Healing Stones (2 page)

“I'm sorry. I've never put him down.”

“No, you haven't, Doc, and please don't start now.”

Pain shot across his face, and I wanted to bite my tongue. I'd told myself I wouldn't use his nickname.

“You love me,” he said. “I know you do.”

“That isn't—”

“Then do what you have to do. I have to set you free for that.”

I closed my eyes.

“But I have to say this one thing, and I want you to hear me.” He hesitated as if he were waiting for my permission. “This—what we have—this is true love, which will win out if we let it.”

“But we can't let it
this
way.” I opened my eyes. “If we put us before God, then that can't be true.”

We both stared at the space between us, as if a third party had entered the cabin and spoken. The thought had curled in my brain like a wisp of smoke for—five months, three weeks, and four days. Longer than that if I counted the weeks watching him at faculty meetings, the days dreaming up reasons to drop by his office, the stolen moments I collected like seashells to hold later. Now that the thought was between us, it cut a chasm I couldn't walk around.

Zach leaped across and came to me. I straight-armed him before he could touch me and make God disappear.

“Please don't make it any harder,” I said.

“Can't happen. I'm already in shreds.”

“Then let me go—please—and we can both start to heal.”

He brushed the hair off my forehead with one finger. “I'll never get over this, Prof.”

And then he gave me the look. Our look. The look that destroyed me and threw me right into his arms—to the place where I didn't care what I was doing, as long as it felt like this.

Our clothes were halfway off within seconds. We had that part down to a passionate science. I was once more ripped from in-control to out-of-my-mind, lost again on the wave I wanted to ride all the way, no matter where it took me. I'd thought in every guilty-afterwards that this must be what a drug addict felt like.

I clung to his chest and let his mouth search for mine. He found it just as the cabin erupted with light. Over my heartbeat, I heard the unmistakable click and whir of a camera.

CHAPTER TWO

W
hat? Zach—what?”

That was all I could say—in a voice whose panicked pitch couldn't possibly be mine. Another flash jolted my vision into misshapen rings of light—then another and another—while I found my jacket and tried to pull it over my face. The satin lining was cold against the bare skin on my chest but I couldn't get it turned around. I felt a flailing sleeve hit something. A flame zipped along the floor and grabbed at a pillow that had tumbled there, startling it to light.

“Go, Demi!” Zach called from somewhere.

The camera's auto-winder chattered like a squirrel as I snatched up articles of clothing and tried to hold them against me with one hand while I grabbed for more with the other. Parts of Zach jerked surreally as if he were moving through strobe lights, slapping at the fire. But it was Rich's voice that shouted in my head.

In a fire, you gotta move quickly, but don't panic. Stay low—don't run.

I lunged for the door and flung it open, my clothes in a bundle across my nakedness.

“That's enough,” I heard Zach say.

I stumbled across the stern deck and hoisted myself onto the dock. Something slithered out of my arms, but I didn't stop to get it. I didn't stop at all until I was at the gate, tearing crazily at the handle. My hands were already so drenched in sweat they slipped off, and I fell backwards onto the ramp.

For an insane moment I considered throwing myself into the inlet and swimming for shore. It was only slightly less psychotic that I kicked my bra and camisole over the side of the gangplank, shoved my arms into the sleeves of my P-coat, and climbed the gate like an escaping ape. I managed to get myself into the Jeep and down Bay Street.

I'd passed city hall before the first rational thought shot into my mind. Two rational thoughts.

One—what was I running from? No one was chasing me. The clock on the hall read a quarter to nine. Drivers passed by on their leisurely way home from eating calamari at Tweeten's or picking up kids from basketball practice, but no paparazzi tailed me with their 35-millimeters hanging out the windows.

I slowed down.

Two—I'd left Zach alone, smothering a fire and dealing with— who? Who hid on his boat, waiting to take pictures of us—
half naked
?

I pulled to the curb and pressed my forehead against the steering wheel. I'd imagined our affair being discovered a hundred different ways—from Rich following me to
The Testament
and dragging me up the gangplank to my eighteen-year-old son hacking into my secret e-mail account. None of them had involved a photographer crawling out of the galley of the cabin cruiser and shooting us groping each other by candlelight.

Now whoever it was had pictures—of our last time together. I pummeled the steering wheel with my fists, and then I sat up. With chicken-claw fingers I buttoned my jacket. Zach wouldn't let anybody get out of there with that film. He'd sounded so calm when he said, “That's enough,” as if it were going to be no trouble at all to disarm whoever it was. By now he'd probably already called the police, or brought the full power of the Dr. Zachary Archer charm and intensity to bear on the situation.

Zach wouldn't have hit the jerk. That was more Rich's MO. Back when he'd cared enough about anything to throw a punch at it.

I pulled my cell phone out of my purse, which I'd left in the car, and turned it on. Pulling my lapels together with one hand, I was reaching down to turn up the heat when the tiny screen signaled one new voice message. Already dissolving into relief, I poked in my password.

“Hey, Mom?” It was the indignant tone only a thirteen-year-old girl can achieve. “Could you come get me?”

I could see Jayne's eyes rolling. But I could also hear the whine of uncertainty, even over the siren now screaming in the distance.

“Rachel was supposed to take me home from rehearsal, but I guess she forgot me. Could you call me when you get this?” The whine reached a peak and fell into a teeth-clenched finish. “Never mind. I guess I'll have to call Christopher.”

I searched the screen. She'd left the message at eight—forty-five minutes ago. Fighting back visions of child abductors in black vans stalking Cedar Heights Junior High, I shoved the Jeep into gear, then shoved it out again. I dialed my home phone.

“You
so
owe me,” Christopher said, in lieu of “hello.”

“Did you pick Jayne up?”

“Like I said, you owe me.”

“Is she okay?”

“She's in her room with the lights out and that music on that sounds like some chick needs Prozac.” Christopher gave the hard laugh he'd recently adopted. “Which is what she always does, so, yeah, she's okay. Where were you?”

I was suddenly aware of the nakedness under my jacket.

“I had a meeting,” I said. “Has your dad called?”

“I called
him
to see if he was okay.”

“Why?” I said. My chest tightened automatically—the Pavlovian reaction of the firefighter's wife.

“Fire
at that 76 station on Mile Hill Road. Heard on the radio on my way home from the library. They said it was contained, so I called him.”

I told myself I was imagining the innuendo of accusation in his voice, the
Why didn't
you
call him?
I chalked it up to the overall attitude of superiority my son had taken on now that he was a college freshman and knew far more than his father and I could ever hope to. I was forty-two with a doctorate in theological studies, but Christopher Costanas could reduce me to the proverbial clueless blonde.

“He said they got another call and he's going out on it,” Christopher said. “Even though his shift's over—you know Dad.”

Thank you, God
, I thought as I hung up. Although God helping me keep Rich out of the way until I could find out what had just happened wasn't something even I could fathom. Funny. All through my affair with Zach, I'd continued to talk to my God, asking His forgiveness over and over, every time I left the yacht club, knowing I'd be back. Now that I'd ended it, I couldn't face Him. In His place was a rising sense of unease.

Rich's Harley wasn't in the garage when I got home. Christopher answered with a grunt when I said good night outside his door. I tiptoed into Jayne's dark bedroom, but all I saw was a trail of strawberryblonde hair on top of the covers and a rail-like lump underneath them. I kissed the cheek that was no longer plump and rosy, now that my daughter had abruptly turned into a teenager. She didn't stir, even when I whispered, “I'm sorry about tonight. We'll talk tomorrow.”

Whatever “tomorrow” was going to look like. The uneasiness rose into full-blown nausea as I pulled on an oversized Covenant Christian College nightshirt and crawled into our empty bed. Tomorrow would be the first day of a new existence—without Zach to make me okay. When I woke up, I would be completely Rich Costanas's wife again, and nothing would be any different from the first moment when I'd admitted to myself that I'd fallen in love with someone else.

Tomorrow I would still try to be cheerful as Rich silently, sullenly sat like he was walled into a dark room he wouldn't let any of us into. I would kiss him on the cheek before I left for work, and he would mumble “have a good day.” He would go to the station for the evening shift before I came home, leaving no note, making no phone call, giving me vague, monosyllabic answers when I called him. I'd stopped calling three months ago.

Tomorrow I would do the right thing: give up a relationship that made me feel alive and loved and necessary, and attempt to revive what Rich and I once had, before September 11, 2001, drained the life out of us. I'd found a reason to keep breathing. I wasn't sure Rich ever would.

And yet, tomorrow I would try. Only it would be a different person doing the trying. I was now a person who'd manufactured lies so she could meet her lover. A person who'd stripped herself down to betrayal, just to feel connected again. A person who'd been caught in the flash of a camera with her clothes on the floor around her.

I churned in the bed, tangling my ankles in a knot of sheets. I had to see Zach and find out what had gone down. And I had to make sure that he knew we were over—and I was really gone.

Though I pretended not to be, I was still awake when Rich fell into bed beside me, smelling of smoke and the Irish Spring attempt to wash it away.

“Hi, hon,” he said.

I stiffened. Why did he choose this night to sound like the old Rich? His voice hadn't held that smushy quality for—what—two years? It sounded the way it used to when he wanted me to rub his head or make him a fried egg sandwich.

“How was your shift?” I said.

“I've got bad news for you.”

My eyes came open. The answers I'd heard for months had tended toward
It was all right
or
The same as always
. They always implied that I'd asked a stupid question that was more than annoying. I propped up on one elbow and tried to sound sleepy. “What happened?”

“We hadda fight a boat fire—down at Port Orchard Yacht Club.”

I curled my fingers around the pillowcase.

“Does your friend—that guy who took us out that one day— does he still own that Chris-Craft?”

He didn't know. He didn't know.

“Uh, yeah,” I said—and then my heart clutched at itself. “
His
boat?”

“Had to be—total loss too.” Rich punched at his pillow and wrapped it around his neck in his usual preparation for going into a post-fire coma.

But I had to ask.

“Is Zach—was he hurt?”

“Dunno. He wasn't around. I don't think he was there when it started.” He gave a long, raspy sigh. “It was a mistake to ever leave New York.”

I struggled to keep up. “Tell me some more,” I said.

“I don't belong here, Demitria. I'm a fish outta water.”

How many times had I turned myself inside out to get him to open up? Six months ago, I'd have had our bags half-packed already, willing to do anything to bring him out of his cave. Now I said nothing, because I felt nothing—except terror at the vision of Zach as a charred version of his former self, buried in the rubble of
The Testament
.

Rich sighed heavily and flopped over, leaving me on the other side of his wall of a back, the one I'd stopped trying to hoist myself over. “There's nothing we can do about it now,” he said.

I sank back stiffly onto my own pillow. “Not tonight,” I said.

“I didn't mean tonight.”

There was the edge that implied I was of no help to him whatsoever, and why did I even think I could be?

I turned my back and moved to the far edge of the bed.

The next day couldn't dawn soon enough. Most of the night I watched the digits on the clock change with maddening slowness, and planned how to get to Zach before I lost my mind.

I was up, dressed, and making coffee by six thirty. Fortunately— and not surprisingly—I didn't hear a sound out of Christopher, but Jayne slipped into the kitchen in ghostly fashion at six thirty-five. Guilt scratched at me like an impatient dog.

“Hey, girlfriend,” I said. “You're up early.”

“Mom, I'm always up at this time. I have to catch the bus at seven.”

I didn't see whether she rolled her eyes. Her face was already in the pantry, where she pawed at the cereal boxes. From the back, she was still a waif of a child, with little-girl-fine golden tresses and a penchant for long flowy skirts, an echo of the tiny days when she fancied herself a fairy princess. Her front was a different story, where late-blooming breasts and a well-rehearsed disdain proclaimed her as
teenager
.