Healing Stones (15 page)

“He lost his twin brother. Eddie. Since then, he's never seemed the same.”

“Because he isn't the same.”

She finally pulled her eyes up to his. It was shame he was seeing, but it was murky now, as if something else were surfacing too, and muddying its color.

“It's not like he's a different person,” Demi said. “It's like he's not a person at all.”

Sully winced.

“The counselor who talked to all the wives told us it was survivor guilt.” Her voice grew clearer, as if she were in territory she knew. “Almost three thousand people died, 343 of them firefighters, and the ones that made it couldn't help feeling it was their fault—why weren't they taken?” Her eyes flinched. “For some it helped that eighteen thousand people did survive, but that didn't do it for Rich. I mean, he lost his brother.”

She glanced at Sully. He nodded her on.

“The thing is, Eddie only became a firefighter because Rich did, and because their father was one. It might have been in his blood, but it wasn't in his soul.” Her voice thickened like a sauce. “That's what he used to say.”

“Did Rich go to therapy?” Sully said.

She shook her head. “He wouldn't. I tried everything, short of threatening to leave him.”

Sully heard her breath catch. Don't go there yet, he told himself.

“So what brought you to Washington?”

“There was nothing left for us in New York after Rich was suspended from the department. Before that he kept working, even though his captain advised him—practically begged him—to take a leave of absence and get help.”

“He didn't.”

“No, he didn't. He was the officer in charge at a call one night, and he made a tactical error—ventilated the wrong spot, and one of the other firefighters almost died.”

For the first time, she sank against the back of the chair. “I know it was his fault, and it wasn't the first mistake he made after 9/11, but losing Eddie was so ripping for him, for all of us.”

Ripping
was exactly the word. Sully could almost hear the tear.

“He hit rock bottom, then?” Sully said.

“It was more like he was disappearing right there in front of us.”

Sully watched her neck muscles go taut. He couldn't push her too much, or she'd have her purse and her P-coat and her pinched-in self out of there so fast, it would make the wheel of fortune spin. This would have to be about safety.

“So—how did that affect you?” he said.

“Me?” She shrugged. “I was desperate. I thought I was going to lose him, but I didn't even know to what. I talked him into coming out here, to start over. I'm from here originally, and it's so different from New York City. It was the only thing I could think of to do.”

Sully propped up a foot on the papasan. He dug this part—hearing the story, starting to put together the puzzle. It was too soon to buy a vowel though.

“How did
you
feel about New York?” he said.

She blinked. “How did
I
feel?”

“Yeah.”

“I loved New York,” she said. “I went to NYU, and I met Rich in the city. We lived there all our married life, close to my in-laws, but with Eddie gone, and Rich's parents, there was nothing left for us there.”

“When did they pass?” Sully said.

She furrowed her brow. This apparently wasn't on the script she'd prepared either. But she said, “Papa Costanas—my father-in-law— had a massive heart attack in 1997. Mama died before 9/11— Alzheimer's—she was in a nursing home. Then, of course, Eddie.”

“That's a lot of loss,” Sully said.

“Which is why Rich needed to get help—”

“No, I mean a lot of loss for you.”

She squirmed, setting the chair at a tilt. She righted herself and said, “Rich suffered more than I did. I just wanted to help him.”

Sully waited.

“Now I know I only made things worse.”

“How so?”

Demi bugged her brown eyes at him. “I had an affair. I think that qualifies as worse.”

This lady was determined to make everything her fault. Sully itched to take that road, but instead he said, “Let's stay with before the affair for a minute—can we do that?”

“Sure—I guess.” She shook her hand in her hair as if she were stirring up anything that might be hiding there.

“Tell me about your relationship with Rich once you moved here, before the affair.”

“At first I thought it was going to work out.” She seemed to be taking out thoughts she'd stowed. “We bought the log home he used to dream about. I got the professorship at CCC, so he didn't have to worry as much about the pay cut he took coming out here.” She stopped. “That might have started it. He never used to care that I had more education than he did, or that I made more money. But here it bothered him. A lot. And then I went and slept with a
professor,
for Pete's sake.”

She put up a hand. Sully wasn't sure which of them she was stopping.

“You want me to go on?” she said finally.

“I'd like to hear more.”

She fingered her purse. “At first everybody at the fire station— Orchard Heights—was great to him. He was a 9/11 hero.”

No pressure
, Sully thought.

“But that wore off—and then he didn't get promoted.”

“How come?” Sully said.

“Something about his attitude. I don't know—that was about the time he started shutting down again.”

“And where did that leave you?”

“This isn't about
me
!”

The sudden shrill seemed to surprise even her. She jerked in the chair and tried to steady herself with both hands, but
the bowl tilted again.

“Look—” she said. “I want to know why I would hurt a man who's already been through hell and can't get out.” She talked between her teeth. “I want to know what's wrong with me so I can fix it and get him back.”

“So—” Sully picked his way. “If you fix yourself, that will automatically make things all right?”

The look she gave him almost made him laugh. The word
duh
was not far away.

“It makes sense to me,” she said. “I'm the one who screwed up.”

“Okay,” Sully said. “So let me ask you this, then—just something to think about for a minute.”

She jerked a nod.

“Can you think of anybody in your past—somebody important to you—who distanced himself or herself from you—so it hurt?”

Demi thrust her head forward so abruptly, Sully was sure there was a
Don't you
get
it?
in his near future.

“Why dig up my past?” she asked. She huffed out a breath. Frustration practically smoked from her ears. “I was a great kid growing up. I didn't lose it and mess up my entire life until six months ago.”

Sully squeezed through the space he'd been prying open. “You say you want to know what's ‘wrong' with you now. Well—your past is your present, and if we don't dig it up, it could also be your future.”

She looked at him, and Sully could see the wavering that must be tormenting her every waking moment—and probably most of the sleeping ones too.

“I can't help you figure out why you've done what you've done unless I know more about you,” he said. “That's all.”

She didn't answer.

“And even then, you'll be the one figuring it out—”

“If I could do that, don't you think I would have by now?”

“No—because you need somebody to give you multiple choice selections. You game?”

She pushed two hunks of hair behind her ears and showed the first sign of letting go of the purse and its backup, the P-coat. That was good, since what he was going to try next could make her want to clobber him.

He leaned forward. “Are you ready to play Deal or No Deal?”

Her brow went awry. “Excuse me?”

“A little Game Show Theology.” He tilted his head at her. “Look, Demi—I'm not trying to make light of what you're going through. But I have the feeling that you're worn out from working this thing—taking it apart and wringing it out and trying to fit it back together—and right now it's in pieces all around you. I'm not sure we can get them into a new picture unless we play with them some. That's what I'd like to do.”

“Play?” she said.

“Just play,” he said.

He was sure the corners of her mouth wanted to turn up, but there wasn't a smile left in her anywhere.

“Sit tight,” he said. “I'll be right back.”

He dashed into the garage and did a quick scan. Two tool cases and—what else? He snatched both of those up and tucked a metal bucket under one arm. When he set them next to his chair in the office, Demi eyed the collection incredulously.

Sully sank into his chair and picked up the empty toolbox.

“In case number one,” he said, “is the possibility that you were born with a defective gene that makes you adultery material.”

“Hello!” she said.

“I see we're not choosing case number one.”

“How 'bout no!”

“In case number two—” He picked up a ratchet case. “The possibility that you don't believe any of the things in the Bible that you profess to believe. You've been a fraud all this time.”

She blinked, hard. That was one she'd obviously considered. He was relieved when she discarded it.

“So much for case number two,” Sully said, before she could reconsider. She was breaking his heart.

“Then how about case number three?” he said. “Which is, by the way, the only case left.”

Demi looked at it, a wisp of wistfulness in her eyes. Good.

“In case number three”—Sully picked up the metal bucket—“lies the possibility that your husband distancing himself from you may have made it easier for you to justify your affair. Otherwise, you wouldn't have been able to do it.”

She clenched the coat.

Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding
, Sully said softy in his head. The right answer—because it was the one she resisted. Even now she was kneading the purse too. She would throw it at him without so much as a by-your-leave if he pushed even an inch further—although, in his opinion, the best work got done in therapy when projectiles were thrown.

When she reached over and picked up the river rock from the desk, he did prepare to duck.

“Please just throw this at me,” she said.

Sully guffawed out an “Excuse me?”

“Let's get it over with. You know—like they used to do to adulteresses in the Bible.” Her voice warbled with weak humor. It was the closest she was going to get to crying in this session.

“Maybe I don't want to know why I did it,” she said. “Maybe I just need counseling for how to fix me.” She looked ruefully at the rock. “Or maybe I need somebody to knock me in the head and tell me I'm an idiot for even trying.”

“Which would help how?” Sully said.

“I don't know,” she said. “I don't know anything.”

Ding-ding-ding
, Sully thought again. A place to start.

She was still looking at the rock, and Sully grinned.

“Just so you know,” he said, “I haven't thrown that at anybody yet.”

She gave a soft grunt. “Almost everybody else in my life has thrown one at me. Maybe you haven't met anybody as bad as me yet.”

“How bad do you think you are?”

“Think about it. I'm a Christian. A professor at a Christian college. A mother. A wife—I thought. And by the way”—she cocked her head. “Ethan told me you're a Christian counselor. I'm not exactly getting a sense of that here.”

“Because I'm not quoting Scripture?”

“Well, yeah. We didn't even start with a prayer.”

“Do you want to pray?”

“No,” she said, before he even got out his last syllable. So—she was straight-arming God right now.

Sully recrossed his legs. “I can give you chapter and verse, and that's what some of my colleagues would do. But as you just mentioned, you're a professor at a Christian college. You have a doctorate in theology.” He smiled at her. “You could probably tell me what verses to apply to this situation.”

“We could start with the Ten Commandments,” she said dryly. “Number eight, to be exact.”

“Which you knew before you broke it. So me parading that in front of you would help how?”

“Exactly my point. If I'm this Christian, and I could commit a sin like this, maybe I'm basically a tramp.”

“Do you really think you're a tramp?”

“No.”

“Then you were right to begin with.” He shrugged. “You did this for a reason, but it doesn't make sense to you now.”

“Ya think?”

“At the time it did though, because it was based on a premise you believed then. You follow?”

“Go on.”

“Maybe together we can find out what that premise was and how you got to it in the first place.”

She lowered her voice in imitation. “And that helps how?”

“Because—when you had the affair, you were reacting accurately to what you believed. It was what you believed—the premise—that wasn't accurate.”

“Give me an example.”

Sully resituated himself in the chair. “If I believe it's every man for himself, I'm probably not going to show up at the soup kitchen to serve the homeless.”

Her eyes took on the intelligent gleam he'd seen in the picture. “So if I didn't believe I was capable of being unfaithful to my husband, why did I act like I was? That's what we're looking for, right?”

“There you go. Now, I warn you, it might take time to figure out your premise. And then if you're still interested in change, we can help you develop one that's actually true. That's where God comes in and starts shaping.”

“And that will help me get my family back?” she said.