by Nancy Rue
I wasn’t. The minute I got outside the cover, I crabbed my way across the platform and leaped to the bigger boat, setting the smaller one rocking like a cradle. I heard Chip swear as I tore at the latch on a glass door and slid it open. Shiny teak and white leather blinded me like a spotlight in my face, and I knew in that flash where Sonia’s money had gone. How—when—it didn’t matter. I called out Bethany’s name as I hurled myself through the cabin, yanking open cabinets with brass latches on the way.
“Bethany! Bethany—are you here? It’s Aunt Lucia Mom!”
The boat moved sideways, and for an awful moment I thought we were under way, until Chip’s voice cut me from the door.
“Lucia—stop!”
He swore at me again, but I plunged ahead and pulled open a long hatch, so hard I felt a muscle tear in my shoulder. I stumbled forward into a bed that filled a cabin. Nestled into its satin pillows was a round child, curled into a motionless ball.
“Bethany!” I screamed.
She didn’t move. Chip’s arm came around my throat and jammed me against him.
“What did you do to her? Chip—did you kill her? Did you kill this baby too?”
“Shut up, Lucia! Shut up!”
His arm tightened at my neck and cut off my words and my breath. I tore at his skin and kicked until the black in my eyes flecked the cabin.
“Help us!” I screamed into my chest. “Help us!”
Chip’s arm left my neck with a jerk, and I slithered to the bed. Before I could crawl to the too-still form on the pillows, Chip was on top of me, tearing at my shirt.
“Are you wearing a wire?” he shouted. His hand found the microphone, and he ripped it off, tape, flesh, and all. With his other hand he pinned me to the bed. “You too? You betrayed me too?”
I opened my mouth. Beside me Bethany stirred.
She was still alive.
That was the only reason I gave Chip one more lie. “They made me, Chip,” I said. “Agent Schmuck, right?”
He went still.
“I just wanted to make sure you had Bethany. I knew she’d be safe with you.”
“You’re lying—just like your sister. Just like all of them.”
He got to his knees and pushed the wires into my face. With a force that could only come from a mother bear, I brought up my knee and slammed it into his gut. With a yelp he rolled to the side and clutched his arms around himself. I snatched Bethany into my arms and staggered with her out of the cabin, through the galley, eyes on the glass door. Chip had left it open. I just had to get through it and they would see me—
But I only got as far as the stern platform when I heard Chip storming behind me.
“Help!” I screamed. “Help us!”
The cove answered with silence.
“Bethie—wake up, baby—wake up.”
Bethany stirred again in my arms, but not enough. Chip flailed for me. As his hand caught my sleeve, I pulled her against my chest.
“We’re going swimming, Bethie,” I said. And with her dead weight heavy in my arms, I plunged over the side. As we sank below the surface, I could still hear Chip raving. But at least I knew he wouldn’t come after me.
By the time we came up, yards away from the yacht, Bethany kicked and grabbed. Her voice was drug-thick as she screamed.
“Bethie, it’s okay!” I shouted to her. “I won’t let you go—remember— I’m your BFF! I won’t let you go.”
I believed in miracles at that moment, because she went limp in my arms.
“Good girl,” I said. “I won’t let you go.”
“Can we float?” she said.
I didn’t have enough air to answer her, but my nod seemed to be all she needed. Sleepily she rolled onto her back, and I held on. Beyond us a motor roared to life, and I whipped my head around in fear. But it wasn’t the yacht. It was a boat with a guiding light easing into the mouth of the cove—with a squarish woman on its bow.
“Here! Over here!” I shouted with the last of my breath. “It’s Agent Schmacker, Bethany—we’re okay!”
Bethany just smiled. “I hope she brought J. Edgar,” she said.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Sonia finally fell asleep, just as Bethany was waking up. The sun laughed through the rounded part of her window and teased at both their faces. I watched from the futon as Sonia’s scarred one turned from it in exhaustion, and Bethany’s cherubic one met it in sleepy glee.
“Aunt Lucia Mom?” she whispered.
“Yes, Bethie.”
“I’m staying home now, right?”
I sat up and tugged at a dark curl and assured her she was—just as her mother and I had every time she’d awakened in the night with a startled cry.
“And you’re not going away, right?”
That was a question I could only partially answer. At 2:00 AM Sonia had asked me to stay—as her sister, her friend, her baby girl’s Aunt Lucia Mom. I didn’t know if in the harsh realizations of the day the offer would still stand. There was so much for us to sort out. A lifetime of tangles.
“Not today,” I said. “Shall we let your mom sleep and go get some breakfast?”
“May I look at her?”
I stopped halfway up from the futon. “You mean your mom?”
She nodded shyly. It came to me that she had not seen Sonia in the daylight in weeks. Since before she knew she was allowed to see her “without her face.”
“Do you want to look at her?” I said.
Again she nodded.
“Then you go right ahead,” I said.
Bethany gave me one more blue-eyed look before she leaned over her mother and pulled the covers from her neck. I held my breath. Had we come as far as I dreamed we had?
She didn’t say a word. Like the rest of us, perhaps she could find no words for what she saw. But as I watched, she unfolded her chubby fingers from a pink fist and reached for Sonia’s cheek. With a touch so light it could have been an angel’s, she ran her finger along a rosy, raised scar. And then with her little red bow of a mouth, she kissed it.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I had just seen God.
Harry the Heron was guarding our river when I walked out onto the dock. He didn’t lift himself from his perch, and I was grateful for that. I could use his wise, quiet company.
I’d left Sonia and Bethany discovering each other in the Princess Room.
Francesca had finally gone home, looking as drained and normal as the rest of us. When she said, “I’ll call you, Lucia,” I hoped she would.
Though Wesley phoned hourly, she was at her house, hugging James-Lawson at regular intervals. She said she was about to get on his last nerve.
Deidre and her team were gone until tomorrow, when the debriefing would begin again. For now they were satisfied with Chip’s confession and had assured me that he would never see a day outside a prison. I hadn’t even begun to process that yet.
I couldn’t do it alone. Sullivan Crisp would help me for a while longer, he’d said. But he had to move on. He would make sure I had someone I could connect with. When he’d left for the guesthouse at dusk, he’d turned to me and grinned the one-side-at-a-time smile.
“I know you’re in pain,” he said. “But, Lucia, I hope you keep dancing with the stars.”
I tilted my head back and looked for the stars now. A few were venturing into the evening sky, shyly at first, then twinkling with confidence.
“I want to dance, God,” I whispered. “But I don’t have a partner.”
It came at me like a fist, that thought, but I thrust my arm up to ward it off. I hadn’t had a partner for a long time. Maybe Chip had never been one. I had no tears for him. I had only a sudden, aching loneliness, and I closed my eyes and let myself sway with it.
“You always were a wonderful dancer.”
I turned and watched the once-strong silhouette make its bulky way toward me on the dock.
“I wish you’d take it up again,” Dad said when he reached me.
“I thin
k I’ve started to,” I said.
“What made you ever stop?”
“I guess I had the wrong partner,” I said.
He grunted as only a disgruntled Italian father can do. “You were doin’ the wrong dance,” he said.
I looked at the life-weathered face, dimming with age and the twilight. “You were wrong, Dad,” I said.
“You don’t have to tell me that.”
“No, you were wrong when you said I married you. You are nothing like Chip.”
His head ducked. “Thank you for saying that.”
“I think you just did what all we Brocacinis did. We were all afraid to be who we were, and we ended up doing somebody else’s dance.” I nodded at Harry, who still stood alone on his misplaced tree. “I think when you do that, you always end up dancing alone.”
“You got too much love in you for that, Lucia Marie.”
The pain rose in my chest again, and I rubbed at it with my hands. “I don’t know where to dance yet, Dad,” I said. “Or with who.”
He watched me for a moment, hands parked in his pockets, before he pulled them out and held one toward me. “Will you start with me, Lucia Marie?” he said. “Because I would love to dance with my daughter.”
And so, with the stars winking on and Harry the Heron watching with envy, I danced with my father by the water. Not like a fawn. Like a woman whose rhythm was merely Dear God—dear God.
GH
GH “I’m going to miss you around here, Dr. Crisp,” Porphyria said.
Sully grinned at her. “You know what they say about houseguests: after three months, they start to smell.”
Porphyria smiled back at him, sunlight freckling her face through the leaves that canopied her veranda. “I think the saying is three days.”
“Three months feels like three days with you.” Sully swallowed the sweet thickness that had been gathering in his throat all morning as he packed. “I came here a broken man. You’ve helped me heal.”
“Mmm—I think it was the good Lord and you this last month, Sully.”
“It was the loneliest month of my life.” Sully took a sip from the glass she’d put in front of him, carefully avoiding the mint leaf that sprang up between the ice cubes. That must have been the piece he’d missed in his attempts to make sweet tea like hers.
“Does that mean the Lord alone is not enough?” she said.
Sully saw the gleam in her child-wise eyes.
“It means the Lord shows up in people you wouldn’t expect Him to latch onto. And if you aren’t paying attention, you’re going to miss them. And Him.”
She nodded over her own tea glass. She was satisfied with him.
“So you’re ready for the world again,” she said.
“I don’t know if the world’s ready for me.”
“Oh, I think the world is ready for another Healing Choice clinic. And whatever else you’re going to stir up out there.”
Sully set his glass on the table and leaned on his knees. “There is one thing I want to run by you before I go.”
“You make it sound like you’re never coming back. I do have a phone.”
The thickness threatened to rise. “There is no substitute for talking face-to-face with Porphyria Ghent,” he said. “I can’t see your soul over the telephone.”
She closed her eyes and nodded.
“I’m thinking of looking for Belinda Cox,” Sully said. “You remember, she was Lynn’s so-called counselor.”
“You can’t throw her in the Cumberland, Sully. They’ll put you in jail for that.”
“She’s the one who should be in jail if she’s still practicing therapy. I’m not doing it out of vengeance, Porphyria. I’ve seen what good that does.”
“So you have.”
“I just don’t want anyone else to suffer what my family has—and what Sonia’s family has—because of misguided dogma.”
“You know you could have a big battle ahead of you,” Porphyria said. “It won’t be easy to prove she’s unfit for the job.”
Sully tried to grin. “When have I ever gone after anything easy, Porphyria?”
“Never since I’ve known you.” She bathed his face with a long look. “Just keep your eyes on the prize, Sullivan,” she said. “The real prize.”
“I’ll do that.”
She stood up and put a warm, brown hand on his shoulder. “Are you leaving now?”
“I just want to do my last podcast before I go.” Sully covered her hand with his. “How can I thank you, Porphyria?”
“By coming back to share your wisdom with me,” she said. “The Lord be with you, my friend.”
The thickness crept into his voice. “And also with you,” he said.
When she was gone, Sullivan picked up the microphone and clicked Record. He let the birds take the first few seconds with their chatter before he joined them.
“Part Last of What I Know to Be True,” he said. “God knows suffering, not because He created it, but because He experiences it with us. I know this as well as I know the piercing, biting, tearing pain of loss.”
Sully tilted his face to the sun. “It is also true that although God knows suffering, He doesn’t explain it. I waited and searched and beat myself up for that, and I know now that it just flat-out doesn’t happen. God only walks us through it and out into a place where we can once again be free.
“He does this not because we believe some rigid this or that about Him. He does it because He believes in us. He doesn’t ask us to go out into the world telling people why they suffer. Even if we knew why, it wouldn’t hurt any less. What we need to know is how to help each other live with it, and live well.” Sully felt the sweet thickness rise, and he let it come. “This I know as well as I know the sobbing, hugging, tea-pouring comfort of love,” he said. “I have seen it. I will seek it every day of the life I have left. That, my fellow sufferers, is what I know to be true.”
Sully let the birds agree before he clicked Stop.
But that wasn’t the end.
That, he knew, was the beginning.
Ding-ding-ding, Dr. Crisp. Ding-ding.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
No one reads the acknowledgements unless he expects to find his name among the thanked, but in case you’re the exception, please join us in our appreciation for the help of these generous people:
• Dr. Jeffery Guy, burn surgeon at Vanderbilt University Regional Burn Center, who gave hours of his valuable time, making sure we got it right. We hope you’re pleased, Dr. Guy.
• Dan Ramage, LCSW, also at the burn center, who discussed Sonia with all the compassion he would give a nonfictional patient.
• The staff in the Nashville Room at the Nashville Public Library, who helped uncover more than we ever needed to know about the Shelby Street Bridge. We used it all.
• Carrie Daughtrey, Assistant U.S. Attorney, who kept us from depending on Law and Order and Without a Trace as primary legal sources. Sorry, Carrie, but we just couldn’t follow your advice about leaving J. Edgar Pug out of the story.
• Marnie Huff, Margaret Huff Mediation, Nashville, who led us to Carrie and provided expertise of her own. If we misrepresent the justice system, it’s through no fault of theirs.
• Dr. Dale McElhinney, Doctor of Psychology, whose painstaking attention to Sullivan Crisp keeps us from setting the practice of psychotherapy back fifty years—and keeps it moving forward.
• The brave, honest participants in Lose It for Life, especially counselor Elisa Marshall, and the God’s Girls: Jennifer, Melissa, Nancy, Linda, Ethel, Judy, and Peggy. Their courageous sharing brought Lucia to life.
• Sharon Hurt, Jefferson Street United Merchants Partnership, Nashville, who breathed into Wesley and made her real.
• Ken Feist, without whom we could never have gotten that plane off the ground, or crashed it, for that matter. Your attention to detail made the scene all too real.
• Luke Schurter, FF/EMT-P, who got us from the burning plane to the hosp
ital. Space limitations wouldn’t allow us to include all you taught us, Luke, but you gave us the voice of authority.
• Joyce Mocerro, who showed us the side of Philadelphia we needed to see.
• Nancy Feist, Linda Knause, Jennifer Thomas, and Melissa Craig, who read dreadful first drafts and steered us in the right direction.
• Amanda Bostic, our editor, who has no business being so smart and savvy and insightful at her tender age.
• L.B. Norton, our line editor, who is as good at putting up with whining as she is at tightening a manuscript.
• Marijean Rue, who gave us a peek at the Vanderbilt Divinity School—and a taste of SATCO.
• Jim Rue, who provided countless boat rides for viewing Sonia’s house and gave her story many of its twists, as he so often does. Thank you, Jimmy, for being so un-Chip-like.
• Nan Allison, Nutrition Consulting, who models the kind of gentle, nurturing approach Sully uses with Lucia.
• Barbara Moss, Partner, Stites & Harbison, Nashville, PLLC, who shared both her professional expertise and her personal story, and inspired Lucia’s courage.
• The Reverend Gordon Peerman, whose sermon on suffering brought Sully’s struggles into perspective and shaped his podcasts. God bless you, Gordon.
God bless you all.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
You may answer the following questions if you promise not to treat them like a class assignment. These are provided in case you want springboards for thought and/or discussion. Otherwise, simply enjoy the story with our blessing.
Nancy Rue and Steve Arterburn
About Faith
1. Sully describes Sonia’s idea of faith as “toxic.” Do you agree? Do you see that concept applied in real life situations? With what results?
2. Do you think Sonia’s faith was ever real? How did it disintegrate? What are her chances of gaining a truer perspective?
3. Can you follow the thread of Lucia’s faith as it grows from virtually nonexistent to something her whole family can now stand on?