Healing Stones (29 page)

“I have to go,” she said.

He saw her shoulders shaking before she got to her Jeep.

The phone woke him up the next morning. He had to claw his way out of an entangling dream to get to it—something about Demitria driving Isabella and screaming
Where are the brakes? I can't find the
brake pedal!

He was going to have to get on those so he could get some sleep.

Meanwhile, the cell phone continued to chirp insistently while he rammed through the trailer, dumping over piles of clothes and peering under stacks of papers. By the time he located it between the cushions of the dinette booth, whoever it was had given up.

Who the Sam Hill was calling him in the middle of the night anyway?

He squinted at the phone screen. Eight AM. Those dreams really did have his timetable scrambled up.

Sully smeared his hand over his face and pushed a few buttons on the phone. Porphyria had called. What was it about
No, I'm not coming
for the anniversary this year
that she didn't get?

He slid the phone across the table and tucked himself into the booth, feet hanging out to the flat excuse for a couch. He felt vacuum-packed into this place. Porphyria's calling him constantly to say he could still book a flight and be at her lodge in the Smokies on May 6 didn't help. She wasn't as subtle as she used to be, but she was just as insistent.

“You can run yourself ragged solving other people's problems,” she'd told him, “but you cannot hide from your own.”

Sully churned restlessly from the booth, stood up, banged his head on the tin can ceiling. Okay, no, he'd never get over Lynn. There had been a oneness with her, an
Everything is us.
You didn't get over love like that. You just learned to live without it.

When the phone rang again, Sully made sure it wasn't Porphyria before he picked it up.

“So you are alive,” Ethan Kaye said.

“I'll take Famous Quotes for $200. Rumors of my death have been grossly exaggerated.”

“Who was Mark Twain? Are you okay?”

“For somebody who hasn't had a cup of coffee yet, yeah, I'm good.”

“I have information,” Ethan said. “Nothing that really helps us— elimination maybe.”

“Yeah?”

“I did a little snooping—actually, I talked to my secretary.”

Sully pictured the plumpish platinum blonde in Ethan's office who all but pressed a glass to the door when he and Sully were conferencing.

“She says Wyatt Estes wasn't aware Tatum Farris was dating Van Dillon, because he wouldn't have met with family approval.”

Sully snickered. “You want to tell me how your secretary knows that?”

“I have no idea, and I don't want to know—but you can take it to the bank. Gina has the 411 on everybody.”

“I love it when you talk college,” Sully said. He moved gingerly toward the coffeepot.

“I don't know where that leaves us. We've ruled out every possible photographer, and I'll tell you, Sully, I don't think it was a total amateur who took those pictures.”

“So maybe we give up on finding the shutterbug and go at this from another angle.”

“Do you have one?” Ethan's voice was suddenly weary.

“Not yet,” Sully said. He abandoned the coffeepot. “But I think I know where I can find one.”

Eight-thirty was too early for pink champagne cake. Anytime was too early for pink champagne cake. But a cup of coffee with three sugars and two creams would go good about now.

He'd never been to McGavock's Bakery before noon. It was a different place, with men in hammer-swinging jeans and flannel shirts crowding the counter, vying for donuts, and harried-looking women placing orders for baked goods.

“I need that Saturday—for Easter,” one of them barked at Tatum.

She kept her unruffled expression in place and moved nothing but her pen, a myriad of pastries, and her earrings.

Sully took a seat at his table and watched her do a silent, intricate dance behind the counter with an older woman who also took orders and passed out free hot cross buns.

“Traditional Easter treat,” she told each customer.

Sully hadn't even remembered Sunday was Easter. He wondered if Demi remembered. Holidays could be brutal in her situation.

“He actually emerges before noon.”

He looked up to see Tatum standing beside him, steaming mug in hand. She put it on the table. It swam with cream.

“Y'all are busy in the mornings.”

“That's how we stay in business.” She let a smile pass briefly through her eyes. “You don't think your eating us out of pink champagne cake pays the bills, do you?”

Sully grinned.

“You want a piece right now?”

“How about a hot cross bun?” Sully said quickly.

“They're gross,” she said. “But okay.”

When she returned, she'd taken off her hairnet, and the highlights fell into their assigned rows. “You don't mind if I join you, do you? I've been here since four. I need a break.”

“I gotta ask you something,” he said.

“You want to know why a girl like me is working full-time in a has-been bakery.”

“You're good.”

“No—you're just obvious. You've basically been asking me that for weeks.”

Sully gave her half a smile.

“I was in college,” she said. “But I dropped out.” She fiddled with a silver hoop earring she could have used for a bracelet. “It was so bad that I wanted nothing to do with the academic world. I didn't even want a job where I had to read or write.” She looked around coldly. “This is perfect.”

Sully chewed on a piece of bun. She was right, it was gross—but the longevity of its bulk in his mouth gave him an excuse to think through his next question.

“So that's why you didn't go into the family business,” he said.

“I don't want to be identified with them in any way.”

“That's pretty common for your age.”

“My age has nothing to do with it. I want to be authentic, you know what I mean? Anything that smells like hypocrisy, get it away from me. Which is why I left CCC.”

Sully slurped at his coffee. “There's no love lost between you and that place, is there?”

“Seriously. You expect a secular school to claim to be all about truth and wisdom and excellence and actually be all about money and prestige. Call me naïve, but I thought a Christian college would be different.”

“And it isn't?”

“It's the biggest bunch of hypocrites I've ever seen. I could tell you stories.”

Sully forced himself not to say,
Please do.

“I won't, though, not with my uncle being a major donor. I do have some integrity.”

Dang that integrity.

“But yeah, there's stuff going on over there that you would not believe. And I'm not just talking about the administration—although don't get me started on them.”

He tried not to look like an eager hound dog, though he could feel himself practically drooling. “Students are a mess, are they?” he said.

“The students are only a mess because they're confused. I'm talking about the faculty.” Tatum gave him a long look and then shook her head. “You are one of those people complete strangers talk to about their sex lives on airplanes, aren't you?”

Sully choked. “I can't say that I've ever had that happen.”

“I bet I could tell you everything I know about CCC, and you'd never say a word to anybody—but I can't take that chance. Besides, it wouldn't do any good. I'll probably always be a little bitter.” She gave him a sardonic smile as she scooped up his plate. “Did I not tell you those things were gross?”

CHAPTER TWENTY - FIVE

I
knew Sullivan Crisp didn't want me to do it. And the startling thing was, I cared that he didn't want me to do it.

But not as much as I cared about getting Rich back. Which was why the day after our session, I let myself into the house with a letter in my pocket, made as much noise as possible clamoring up the stairs, and pushed open our bedroom door.

The room was a cave until I yanked the blinds up and let the light of a rare sunny day stream in. The sight it revealed was dismal, the odor worse. I'd smelled subways in New York that were sweeter than this.

I was working the window open when Rich stirred, his breathing still carrying the faint echo of a snore. The Rich I knew could come out of REM already shouting coherent orders to twenty firefighters and pulling on fifty pounds of equipment without missing a Velcro strip.

This Rich was red-eyed and disoriented, as if he'd been roused from the dead. I glanced at the bedside table and spotted a half-empty prescription bottle. Not that I hadn't thought of sleeping pills myself, but it jarred me. Rich wouldn't take so much as a Tylenol for a bruising headache.

I decided not to let his obvious stupor stop me. I sat on the edge of the bed—blocking his way out.

“What are you doing, Demitria?” he said. The words were fuzz.

“Saving our marriage.”

He looked at me through swollen slits. “I told you I can't talk about this yet.”

“You don't have to talk,” I said. “I'm going to talk.”

He half growled.

“I have something I want to say to you.” I pulled the letter out of my pocket and unfolded it. “I want you to listen all the way through. You can say whatever you want to me when I'm done, but please hear me out.”

He opened his mouth, but I plunged forward, reading as fast as I could.

“Dear Rich, I know it's hard for you to believe that I truly am sorry
for what I've done to you and to the kids. If I were that sorry, why did
I do it in the first place, right?”

He grunted.

“
I think I can answer that question now—the why—but I'm not
sure you'll believe that either. I know what the pain is like, Rich, and I
know how hard it is to keep your perspective in the face of it. So maybe
it would help to look back—to before this happened—before 9/11—
before there even was a ‘why.'”

Rich ripped the covers off and dumped his feet to the floor.

“Don't go—please,” I said.

“I'm not going anywhere.” His voice thickened, but the sleep had disappeared from it. He went to the window, his back to me.

I read on.

“What I'm remembering is the first months of us. When you told me
even my toes were beautiful. When you were so proud that I was in college,
even though you teased me about not having any mechanical sense.
When you made me physically go through what I would do if my
building caught on fire—the most endearing thing I could think of.”

I glanced up at him. His head hung between his shoulders, and he rubbed the windowsill with his thumbs.

“I took cooking lessons from your mama, and I pumped your papa
for your kid stories so I didn't have to feel left out of everything that had
happened to you pre-me. I knew I wanted to be part of your family, part
of you. That, and the fact that you were a gifted kisser.”

“Demitria,” Rich said.

I couldn't stop.

“You proposed to me two months after we met. It was so right, Rich.
And it still is.”

I grasped at the silence.

“It was a huge risk—as all the important things in life are, I'm learning.
No, we didn't know each other well when we got married. I learned
only after the ceremony that you snored. That you burped. That you
wouldn't wear a tie ever again once that tuxedo came off and fell onto
our hotel room floor. But none of that could overshadow your tenderness.
Your appreciation of my jokes. Your calling out “Hey, Hon!” whenever
you walked in the
door at the end of your shift.”

I paused, not for an answer, but for the courage to move into the next paragraph—the one that might bring him off the windowsill he leaned on.

“The only dark discovery I made was that when you were upset about
something, you brooded. Whether it was work issues, a worry over
Eddie, something I said to hurt your feelings, you closed yourself off and
stewed, often for an entire day. Drove me crazy. I got the same feeling of
dread that came over me in my childhood when my mother meted out
the silent treatment. I took it from her because I had no choice, but I
couldn't take it from you.”

I drew in a rough breath.

“I cried. I pleaded. I slammed cabinet doors. All the things I never
dared do with my mother. I don't think anyone had ever challenged your
cavelike way of dealing with things, and over time, you began to at least
tell me that you weren't upset with me and you just needed to think
things through on your own. It wasn't my favorite compromise, but I
learned to live with it. Until 9/11.”

“Stop,” Rich said.

“I'm almost through. Rich—please.”

“I can't—”

“I didn't know how to help you. You wouldn't let me find a way, and
that cut into the core of who I think I'm supposed to be.”

I let the letter fall to the floor and took a step forward.

“Don't,” he said.

“Just hear me then. I have this—this premise, they call it—that I live by. It tells me I'm supposed to be everything to everyone, and if I'm not, I'm a failure. Only you know me, Rich. You know I can't do failure—I have to find a way to make it right. And here's the screwy part.” I was close to tears. “When someone told me I
was
right, I believed him—and that started my downfall.”

Rich didn't move.

“I know I can't erase the past,” I said. “But I'm learning from it, Rich. That has to count for something, doesn't it?”