Healing Stones (21 page)

“Look, we got off on the wrong foot the other day.”

“You mean when you tried to take advantage of me when I was in the middle of an emotional crisis?”

“I didn't mean for you to take it that way.”

“Wasn't that the way it was?”

The Chia pet bowed its head. “Maybe partly.”

“Thank you.”

“But I'm on a different track now. I think I can help you.”

I felt my eyes narrow. “Help me how?”

“Can we restart?” He offered me his hand. “I'm Fletcher Basset.”

I took his palm halfheartedly. “You made that name up, right?”

“No, I think I just lived up to it.”

“Sniffing around in people's business?”

We both pulled our chins in.

“I do that, too,” he said. “But like I said, I may have information that could be helpful to you.”

“What's our friend having for lunch?” Mickey said from the doorway. She wore her is-this-character-bothering-you look.

“Give me the split pea, please,” Fletcher said. “It comes highly recommended.”

Mickey looked at me, and I nodded. When she disappeared, with one last sweep of suspicion over the basset hound, I folded my arms on the table.

“Why would you want to help me?” I said.

“Because I want the truth.” He looked straight at me with berry-blue eyes. “I'm trying to get to the truth of what's happening at the college.”

“I don't know anything about it anymore,” I said. “I've—retired.”

He glanced at my shirt. “So I see.”

I scraped the chair back, but he put his palm on the table. His eyes grew warm.

“Please,” he said. “I think if you know the truth too, you'll be able to help both me and yourself.”

“What kind of help do I need?”

“You need to be at that college,” he said. “Every student I've talked to—except the ones out there protesting, who, it turns out, don't know you from Eve and have no idea why they're there—except one little jerk named—” He pulled a pad out of his jacket pocket and frowned at it. “Travis Chapman. You know him?”

I nodded. He wasn't one of my Faith and Doubt students, but he was in one of my sections of Religion 102. He spent most of his time regarding me as if I were an intrusion on his day, but I had no idea why. We'd never exchanged two words.

“The rest of them,” Fletcher went on, “are saying you and Dr. Archer were the backbone of the program.”

“Well, we're not anymore,” I said. “Look—it's over. I have more important things to think about.”

I got to my feet, his protesting hand notwithstanding. He slanted against the chair, but his eyes seemed to embrace the challenge. I wanted to slap him. I was experiencing that urge a lot lately.

“I don't believe anything is more important than what you were doing at that college,” he said. “At least not according to your students. And I think you should know that your partner—”

“What partner?” My voice was shrill and I didn't care.

“Zachary Archer,” he said. “He has no intention of picking up the pieces of the program—and if you don't, it dies. Now it seems to me that—”

I gripped the back of the chair. “How could you possibly know what his intentions are? He's disappeared. Nobody even knows where he is.”

“That part's true. I don't know his location. But he hasn't disappeared. I interviewed him by phone.”

The air went dead.

“I can't reveal how I got in touch with him.” Fletcher looked at me closely. “You really didn't know he was around someplace, did you?”

“Nor did I care,” I made myself say. “Why should I?”

“Wasn't he your closest colleague?”

I backed away from the table. “I'll make sure you get your lunch,” I said. “And after this—stay away from me.”

“Look, I didn't mean to upset you. I want to help—”

“Help me by getting completely out of my life.”

I kept myself from shaking until I got into the prep room, doors swinging behind me. And even then I didn't get the chance. Audrey stood with her back to me, hunched over the chopping table, shoulders shaking.

“Audrey?” I said.

She straightened abruptly and turned to me, slapping at tears with her fingertips and working her face toward a smile she couldn't possibly pull off.

“What is it, honey?” I said.

“Don't you hate men sometimes?” she said.

“Often. Why do we hate men today?”

Her face crumpled. “Because they make you think they care about you and they make you open yourself up to them and then they stop calling and they stop returning your calls and they totally screw up your life.”

Oscar came out of the walk-in freezer, took one look at us, and retreated into it again.

“Are we talking about Boy?” I said.

She nodded and put her arms around me, face in my T-shirt. “I don't know if he's ever going to get to name status. But he's C.J.— and I think I love him, Dr. C.”

I tightened my arms around her. “I'm sorry you're hurting.”

“I hate this. I didn't do anything wrong, but I feel like a loser.”

She wept the way I had for hours on end the past few endless days. Her crying swept over me, and then got into me, and suddenly I was holding her out in front of me, both hands on her shoulders.

“Listen to me, Audrey,” I said. “You are not a loser—that is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. You cannot let some guy who can't even make a commitment define who you are, do you hear me?”

Her eyes grew almost fearful, which may have been because my hands were squeezing her biceps.

“He has lied to you with his promises, and now you're the one who's taking all the foolishness and the self-put-downs. Don't do that.” I pulled
her back to me and held on. “Promise me that you won't do that.”

Whether she did or not, I couldn't tell. She cried in my arms and made me miss my Jayne—and for the first time, hate Zachary Archer. From the broken pit of my soul.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

S
ully put the last stone on the pyramid he had built on his desk when she knocked on the office door—so hard the whole thing teetered off balance and tumbled all over the desktop.

“Come in,” Sully said, “but only if you're not armed.”

Demitria shoved the door open and stood there, flushed and fiery-eyed.

Holy crow. The controlled Dr. Costanas on a tear.

“You wanted me to talk,” she said. “I'm ready to talk.”

She stuck herself into the papasan chair, rocking backward and recovering herself like a kid determined not to fall out of that swing. Sully slanted against the desk.

“You want to take a minute to breathe—maybe get centered?”

“No, I do not. I want to get this out before I explode.” She pulled at her hair with both hands. “How could I have been so stupid? This is just getting worse.”

“All right, then let's—”

“He's out there!” she said.

“He's out there.”

“Yeah, sitting around, letting me take the flack for this whole thing by myself. He hasn't ‘disappeared.' He's a complete psycho—and I thought I loved him! I threw away my whole life.”

She stopped abruptly, chest expanding as she heaved in air. He could see her reeling herself in.

“Sorry,” she said.

“For what? This is exactly what I think you need to be doing.” He grinned. “If I didn't suspect you'd deck me I'd give you a series of dings.”

She folded her knees up to her chest.

“I take it we're talking about Zach Archer,” Sully said.

She shuddered. “A reporter told me he's been in touch with him—that he has no intention of coming back.”

Sully eased himself into his own chair. “Do you want him to come back?”

“No!”

Sully waited.

“Yes—I want him to take his share of the responsibility.”

Sully waited longer.

“Although I don't know why. What difference would it make?”

She shrugged, but Sully put up his hand. “Try not to do that, Demi,” he said.

“Do what?”

“Slough off things because it doesn't make sense to be upset about them. If you're upset, you need to let yourself feel it. Then we can really look at it.”

She gave him a look. “I'm upset.”

Sully smiled. “And you do it so well. Nice job.” He propped a foot up. “I was hoping you'd get angry at somebody besides yourself.”

“Oh, I'm still ticked off at myself,” Demi said. “How could I have been such an idiot? I'm like a little coed who fell for some guy's line— only I should know better. You know what really ticks me off?”

“Tell me.”

“He got away without believing I meant we were done. Why does that bother me so much?”

“You really want to know?”

She gave him the look. “What else am I here for?”

He wasn't sure she was going to like it, but he had to go with it. He took the first step gingerly.

“As long as you still want something from Zach, you're still in the affair.”

“No, I am not.”

He stopped.

“Okay—okay—go on.” She chewed at her lower lip.

“I get the sense that you'd like to have it all wrapped up with a bow.”

“Right.”

“But here's the thing—if you have a neat wrap-up, you leave with a final kiss and the feeling that you're abandoning something good.” Sully leaned forward. “How does that leave it? Done—or still lovely in your memory?”

She watched him with that focus he could imagine her having in the classroom.

“Neat and tidy,” she said finally. “But if it's rotten and lousy, like this has been, I won't wish I had it back.”

“Ding-ding,” Sully said.

“Yeah.” Her voice gave. “We better get to that premise fast, or I'm going to have to believe I went completely nuts.”

“You ready to get to work?”

She nodded. Sully waited until she got her face where she wanted it to be.

“You've noticed my collection of stones,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said, even before her eyes actually lit on them.

“There's one for every person on your list.”

“Like the story of the adulteress.” She twisted her mouth. “I'm not sure you have enough though. What do we do with them?”

“That's the point,” Sully said. “You can't do anything about the people holding the rocks. Jesus didn't even order them to lay down their weapons.”

Her eyes were now on the scattered pile.

“He said, ‘If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.'”

She saddened, as if the right string had just been pulled. “I wish He were here now.”

“Who says He isn't?”

That thought seemed to make her squirm.

“You still having trouble going to Jesus with this?” Sully asked.

“Ya think?” She lowered her eyes from the pile to her lap.

“The woman in the story didn't exactly go to Him of her own free will,” Sully said. “She was pretty much dragged.”

He let that sink in. Demi finally looked at him.

“I know the feeling,” she said.

“So as long as you're here—on the ground in front of Him, as it were—what does He say?”

She closed her eyes, as if the quote were written on her lids. “‘Go now and leave your life of sin'—I think that's what it is in the NIV.”

Sully stayed silent and watched impatience gather on her face.

“That's what I'm doing!” she said. “I'm not sinning anymore—I could cut my heart out for doing it in the first place!” She doubled her fists and banged them on her lap. “I'm never going to do that again—but what good does saying that do me now?”

Sully selected his next words carefully. “How do you know you won't do it again?”

She nearly convulsed from the chair.

“Wait, there's more,” Sully said.

“There better be.”

“You
don't know you won't do it again unless you understand why you did it in the first place. I personally think that's why you haven't taken it to Jesus.”

“Then why did I do it?” Her voice broke, and the words tumbled like the stones. “I have to know.”

“I'm walking you through that, remember?”

“Do it.” She shook her head. “I don't know if I can stand what I'm about to find out about myself.”

“Demi,” Sully said, “I'll risk it all on this: there is nothing you're going to discover that is plain evil, because that isn't you.”

She gripped the sides of the chair and pressed her lips together. “Then let's do it,” she said.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Back to the post-9/11 days. You said Rich withdrew so far into himself you couldn't see him anymore. How did you put it—as if he were disappearing before your eyes.”

“Yeah.”

“You tried to pull him out of his depression—you even uprooted your whole life to bring him here, hoping it would help.”

“Yes.”

“But it didn't. Now—how were you feeling about yourself about then?”

“Like the most ineffectual, incompetent woman I could imagine.”

Ah, she was racking up points.

“You weren't mad at Rich?”

“No.” She chewed at her lip again. “Okay, yes—but then I'd feel guilty because he lost so much, why shouldn't he be depressed?”

“And hadn't you lost a lot too?”

“Well, yeah, but . . .”

“You were losing him.”

She didn't even have to answer. The emotion drained from her face right into the sad cave of her chest.

“And when in the course of this did Mr. Wonderful come along?”

Her laugh was unexpected. “About nine months ago now—that's when we got to be close friends.”