
She didn’t answer. Instead she opened the folder she hadn’t let go of since she sat down and pulled out a wrinkled sheet of paper, which she looked at with the kind of tenderness reserved for precious objects.
“This is a drawing Bethany did of me,” she said.
“Can I have a look?”
&nb
sp; She handed it to him, and Sully grinned at it.
“It looks just like you. Really.”
“It took me five minutes to figure out it was me.”
“Why?” Sully said.
“Because . . .” She sucked in air. “This person isn’t fat.”
“I think I know why that is.”
“Why?”
“Because when Bethany looks at you, she doesn’t see fat. She sees beauty.”
“I need to have her eyes checked.”
“Aw—your first buzzzzz of the session!” Sully said.
She put her hand up. “Okay—if that’s what she sees, it must be in there somewhere. So I’ll try to do this for me. I’ll try—that’s all I can promise myself.”
“Ding-ding,” he said.
“So how do I start digging?”
“We’ll do that in our next session. Before then I want you to explore a little Game Show Theology.”
She groaned. “I knew it. More Family Feud.”
“No,” he said. “Dancing with the Stars.”
She stopped digging in her pocket for her pen.
“How long has it been since you really danced?” Sully said.
“High school.”
He was surprised it had been that recently. “What did it feel like? Do you remember?”
“I was the only freshman to make the dance team. Of course, I went on a Tab diet that summer—do you remember Tab?”
“Wasn’t that a diet soda? A gross one?”
“Yeah, and I practiced blisters onto my feet, but I made it. Rehearsals and performances kept me out of the house, except when I was doing my housework.”
“Were your mother and Sonia still on the road?”
“No. My mother had to have Sonia tested because she homeschooled her, and they found out she was two grade levels behind. That was the one time my father put his foot down and made her enroll Sonia in school.” Lucia rolled her eyes. “Of course, Mother became the most involved parent in PTA history, so she barely noticed I wasn’t around that much.”
“And since it was a school activity, nobody had to pay for lessons.”
“Oh, it was expensive.” She looked a little sheepish.