Healing Stones (37 page)

“I don't know what God wants me to do.” Ethan drew his brows together and stared long at the chapel. “For the first time in years, I don't know.”

“In therapy we always advise,” Sully said, “in situations where you don't know exactly what to do, don't do anything until you do know.”

Ethan pulled his gaze from down the hill and let it rest in the middle of Sully's chest. “Thanks,” he said. “I'll call you.”

As Sully climbed into his car, he couldn't decide which hurt worse—seeing Ethan as a target, or not being able to help. The frustration burned in him.

He was still steaming when he turned down Callow Avenue. Eyes drilled to the windshield in yet another mental confrontation with Kevin St. Clair, he only peripherally caught movement in front of the bakery. When he turned toward it, the silhouette of two bodies pulled into a struggling knot, and Sully heard a scream.

He slammed into the curb, already wrenching the door open, and abandoned the car with the engine whining.

“Get your hands off me!” said an unmistakable female voice.

“Tatum!” Sully called to her.

Both bodies twisted toward him. The bigger, masculine one froze. Tatum raised her leg and landed a foot in his gut. The man moaned and curled over himself.

“I got him—I got him,” Sully said. Although there wasn't much to it. Van Dillon was a sack of mush as Sully pinned his arms around him from behind and pulled him away from Tatum's poised foot.

“Let him go so he can get out of here,” he heard Tatum say. “I can't stand to
look at him.”

As she watched Sully give Van a shove, her eyes dug into him with a fury that, Sully realized, mirrored his.

“What are you doin', dude?” Sully said. “You think this is the way to get the girl back?”

“In his dreams. I wouldn't have him.”

“You had me when you needed me—to use me!”

Sully lunged for Van again, barely getting his fingers around a clump of the back of his shirt before Van could reach Tatum. Sully managed to get his arm pinned behind him and got him to the ground.

“Get in your car and go home, Tatum,” Sully said.

“No way—I am so not letting him—”

“Slut!”

“Hey!” Sully tightened his grip on Van's arm.

“It's your fault too. You're the one who took—”

“Shut up!” Sully wrenched back on the kid's arm, and he let out a yell.

“Did you kill him?” Tatum said.

Van lifted his face.

“Go, Tatum,” Sully said, “before this gets any worse. Call the police—do whatever you have to do, but get out of here.”

Tatum's Volkswagen squealed from the curb, barely missing Sully's car, which still hung halfway in the street with the motor running. Van slumped again, and Sully let him go. The kid backed against the trellis pole that held up the bakery awning, his heaving bulk jarring against a backdrop of pink cakes.

Sully looked down at his fists and forced them open. “You have a lot of finesse, boy, you know that?”

Van grunted.

Sully nodded toward his belly. “You okay?”

“Fine.” He lifted a face as blotchy as his voice. “Are you calling the police?”

“Me? No,” Sully said.

“Then I'm going.”

Van launched himself from the pole, but Sully held up his hand.

“Only if you swear you'll stay away from Tatum.”

The kid flipped his head back, sending a mop of hair off his eyes. “What's it to you? You her new lover?”

“Excuse me?” Sully said.

“Wouldn't surprise me.” Van's lip curled. “Like I said, she's a sl—”

“All right—enough. Stay away from her, and I won't tell Wyatt Estes you tried to beat up on his niece.”

Van blinked. “Who's Wyatt Estes?”

Sully looked at him closely. Even without a clear view of his eyes, the hanging lip proclaimed ignorance. He didn't know.

“Somebody you don't want to cross,” Sully said. “Let me hear you say it.”

“Say what?”

“That you'll stay away from Tatum. Say it.”

“All right, all right—dude. I wouldn't go near her again anyway. She's not worth it.”

“Good attitude,” Sully said.

The kid started off, and then stopped. With one more fling of his head, he got the hair out of the way long enough to direct a knowing look at Sully.

“You should stay away from her too,” he said. “She'll sleep with any guy, no matter how old he is.”

Sully watched Van make his surly way down the sidewalk toward the battered pickup truck.
Lyin' sack of cow manure.

He was suddenly exhausted. But one thought did get through before he drained completely: no way did that kid ever have anything to do with Wyatt Estes. But now, more than ever, Sully had to find out who did.

I realized as I got into the Jeep the next morning—after making sure Audrey was vertical and was actually going to drop Jayne at school— that I was thinking about the list, about Jayne, about getting myself strong enough to help Ethan Kaye. About other things besides how wretched I felt about myself. It was that kind of freedom you feel the first time you put on a pair of shorts when you've been clad in trousers all winter.

Washington spring was peeking out of the hideous blue window boxes, and Mickey was positioning a pair of chairs at a cozy table on the sidewalk in front of the Bread. Her head tilted as she surveyed them, cap of fudge-brown hair cupping her face, a satisfied elfin smile curving her cheeks. I considered going down the alley to the back door when she saw me. Though she dropped the smile, she didn't glare or, worse, fold those arms like a wall across her chest.

“Morning,” I said.

She pushed a chair a quarter inch further into place.

“I hope I didn't mess you up yesterday,” she said.

I blinked. “Yesterday?”

“That reporter was sniffing around here.”

“He said you told him where I lived.”

“I wasn't going to.” She repositioned the chair unnecessarily again. “Well, at first I was. I thought you deserved having somebody digging into your business.”

I couldn't conceal a complete gape.

“I never said I wasn't blunt,” she said.

“No, I guess you didn't.”

She put both hands on the back of the chair and leaned into her wrists. “But that's not why I sent him over to your new place—Audrey told me where she was living, of course.”

“Of course.”

“He said you needed to know what was going over at the school— said it would help you. Look, I'm not some witch.”

“I know that, Mickey.”

“And this doesn't mean I've gotten over your undermining my influence with Audrey.”

I felt my eyes widen. “Is that what you think I'm doing? Like we're in competition?”

Her hand flew up. “I still want to see you get your life together.” She shrugged as she turned from the chair. “I don't know why.”

“Because you're a good person,” I said.

She gave me a long look. “You are too. Too bad we're not good in the same ways, huh?”

The Jeep would whine up to the curb any minute, and Sully was still trying to pray—
trying
being the operative word.

The light was the problem. The sun had been spring-bright all day, drawing the denizens of Callow out of their dim bars and smeary-windowed Laundromats and onto the sidewalks, blinking in the glare.

Sunshine seeped into every crack of the garage and cast an unaccustomed cheerfulness, giving Isabella her first chance to gleam under the buffing he was giving her. This was the kind of post-winter light that brought clients to the clinics in anxious bursts. People who'd been depressed all winter and blamed it on the wallpaper-paste skies now expected to feel better. When that didn't happen, they came in to find out why the promise of new life wasn't coming true for them.

Sully closed his eyes. Pray for Demi. This could be her cruelest spring ever. Who said that? Who said April was the cruelest month?

Dude, pray.

He breathed, long. Let the thoughts come . . . the prayer thoughts . . . Light of the World . . . blaze through the darkness . . . the darkness cannot put You out . . .

—Except the red lights—the flashes—swallowed
by the night— by the inky blackness.

He cupped his hands to his face, pulled the Light to himself. Sometimes if he said it out loud . . . “You are the Life-Light. Be my Light to live by—shine through me to her.”

—You can't help me, Sully—she says you can't help me—I have to
listen to her.

“You are the Life-Light—bring me into the Light.”

—
Turn into the slide! Don't hit the brakes, baby.

—The red lights—flashes of alarm—spasms of panic.

Come on. “Every person who enters, You bring into the Light.”

—or out—out and into the black—in long silence from the shrieking skid—lights gulped away—

“No—
into
the Light.”

“Sullivan?”

Sully bolted out of the chair, across the office, into the fading light of the garage. Demi—how much had she heard?

How much had he said?

She was backlit in the big doorway, hand on the metal frame, peering in.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Were you on the phone?” She moved her thumb toward the Jeep. “I can wait, if you want.”

“Absolutely not,” he said. “You ready to go to work?”

With a nod she passed him and went straight to the office. In the doorway, she turned and surprised him by smiling. “You coming?” she said. “I have to get this done, Dr. Crisp.”

Light shone in her eyes. The red ones lurking in the back of his thoughts winked out. By the time he got to his chair, Demi was pulling something from her purse.

“I brought this again,” she said. “If this is going to happen, I have to do the homework.”

Sully looked at the family photo she propped against the rock paperweight on his desk. The pixie-haired girl smiled obediently at him.

“Have you been talking to her?” Sully said.

Demi gave him the wry look. “No. I can't bring myself to do it”

“How come?”

“In the first place, I don't know when and where I'll have the chance. There are three of us living in a space big enough for one five-year-old. Jayne already knows I talk to myself in the bathroom mirror.”

Sully grinned at her. “Doesn't everybody?”

“Do you?” she said, and then shrank behind a raised hand. “Sorry—I shouldn't ask you personal questions.”

“Demi—relax. You're focused on your stuff now. You aren't going to do anything inappropriate.”

She studiedly recrossed her legs.

“Demi.”

She looked at him.

“Trust yourself.”

No word could name the look that worked its way from her throat to her eyes. Sully watched in wonder what he always waited for in therapy, the moment of a genuine shift in feeling.

“It's hard,” she said finally.

“It is for almost everyone. And most of the time it starts before you're even five years old.” He nodded toward the picture. “By the time you were that age, you were probably already questioning yourself.”

Demi grunted. “Are you kidding? I don't remember when I
wasn't.
”

Sully turned his gaze on the posed woman in the center of the photo. “No help from Mom?”

Sully watched the tiny lines at the corners of her mouth harden into stiff threads.

“Do we have to talk about her?” she said.

Sully felt himself smile sadly. “Not today, but sooner or later you're going to have to deal with her if you want to get better.” He leaned back. “I'm going to let you make the rules on this one. Tell me what you think is important about your mom helping you.”

“She didn't ‘help' me, Sullivan—she told me what to do in no uncertain terms—until the day she died.”

Demi brushed her hand across her mouth, as if she were making sure the words had—finally—crossed her lips. Sully was still sorting out the last phrase, one that didn't really surprise him.

The mother died, too, and obviously left unresolved issues boiling inside her daughter. Another life trauma, and once again, Demi neglected to mention it.

Sully leaned toward her, arms on his thighs. “I don't think you realize how much you went through in your life before your affair.”

She frowned. “I've known a lot of people who've lost their mothers to cancer.”

“How old were you?”

“Thirty-five.”

“And how were things between you when she passed?”

For the first time Demi stared at the picture. Her face worked hard.

“Demi,” Sully said softly, “you've come too far to hold back.”

“We had an uneasy truce,” she said finally. “I brought the kids out here to see her every summer. Rich would've come, but I didn't ask him to. She was horrible to him.”

“But you still came.”

“She was my mother.”

“And?”

“She would have made my life miserable otherwise.”

“How so?”

“I wouldn't have been able to live with the guilt. She was alone— my brothers stayed away.”

“It was all up to you then?” He scooted as close to the edge of the chair as he dared.

She squeezed herself in, opening and closing her hands against her knees. “I guess so.”

“You guess?”

“No—I know! She said it—she said she'd suffered three heartbreaks already, and she couldn't take any from me. It was up to me. It was always up to me.”

She whipped her face toward the picture, hands still clawing at her kneecaps.

“Right this minute,” Sully said, “what do you want to do?”

“I can't.”

“I think you can.”

“I want to tear her right out of that picture and rip her into a thousand pieces like she did me—but I can't do that.”