by Nancy Rue
“Babe, how could you remember that?” Chip said. “A lot has happened since then.”
“Mr. Coffey, please.” To me, Schmacker said, “Why did you notice him, Lucia? Was he doing something suspicious?”
“No.” I felt my face color. “He barely gave me the time of day when I came in, but he was all about chatting it up with Marnie.”
“That would be Margaret Oakes, right?” Agent Schmacker said. “I’ll get in touch with her again.” She tapped the picture once more. “This is interesting—because this man was not on the ground crew.”
“Then he wasn’t there,” Chip said.
“I didn’t say he wasn’t there. I just said he wasn’t on the ground crew—not officially.” She stood up and smiled at me. “I knew we’d make a good team, once we understood each other. Thank you. We could be onto something.”
“Are you still watching the house?” I said. My eyes shifted to Chip, who had turned his back to us, face pointed toward Bethany and J. Edgar.
“We are. It would help us if you would let us know of anyone new you’re expecting, particularly at night.” She, too, glanced at Chip. “The agent was about to accost your husband last night before he realized who he was.”
If you find out who he is, I wanted to say, would you let me know?
I didn’t look at Chip as I walked into the kitchen, honed in as I was on the sink full of supper dishes.
“Is she asleep?” he said.
“It didn’t take long. She had a big day.”
“She told me it was the best day of her life.”
I wanted to inform him that Bethany said that every single night now, but I turned on the water instead. There was no point in starting him off prickling under the collar when we were already headed for the ugly conversation that had been brewing in his eyes since Deidre Schmacker left. Until then, we’d had a day that had given me a vague hope. Now he was brooding again.
“Give this to her, would you?” he said. “I forgot to do it before you put her to bed.”
I shut off the faucet and turned to him. He held a small stuffed frog that bore a crown and a pair of glittered wings.
“She’ll love it,” I said. “Why don’t you give it to her in the morning?”
“Because I won’t be here.”
He picked up the duffel bag I’d apparently missed on the way in. “You’re leaving right now?” I said.
“I have a meeting early tomorrow—in Memphis.”
“On Sunday?”
“This is a major deal. It could mean the start of that new life for us.” He touched my cheek and quickly withdrew his hand. “I just hope you want it as much as I do.”
Before I could open my mouth, he put his finger to my lips. “I’m going to make it happen, Lucia. You will have everything you want—everything, I promise you that.”
He hoisted the bag onto his shoulder and went for the door, stopping only to add, “I’ll call you when I have it all together.”
I didn’t try to stop him. I just let him leave with a promise he couldn’t keep. The way he’d been with Bethany made the pain of that bite harder.
“He’ll be back,” I told Bethany when she looked for him the next morning.
She didn’t look as deflated as I thought she might. “He told me he would,” she said, eyes round. “But I wish I knew how many more wake-ups.”
Something in me said there might not be enough. Not for me.
“I have to ask you something, Porphyria,” Sully said.
He could feel her smiling on the other end of the phone line. “Is this of a spiritual or a psychological nature?”
“Neither. Did you see it on the national news when the prowler came onto the property here?”
“No. It didn’t make CNN or any of those. You told me about it. Why?”
“Just a question.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Something Lucia’s husband said has been bothering me, but never mind.” He tried to put on a grin. “How about a little Jeopardy, Dr. Ghent?”
She groaned. “I don’t guess I can stop you.”
“Great quotes for five hundred. ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.’ ”
“If I played your games, Dr. Crisp, I would say, ‘Who is selling you a bill of goods?’ ”
Sully buzzed. “I’m sorry. That’s ‘Who was Janis Joplin?’ You’ve never been very good at this, Porphyria.”
“And neither are you if you believe that jive.”
She so seldom treated him to a glimpse of her predoctoral self, he had to smile. He could tell, however, that she wasn’t smiling with him.
“So you think you’re at the end of the line,” she said.
“The end of this one. The last door I know to knock on has been slammed in my face.” He propped his feet on the balcony railing, then pulled them down. “I’ve been telling people for years: the whys will lead you to the ‘what next.’ ” He paced back into the guesthouse.
“You’ve changed your mind about that?”
“Not entirely. If I had—” He pulled an imaginary microphone up to his lips. “The next item up for bid is this beautiful ministry! It can be yours, if the price is right!”
“Mm-hm. You want to get back on track, son?”
“That’s just it.” Sully flopped into the leather chair, which swallowed him into an awkward slump. “I don’t know where the track is anymore. I just felt like I had more to do with Lynn and Hannah’s death than just not seeing what was going on in my own house. And I was so certain that feeling was coming from God.”
“Is God telling you that’s not the case?”
Sully hauled himself out of the chair. “God’s not telling me much of anything—I think I need to give up this quest I’m on.”
“If Sullivan Crisp ever gave up searching for something he meant to find, I would start making the funeral arrangements, because I would know he was deceased. And you know what I’ve told you before.”
Sully had to grin. “Until you’re dead, you’re not done.”
“You’re in a funk.”
“Is that in the DSM-IV-R ?”
“The answer is going to find you, Sully. Just get yourself ready.”
He didn’t ask how. That one he knew. When they hung up, he cupped his face in his hands and asked for the light he thought had faded to nothing.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Wesley arrived with James-Lawson before I left to pick up Bethany from school on Monday. She had news all over her face.
“If it’s all right with you, I’m going to break my own rule and plug him into a movie for a minute,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”
With a sense of dread, I turned on a DVD in the backseat for James-Lawson, while Wesley climbed into the front. He gazed at the screen in rapture before Shrek even started.
“He thinks he’s died and gone to heaven,” she said.
“Am I going to hate what you want to tell me?”
“That depends. Your sister called me today.”
I slammed on the brakes at the end of the driveway. “Why?”
“Because she was afraid to call you. She said you probably”—she glanced over her shoulder and mouthed the word hate—“her right now.”
“Do you have any more bombs to drop on me before I pull out into traffic?” I said.
“Yes. She’s ready to come home.”
I let out all my air and steered the Escalade onto the road. “When Sonia’s ready to come home and when her doctor says she’s ready are two different things, trust me.”
“You’re not going to rear-end that Lexus if I say this?”
“Say what?”
“Dr. Ukwu is the one who told her to call someone and let them know. He said she had to do it herself. It’s part of her therapy evidently.”
I pulled up to the stoplight at Gallatin Road. “Don’t take this the wrong way.”
“Don’t mean it the wrong way, and I won’t.”
“Why did
she call you?”
“Because she wants me to come back and work with her when she comes home. She didn’t come right out and say it, but I think she wanted to know if you were going to be here.”
“I don’t understand any of this.”
“I would call Dr. Ukwu if I were you.”
I swung into the school driveway. “I basically hung up on his nurse when she called to ask me to bring Sonia her pillow.”
“She’s probably afraid of you too. We all are.” Wesley smiled her magnificent smile, but I couldn’t manage as much as a lip curl.
“Now don’t start feeling guilty because you don’t want her to come home.”
“Bethany is just starting to make progress.”
“Mm-hmm. And so are you. The only person who can keep that from going away when Sonia walks in is you.”
I jockeyed the car into my place in the school pickup line and turned off the ignition. “You don’t know my sister.”
“I don’t know if you do either. She sounded like a different person from the queen that used to order everybody around like they were bees in her hive.”
I leaned against the headrest. “You think she could have changed that much in two weeks?”
“Why not?” Wesley said. “You have. But I don’t think it’s so much changing as it is discovering what was already there.” Her eyes shifted to look past me, over my shoulder. “Now, who’s this coming up here?”
I turned to my window to see a blonde woman, Louis Vuitton bag hanging from her shoulder, jeweled fingers pulling off her Dior sunglasses. Georgia. Or was it Francesca? I never had been able to tell them apart.
Whichever one it was started to talk even before I opened the window.
“Lucia, honey,” she said.
Francesca. Georgia called every woman girl.
“You look great,” she oozed on. “Have you lost weight? Not that you needed to. Lose any more and you’ll be too thin.”
Give it up, Francesca. Your foot is too far down your throat as it is.
She pushed the sunglasses to the top of her head. Her eyes grew serious. “How is Sonia?”
How was I supposed to answer that?
“I don’t have a right to ask,” Francesca said. “We sort of abandoned her after that day with the boys and all.”
When I didn’t say anything, she went on, words tumbling out as if she’d been keeping them in a space too small for them.
“I can’t speak for Georgia, but I just didn’t know what to say to Sonia after a while. It was like she wasn’t doing anything to help herself, and that didn’t seem like what I always thought she believed in. I guess I had it wrong, you know, but I just couldn’t sit there and agree that the doctors and the physical therapists and everybody was wrong, and she was the only one who knew anything.”
She put her hand briefly to her mouth, nails shiny in the sun.
“I don’t know if I should be saying this to you. I thought you’d get it, because it didn’t seem to me like you supported that from the beginning.” She put her hand on my arm. “I would just love to sit down with you sometime and hear about your faith walk. After this thing with Sonia, I’m so confused about God right now, and you just seem to have it together.”
“Are you serious?” I wanted to clap my hand over my mouth, but it was no use. I couldn’t un-ring the bell.
“I am serious,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re still here for Sonia. If there is anything, anything at all that I can do, you’ll call me, won’t you? And, again, I can’t speak for Georgia.”
She gave me a deep look, as if I were supposed to get something she wasn’t saying. I was too stunned to absorb any of it.
“Thank you,” I said.
She leaned in and kissed me on the cheek and saw Wesley at the same time. Her arm reached past me.
“Francesca Christie. I’m sorry to interrupt—ya’ll looked like you were having a good girl talk.” Her hand slid back to my arm. “I miss that. Please call me, Lucia.”
I watched in a trance as her kitten heels tapped across the parking lot.
“You never told me about her,” Wesley said.
“Yes, I did. She was one of the Designing Women who came to the hospital in Philly.”
“Huh.”
“What ‘huh’?”
“She seemed pretty real to me—not the package—I’m talking about what she said.”
I turned to face her. “Do you think she was genuine?”
“What do you think?”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I want to believe she meant that. She seems more sincere.”
“She seems mixed-up.” Wesley sniffed. “I’ll take that over plastic any day.”
“I see Bethany!” James-Lawson cried. “She’s right there!”
“He is so in love with her,” Wesley said. “We might as well just start planning the wedding right now.”
I smiled at that, and at the sight of my niece bounding toward the Escalade with her Beauty and the Beast backpack flying out behind her. Miss Richardson caught my eye and waved, the signal that we’d made the handover safely. I felt a sharp pang as Bethany climbed into the backseat with James-Lawson. Handing her over to Sonia wouldn’t be this easy.
GH
I prepared as if we were marshaling troops for Gettysburg.
I contacted Dr. Ukwu, who assured me Sonia was ready for her outpatient treatment, of which her work with Wesley would be an important part. She’d done well with physical therapy in the hospital and was able to take care of herself “rather nicely.” I was glad to live in a world where someone still said “rather nicely,” but I couldn’t quite apply it to my sister yet.
The rental company came and picked up the hospital bed, and the cleaning folks gave the house a sprucing up. The landscape people mowed the lawn, but they said someone else had already done a great job with the weeding and the edging. It seemed that Dr. Crisp had more than one talent.
I hit him up for his other one the night before Sonia came home. We had our session in the breakfast nook, even though I longed to be out by my river. Agent Schmacker called me daily to assure me they were doing everything they could to track down Pencil Whiskers Garrison, but I wasn’t taking a chance by leaving Bethany in the house alone.
Sullivan propped one foot up on the booth seat, and I knew we were going straight for the hard questions.
“So what do we need to talk about before Sonia comes home tomorrow?” he said.
“You could be collecting Social Security before we cover all that,” I said.
He grinned his one-corner-at-a-time grin. “Just hit the high points.”
Wishing I’d written out a list, I studied the window.
“For one thing, Dr. Ukwu and Wesley are both saying Sonia’s supposed to take care of herself, but I’m having a hard time believing she won’t expect me to just fall right back into being her life-waitress.”
“What if she does?”
“I won’t do it.”
“Ding-ding.”
“But I don’t think she’ll know what to do with that.”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
“But if I cross her, she’s liable to kick me out, and then what happens to Bethany? Which is another thing. I tell her that her mom is coming home, and she doesn’t even respond.”
“That is pretty unusual. Most children adore their parents, even if they abuse them. From what you’ve told me, Bethany doesn’t even seem to acknowledge that Sonia exists.”
“I think Bethany’s afraid of her,” I said. My mouth went dry, the way it did every time I let myself visit this.
“That wouldn’t surprise me.” Sullivan put his other foot up on the bench.
We were going in.
“Let’s try this,” he said. “What do you do when you’re afraid?”
“Run.”
“Run how?”
I studied the tabletop, the window, the palms of my hands. Sullivan hummed the Jeopardy theme.<
br />
“Okay—I bury whatever I’m afraid of. Pretend it isn’t there.”
“Exactly. You think Bethany could be doing the same thing?”
“I do. So what do I do with that?”
“What are you doing with yourself now?”
“I’m not going to sit her down and try to get her to dig into her past with a little shovel.”
“No—but you could give her permission to feel whatever she’s feeling. That’s what you did for yourself in our last session.”
I closed my eyes. “You were wrong about one thing.”
“Only one?”
“You said I was going to stop crying, but I haven’t. Every morning after I take Bethany to school I’m down by the river, bawling my eyes out to Harry the Heron.”
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” he said.
“Like I’m being turned inside out, actually.” Even now my throat ached.
Sullivan tilted his head. “I’m sorry life has brought you this much pain. But looking at it, talking to it—can you see what that’s doing for you?”
I shook my head.
“You said it yourself. When Sonia comes home, you aren’t going to be able to be her handmaiden. That isn’t just a rational decision. That comes from learning to honor your own feelings and seeing yourself as a deserving person.”
He seemed to consider something in my face before he went on.
“How do you think that might play out in your marriage? Have you given any thought to that?”
Only every waking moment when I wasn’t gnawing on everything else.
“Care to share?” he said.
“I don’t have it figured out yet,” I said.
I got a buzz for that.
“What?” I said.
“You don’t have to come here with everything figured out,” he said. “I’d feel pretty useless.” He spread his hands on the table. “This is the place where we put it out there and discover the answers together, remember?”
“I’m not used to that,” I said.
“None of us sorts it all out alone.”
“I thought I had to.”
He let his smile dawn slowly. “I have a great game show for that, but let’s get back to you and Chip. Any thoughts you want to put on the table?”
“He’s promising me the moon, and at first I thought I didn’t want it. But then I saw him with Bethany, and he was so—I don’t know. He was like a real father.” I could feel my throat thickening. “Part of me hates him even more because I see what could have been, and part of me wants to give him a chance and try to adopt— only who’s going to give a child to a convicted felon?”