Healing Stones (46 page)

“What about you, Tatum?” Sully said.

“What about me?”

“Don't you deserve to be able to face up to this so you can be healed, instead of turning into a bitter, cynical woman wasting her life in a bakery?”

Her eyes swam, and, he saw, she hated them for it.

“Is that the shrink talking?” she said.

“No—it's your friend talking.”

She came out from behind the counter and marched to the door, and for a minute he thought she was showing him out. But she flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED, and turned the deadbolt. With her hand still on it, she said, “Sit down. I'll give you ten minutes.”

He sat dutifully and pushed out another chair with his foot. She turned it backwards and straddled it, leaving its back between them.

“Here's the deal.” Her voice was cardboard. “I had a—call it an intimate affair—with Zachary Archer last spring. Technically it wasn't sexual, but it was enough for me to know he was the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. But just before classes started in the fall, he broke it off. He told me he'd had an attack of conscience about seeing a student. It was pretty romantic, actually.”

Tatum licked her lips as if she were removing a bad taste. “He said it broke his heart, but he wanted to stop before we weakened and slept together. He respected me too much to do that to me. Can you believe I bought that?”

She pointed her finger at Sully. “Don't answer that.”

“I do believe it. What woman in love wouldn't?”

“Anybody with half a brain. Anyway, I felt like he was protecting me, even when he said I should date somebody else, preferably a student. I took it to mean he wanted to avert suspicion. It was in the innuendo that we were going to end up together when I graduated.”

Sully leaned across the table. “Tatum, from what I know about this guy, I'm sure that's exactly what he wanted you to believe. Don't beat yourself up.”

She twisted her mouth. “Too late.”

“So where did Van come in? Was he the diversionary boyfriend Zach told you to acquire?”

“Yeah. Zach even picked him out for me.”

“So you two were still talking.”

“He gave me just enough attention to keep me hanging on—I see that now. Which is why when he came to me in February and asked me if I would have Van do a ‘discreet photography job' for him—” She pushed away from the chair back with her palms. “I was sick of Van by that time. He wanted a whole lot more from the relationship than I did, and I felt like a jerk leading him on. Zach said this job would get me out of it and set me free to go away with him.”

Sully tried to keep the utter disgust out of his eyes.

“I was so ready to do that. Van was already accusing me of having a thing for Dr. Archer. I guess I wasn't hiding it all that well.”

The impassive I-could-care-less face she was fond of putting on was a post-Zach development, Sully decided. She must have been a beauty to behold when she was in love.

“I did everything Zach told me to,” she went on. “I gave Van a packet and told him to do whatever the instructions inside said. I have to say I was sort of weirded out by it—but I thought Zach wouldn't do anything that wasn't totally right, after he was so ‘honorable' with me.”

Sully nodded.

“So—the night he took the pictures—at the end of February, Van comes to my apartment, drags me out in the hall so my roommate won't hear, and says if I thought Zach Archer had any feelings for me, I was wrong. He shows me this huge wad of cash and says Zach paid him big bucks to take pictures of him and a woman, print them, and deliver them to the fire station with Rich Costanas's name on the envelope.”

She tilted her head back and breathed in through her nose. “He shows me the pictures, and there's my Zach with Dr. Costanas—her half naked.”

“I know,” Sully said. “I've seen them.”

Tatum blinked at him.

“Long story,” Sully said. “Go on.”

“It was like Tatum Farris ended right there—I either had to become somebody else or die.” She put her head down, and her shoulders shook. “So now I'm a bitter little bakery girl—and I hate myself this way.”

She cried like it hurt and stopped, Sully knew, long before she was ready. He handed her a napkin.

“Now,” he said, “you want to tell me the rest?”

I had to admit it was manipulative, but I had to do it to get Rich to see me, and I had to talk to him before I went through with my plan. Jayne was more than happy to help, though I told her at least six times she was never to do anything like this herself.

“Whatever, Mom,” she said. “You do what you have to do. He'll get over it.”

It was so unlike my fairy princess of a daughter, I had to laugh out loud.

She called him and asked him sweetly to meet her at Java Joe's, that she needed to talk to him. That wasn't a complete lie. She did sit with him for ten minutes, telling him in no uncertain terms (she told me later) that he should listen to me for once instead of deciding to divorce me. From the ladies' room door I watched him rub the back of his head and try to look stern. He didn't quite pull it off.

When she reached up and pulled at her ponytail—our prearranged signal for me to enter the scene—I hurried to the table and slid into her chair as she slid out.

“I'll meet you out front,” she said, and vanished among the tables.

Rich leaned back and simply sighed. The man looked exhausted.

“I'm sorry to hear about your suspension,” I said. “I really am, Rich.”

“Is that why you set me up—so you could tell me that?”

“No. I'm sorry about the setup, but you need to hear this.”

“You used our daughter.”

“She was a willing accomplice—and much more honest than our son, which is another story.”

“What is it, Demitria?” he asked wearily.

I folded my hands on the tabletop and shook my head at the waitress who waved a coffeepot in my direction.

“What I've done has hurt a lot of people, and some of them won't let me make it up to them. But there's one person who I can help, and that's Ethan Kaye. I know you've always respected him.”

Rich gave a jerky nod.

“There's a board meeting coming up to decide whether they're going to let Ethan go.”

“That makes no sense. He's put that place on the map—he got you your position.”

“I know that if I go to the board and tell them that Zach Archer set me up with those photos and somehow Wyatt Estes and Kevin St. Clair got them and tried to use them to force Ethan to resign—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. He did what?”

I blew out air. “Zach was the one who had the pictures taken and delivered to you. Somehow, the others got them too. I don't know for sure if he had anything to do with that—Ethan doesn't think so.”

“This was the guy who supposedly loved you?”

“Don't start, Rich,” I said, closing my eyes. “I know I was an idiot to ever trust him—and it isn't going to do me any good to tell you how deceptive he could be.”

Rich swore under his breath. “The nice guy who took us all out on his boat. I bought it too.” He cleared his throat. “Not that that's any excuse for you—”

“I said don't
start. What's the point? You've already asked for a divorce.”

“So why are you telling me this?”

This was the part I dreaded. “Because there's likely to be publicity, and I know you don't want that.” I pressed into the table. “I have to do this, Rich. It's the right thing. I'm sorry if it embarrasses you, but people are going to know sooner or later. This way you can tell anybody you care about before they read it in the paper. Anybody else might even feel bad for you the victim.”

He looked down. “There's nobody I care about anymore, except the kids. Do what you have to do.” His eyes came up. “I'm surprised you want people to know what you did, though. You have friends here.”

“They all know already—and besides, people can think what they want, but I know that one act of infidelity does not define me as a person. I can still do good things, and I can still love, and I can still serve God. That's who I am.”

Something came into Rich's eyes and lingered there long enough for me to catch it and name it respect. He gazed back down at his hand.

“I hope all our conversations in the future can be as calm as this one,” I said. “We're going to have to have some—about the kids and the property.”

“Yeah.” He shifted in his seat.

I scraped back my chair and swallowed down the emotional lump in my throat. “If anyone asks, I'll tell them you didn't deserve what I did to you.”

Before he could answer, I wove among the tables and out to my daughter.

CHAPTER THIRTY - EIGHT

T
he air was misty the day of the board meeting, which seemed fitting. Sunshine wouldn't have worked for the uncertainty that shrouded the school as I made my way from the car up the hill toward the admin building.

I stopped at the top and looked down on the campus. The last of the day's protestors, lounging on the chapel steps in Northface, their signs dripping at their sides. People under a canopy of umbrellas moving into Huntington, shoulders nudged together in concerned conversation. I could see it all at once, and I knew what it meant: if I didn't go forward with the story I had spent all night receiving from the God-whisper, the struggle for truth through doubt would disappear.

And part of me would vanish with it.

Hanging the bag of rocks I'd collected from our brook over my shoulder, I picked my way down and went in through the back door. This might be the last time I climbed through that old stairwell with its battered couches and student clutter.

The board members were gathered at the front of the conference room, all looking decidedly Washingtonian at the front in their suits and polished hair. The place was swollen with people, and I stopped in the doorway to look for one with an unmistakable Chia-pet do.

Fletcher Basset waved covertly to me from the corner where he stood, a wireless earpiece in one ear and a pencil tucked behind the other. I nodded to him. Calling him to alert him to what I was going to do and to urge him to fill the place had been the source of much floor-pacing in the middle of the night, but I decided the light this might shine on the public debate was worth having to consort with a little weasel.

He looked less like a rodent than a concerned citizen at the moment, though. His eyes rested on Ethan Kaye, who sat still and distinguished on the front row next to Andy Callahan, right in front of the pompous St. Clair and Estes—and he covered my friend in unexpected compassion.

I marched myself up to Peter Lamb, the round, black-bearded chairman of the board of trustees, and put out my hand.

“Demitria Costanas,” I said.

He seemed taken aback, which gave me a chance to hurry on. “I understand it's in the by-laws that anyone wanting to speak on behalf of a person who is up for dismissal is allowed to do so.”

“So, I take it you'd like to speak,” he said.

I'd never noticed the hint of a speech impediment, which made him sound less than chairmanlike. At the moment, I appreciated that.

“I do have something to say,” I said. “As early in the agenda as possible.”

“There is only one item on the agenda,” Lamb said. “We'll call on you as soon as the position evaluation regarding Dr. Kaye is read.”

I wanted to hand him a stone to throw while he was reading, but I just leaned against the far right wall, since there were no seats left. Fletcher had outdone himself. He'd filled the place, and there were still more neck-craners in the doorway, practically bulging the frame.

Peter Lamb mumbled the meeting to order, and people poked each other until all was quiet.

Lisping his way through, Lamb regaled us with “details” of Ethan's ministry to the college that made me want to chunk the whole bag of rocks over his head. The only thing holding me back was the uncomfortable scarlet his face turned as he went on about Ethan's creeping liberalism and the unrest it had caused among the students. How Ethan was not holding the line on traditional moral values, and how the consequences of that were becoming evident in the way students were expressing their disbelief in class. How the instances of pregnancy, drug use, and cheating were increasing as the truth was diluted.

I felt my eyes roll so far back in my head it would have made Jayne proud when he read that, due to the situations that had occurred under Ethan Kaye's watch, he must be held accountable for the failures in morality on campus and be dismissed from his position as president.

Half the room clapped when he finished. The other half joined in a low growl. The whole thing had so obviously been written by Kevin St. Clair. The only thing missing were the blowfish lips.

Peter Lamb held up a hand and bawled over the vocal chaos, “Excuse me—ladies and gentlemen. There is someone who would like to speak on Dr. Kaye's behalf. And then we will hear from others—” He looked anxiously at the second row. “On both sides of the issue.”

As I elbowed my way through the standing rows of folks in front of me, the first real hush of the day fell over the crowd. If I hadn't known already that most people had put two and two together and come up with my affair, I was sure of it now. I thought of Rich, so worried about exposure that had long ago stripped our life naked before the world.

Peter nodded to me, his face still a bilious red above the beard, and muttered something about keeping it brief.

I leaned close to him. “It will take as long as it takes,” I said in his ear. “So you might as well sit down.”

By then the crowd was stirring. They hushed when I plunked the bag of rocks on the desk, opened it, and took them out to display them, one in front of each board member. The rest, all but the one I left in the bag, I piled at one corner. With the last one set on top, I turned to the now wide-eyed audience.