Healing Stones (6 page)

I dumped a lump of pink mashed potatoes into the garbage disposal and concentrated on scrubbing out the Tupperware it had been growing in.

“I also know Dad throwing tools isn't about ‘issues.'”

I stopped scrubbing. “He threw something?”

“Have you looked in the garage this morning? Looks like Mr. Goodwrench went ballistic in there.”

I nearly scoured the logo off the bottom of the container. Rich didn't hurl screwdrivers and yell at his kids. He'd never even spanked one of them.

“So, yeah, Mom,” Christopher said. “What's going on?”

“Maybe it's none of our business,” Jayne said.

Christopher held his coffee mug halfway to his lips and looked at her through the steam. “Is it my business if they sleep together?”

“No,” she and I said in unison.

“Does it become my business when my father turns into Attila the Hun? Yes. Do I have a right to know what's going on when I'm afraid to walk around in my own house? No doubt.” He took a noisy sip from the mug and surveyed me. “So what gives, Mom?”

Jayne pushed her plate across the counter and slid off the stool.

“Don't go anywhere, Sissy,” Christopher said. “We need to hear this.”

Only Christopher's use of his childhood name for his sister pushed me toward telling them something to ease their minds. “Okay, listen,” I said.

Jayne slid one bun-cheek back onto the stool and examined her split ends. Christopher took another drag from his coffee.

“I did something that upset your dad,” I said. “So he asked me to sleep downstairs until we can sort it out.”

“Geez, Mom, what did you do?” Christopher said. “Cheat on him?”

The flicker of shock I registered lasted only until I saw in his crooked smile that he was kidding. But it was long enough. Christopher set his mug on the stove and stared at me.

“Dude, that's it, isn't it?” he said. “You slept with some other guy.”

“You
told them?”

Rich was there, out of nowhere, the way everything suddenly seemed to be. His eyes bit into me.

“No,” I said lamely. “He guessed.”

Rich hissed. “He grabbed it out of thin air—”

“So that's why you're never here,” Christopher said. “That's why Jayne has to call me to pick her up—”

“It's over, Christopher,” I said.

That didn't seem to make any more difference to him than it had to anyone else I'd said it to. He drew his mouth up to his nose. “How could you do that to Dad? You're a hypocrite.”

“I know,” I said. “I've hurt your father—now I've hurt you kids— and I'm so sorry.”

“Like that's supposed to change anything.” For a horrified moment I thought Christopher was going to spit at me. Instead, he turned to his father, but Rich was honed in on me, wearing an expression identical to his son's.

“Come on, Sissy,” Christopher said. “Let's go for a ride.”

Jayne looked at me. There wasn't an eye roll within a hundred miles. Only heartbreaking confusion splashed across her face.

“Go with your brother,” I said. “We'll talk later.”

Christopher nodded Jayne toward the mudroom door. His last look before his exit was for Rich. “Anything you need, Dad,” he said. “I'm here for you.”

Both Rich and I stood there, not moving, not speaking, until Christopher's pickup roared out of the driveway.

“Why did you have to let them find out?”

“Did you think they weren't going to notice the tension? I tried not to—”

“Look—stop trying, would you? Just stop.”

He said no more.

CHAPTER FIVE

T
hey avoided me the rest of the weekend. Christopher kept Jayne out of my sight with such apparent disdain that by Monday morning I was nearly convinced I was as toxic for my daughter as his twisted lip made me out to be.

I wanted to talk to her, but I couldn't even explain anything to myself yet. How could I make her understand?

Rich stayed home, but his marked escape from any room I entered shot fear through me. When I'd dogged him to the TV area, the mud-room, the kitchen, the garage, he finally holed up in the bedroom. From the sound of his stocky self heaving back and forth across the floor, I knew he wasn't sleeping any more than I was.

I went out once in the Jeep, to pick up a pound of his favorite French roast out of a thready hope that the aroma might lure him downstairs. When I pulled into the driveway on the return trip, I saw a movement in our bedroom window. Rich was backing away from the glass, caught in the act of watching for me. His broad shoulders looked shrunken in that instant, shriveled in loneliness. At least we shared that.

That kept me hanging on to the frail possibility that once the week started and our routine resumed, a piece of our life would fall back into place and I could begin to stitch it back together.

The only place I could start was with closure at Covenant and with Zach. I spent most of Sunday night composing my letter of resignation, and before eight o'clock Monday I was cleaning out my desk and bookshelves at the college.

I got into a saving rhythm that kept my thoughts from spinning out of control, until I came to the Faith and Doubt binders. Then I sank to the floor with a pile of my past in my lap.

Each pristine white notebook was labeled with titles Zach and I collaborated on with the students around a piled-high platter of fried calamari and fries at Tweeten's. I could see the kids working them over, their eyes narrowing and springing open in the gleam of neon fish signs.
Early Images of God
—No—
Infant Images
. Bursts of inspiration rose from prayer and shared purpose and unbridled laughter.

I ran my hand over the binder we'd finally labeled
Off His Lap
and into the Trenches
.

“We were so close to God,” I whispered.

The distance now left me hollow.

I stacked the binders as carefully as teacups on a chair by the door. The rest of my current teaching materials I dumped unceremoniously into a copy paper box. F&D had been the most meaningful thing to me at CCC that semester—since Kevin St. Clair had saddled me with teaching the ultra-dry “Religion in the Pacific Northwest” and two sections of Religion 102.

“What happened to Speaking in Parables?” I'd asked St. Clair when the preliminary schedules came out. “I thought we'd agreed I'd be teaching that.”

“I'm still developing a sense of your take on the parables, Dr. Costanas,” he said. The blowfish lips were fully operational. “I can't tell if you're a literalist or something else.”

Beyond that, he'd refused to discuss it. That was the biggest obstacle in this relentless battle among the faculty. Zach, Ethan, and I—we all wanted to talk, to find out what common ground we had to work from. Kevin's camp always answered, “We have taught the Word as it was meant to be taught, and there is no reason to allow anyone to put a different slant on it.” I would never forget the faculty meeting when Kevin himself had said, “The next thing you know someone will be declaring that the Prodigal Son was the victim of a wealthy workaholic father who never paid any attention to him.” I guffawed right across the table.

The thing was, all Zach and Ethan and I, and a few others, wanted for our students was a chance to grapple with the possibilities, to pray together over interpretation.

A lump the size of my fist formed in my throat. I hadn't shed a tear over any of this, not even in the endless darkness of three AM. Now every one I'd been holding back threatened to break free, just as three girls, led by Brandon Stires, crowded into my office.

“So what's the deal, Dr. C.?” Brandon leaned a bony shoulder against the empty bookshelf. “The note on Dr. A.'s door says some new guy's taking over his classes.”

Chelsea Farmer's eyes, perfectly framed in eyeliner, widened at the box I hoisted off the desk. “Are you leaving too?”

“Irreconcilable differences with the university,” I said. “I was going to send out an e-mail, but—” I dusted off my hands. “Here you are.”

I attempted a smile, which no one appeared to buy, and they all exchanged loaded looks.

“I've been asked not to discuss it, guys,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

Brandon elbowed his way past Chelsea, Marcy, and a new girl who'd transferred from Olympia in January. I thought her name was Audrey. Now I'd never know for sure.

“You can't even tell us what's gonna happen to F&D?” Brandon said.

Marcy's wide face flattened. “We talked about writing monologues we could perform. What about that?”

I tried to swallow. “I'll get together with Dr. Archer, and we'll set up a time to discuss it with you.”

Brandon folded his arms. “What do we do in the meantime?”

“Keep meeting, interviewing people.” For no reason that I could think of, I nodded vehemently at the dark-haired, diminutive Audrey. “You'll be okay, and I promise you, we won't abandon you. We'll get you a new advisor—”

“Like who?” Marcy said with a sniff. “Dr. St. Clair?”

“Dude—no! It'll go from the Faith and Doubt project to the Mandatory Faith Edict.” Brandon jerked his head. “He'll want to rename
it You Better Believe It.”

I winced. “All right, so maybe we—maybe I could act as an outside consultant.”

“That would work,” Chelsea said. “What about Dr. A.?”

I'd come to the end of what I could pretend. “I can't speak for him,” I said.

Marcy nodded. “You guys are a team.”

I turned to an empty box and resisted the urge to stick my head in it.

“It'll be okay,” I said again.

Nobody appeared to believe that. Least of all me.

When they were gone, everything was packed except two books that belonged to Zach—
Speaking in Parables
by Sally McFague and Paul Tillich's
Dynamics of Faith.
We'd talked about both of them, in those early days before we couldn't keep our hands off each other.

The theology department “secretary”—a round senior named Sebastian who never looked up from his NKJV when any of us made a request—let me use the master key to get into Zach's office to return them. I probably could have told him I wanted to rifle the place and he wouldn't have cared, or remembered two minutes later.

The aura of the tiny room overpowered me as I closed myself in— Zach's musky scent and herby-smelling tea stash and slicing wit still lingered in the air. Each word we'd spoken—beyond the yearning whispers to the real exchanges that led us to know that we thought and believed and doubted in identical ways—screamed now from the pages of the books he'd left behind.

Along with everything else. The electric kettle, the canvas bag he used to carry his overflow of papers, even the twenty-pound, leather-bound Oxford Annotated Bible were exactly where they'd always been.

I shoved my knuckles against my mouth. He wouldn't leave all this here.

So where was he?

When I got to Ethan Kaye's office, Gina took one look at me—told me I looked awful—and went directly into the inner sanctum. She was back before I could sink any further and ushered me in.

Ethan didn't have to tell me to sit down. I couldn't stand up. I barely made it to the Windsor chair before I broke down. Hard, from the pit of myself.

Ethan and I didn't have the kind of relationship where I poured out my personal soul. In fact, I didn't have that kind of relationship with anyone—except Zach. I choked myself back and buried my face in the handkerchief he tucked into my hand.

“It's finally hit you,” he said.

“Rich knows. My kids know.”

He let a short silence fall. “That's rough.”

“I deserve it.” I looked up. “I'm trying to tie up loose ends—I brought my letter.”

“No hurry.”

“I need to know—Ethan, where is Zach?”

His eyes narrowed.

“I don't want to see him for—that,” I said. “But we need to get closure with the kids on the Faith and Doubt project.”

“I have no idea where he is.” Ethan's voice flattened. “And neither does anyone else. As of this morning, his e-mails are bouncing back. His cell phone service has been discontinued. To my knowledge he hasn't been seen since you left him on the boat Thursday night. I've talked to the police, the fire inspector—there's no trace of him in the—remains of the boat.” He cleared his throat. “They've had divers in the inlet.”

“What about whoever took the pictures? He would know.” I choked back another threatening sob. “I should never have had a relationship with Zach, Ethan, but I can't just shrug off the fact that he's disappeared. Something has happened to him.”

Ethan ran his hand across his mouth. “Or he simply left.”

I stared at him. “Right or wrong, Zach loves me. He wouldn't abandon me to take the fall for both of us.”

Ethan said something that I didn't hear, because I put my face into the handkerchief and wept until it hurt.

When the strange woman inside me finally shuddered out the last of it, Ethan handed me a glass of water.

“Drink this,” he said. “And I want you to listen to me.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't come here to do this. I'm fine.”

“No, you're not fine, and you won't be until you get help with this. Hear me out.”

I nodded and took a sip. He half-perched on his desk. The lines on his face drew long.

“I have a friend who's a therapist,” Ethan said. “He's a well-known Christian psychologist—has a syndicated radio talk show, has written a couple of books. You may have heard of the Healing Choice Clinics.”

I shook my head.

“Anyway, he's gifted. He doesn't see clients much anymore, but he would talk to you if I asked him to. We go way back.”

“I can't go to—wherever—” My intellect seemed to have drained out with my tears.