Healing Sands (32 page)

“So what about you?” Kyle said. “Where did all your gutsy wisdom come from?” He grinned as he chewed. “If you don't mind me asking.”

Sully grinned back and inhaled the steak and the selection of starches like he hadn't eaten in weeks, and gave a more detailed version of his schooling in psychology at Vanderbilt under Porphyria Ghent than he shared with most people. Kyle devoured his meal, never taking his eyes from Sully while he talked, not shifting his gaze to the flirty server who came by every three minutes to check on him or letting it wander to the tray of decadent desserts she was hefting. He listened in that way only somebody who'd been there could do.

Kyle finished eating before Sully and ordered coffee and flan. Sully passed. He still had a quarter of a steak to finish.

“You're going to get extra caramel sauce—you know that, don't you?” Sully said when the waitress had run off happily with Kyle's dessert order.

“Huh?”

“Don't tell me you haven't noticed her trying to crawl into your pocket. You could probably get a neck massage. To go.”

“Not interested. I've come a long way, but not that far. But speaking of pictures on desks . . .” Kyle stopped and took the coffee from the server, who now identified herself as Zoe and gave him every option for his coffee, from full-out cream to skim milk.

Sully shifted in his seat and tried to mark out a direction. It had been awhile since he'd been with a colleague who wasn't a mentor or didn't need one.

“I think you're spot on,” Kyle said when Zoe was gone. “She's making another whole trip to get the flan.”

“Don't be surprised if she puts her phone number on the check—which, by the way, I'm picking up.”

“No way. I invited you.” Kyle sat back with his coffee and sipped in spite of the steam pouring from it.

Sully watched him and felt something give within, a thawing of ground long hardened. “The picture on my desk,” he said. “That's my wife and baby. Was them. I still have a hard time putting them in the past tense.”

Kyle grimaced. “How long has it been?”

“Fourteen and a half years,” Sully said. “And there are times when I don't think I'm as far along as you are.”

The flan arrived, flooded with sauce, but Kyle didn't touch it.

“In your podcasts, the series on suffering, you never said exactly what it was you had to deal with, but I had no idea it was something that devastating. Do you mind me asking what happened?” By now Sully was unsurprised that he didn't, in fact, mind. As Kyle listened, Sully described his thirteen years of burying his guilt and pain and anger under a career designed to heal the hurts in people's lives when he couldn't face the gaping wound in his own.

“You said I probably haven't been where you were, ready to slit my wrists,” Sully said, “but I almost ran myself off a bridge. It took that for me to get the kind of help I was offering everyone else.”

“Which now makes you an even more incredible minister than you were before,” Kyle said.

“I don't know. I took a three-month leave of absence, and when I did test the waters again, I was scared spitless. That's when I did the podcasts.”

“But since then you've been incredibly productive. I mean, the speaking tour.” Kyle folded his hands behind his head. “I caught your act in Little Rock, which was where I was living at the time, and I bought the DVD Healing Choice produced when you spoke in Oklahoma City.”

Sully rearranged his silverware on the plate Zoe had yet to remove. Should he tell Kyle the underlying motive for doing those particular cities, and Amarillo? That he'd chosen them because they were places Belinda Cox had lighted before she wound up in Las Cruces?

“So are you ever going to go public with this?” Kyle asked. “Not that you necessarily should, but if people knew, I mean, think of the impact it could have.”

“The story's not over yet.” Sully gave Kyle one more search for mere curiosity. He saw only his own former self, grasping for understanding wherever he could get it. That, and the pain he knew Kyle would never be rid of.

“I'm looking for Belinda Cox, Lynn's so-called therapist,” he said. “She's apparently somewhere in Mesilla, still practicing— something. I'm struggling with whether I should find her and stop her. If I even can. I'm questioning my motivation.”

Kyle pushed his untouched plate of flan aside and leaned forward, hands flat on the table. “You have to do this,” he said. “Not just for your own grief work, but for the people this woman could be keeping from getting real help. You owe them that. And Lynn and Hannah.”

“That's what I'm thinking.” Sully put his fist to his chest. “It's what I'm feeling, what I keep hearing from God. But I get frustrated, and I wonder if I'm getting it wrong—if I'm not just supposed to let it go.”

“I don't think so. You probably feel that way because you're going it alone. I'd help you, man. I'll go to Mesilla with you and knock on doors or whatever it takes. It's not that big a place.” Kyle sank back against the booth. “I guess I'm coming on pretty strong, but I know what you're feeling. If there was anything I could do to make Hayley's death mean something, I'd do it in a heartbeat. You have that chance.”

“Who wants this?” Zoe was once again at tableside, biting her lower lip at Kyle and holding up the check.

“Me,” Sully said.

She looked startled when Sully took it from her hand, as if she truly had never noticed he was there.

“Um, you can take it up front,” she said.

Sully pushed his plate away and extricated himself from the booth where, it seemed, he'd just spent several years. In spite of the ancient pain thudding dully in his chest, he had to grin to himself when he looked at the check. Zoe had written a phone number across the bottom.

Kyle had that effect on people. He made you want to trust him.

Sully could see where she was coming from.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

A
lex had a game on Saturday, which I wouldn't have missed if I'd been having a heart transplant. I felt so estranged from him again, as if all the ground we'd gained in September was lost when October blew in. I had to be there to cheer him on and smuggle him a Coke and somehow reconnect.

Jake, however, was not enthused. I had dragged him out every morning at dawn for the week he'd been with me, after he hadn't slept well to begin with. When I sat on the edge of his bed to wake him up Saturday morning, he groaned like a bear being rousted from hibernation.

“I wish I could just leave you here to sleep in,” I said.

“Why can't you?”

I pulled the pillow from over his face. “You know why.”

Jake grabbed it back and clamped it to his chest. “No, I don't. I'm not gonna go anywhere. I don't want to go back to jail.”

It was the first time he'd mentioned it, but I hadn't forgotten the condition he'd been in after just one night in that place. He peeked at me now through the slits he made with his eyelids.

“Would you just stay in bed the whole time?” I said.

“No doubt.”

“Don't answer the door if anybody comes. I'll take my phone with me so you don't have to worry about that. Nobody ever calls on the land line.”

“Nail the door shut from the outside, I don't care . . . No, don't do that.”

“Wasn't planning on it. Okay, I'm trusting you because I know I can.”

As I pulled the covers up around his shoulders, I felt them soften and give.

“Speaking of phones,” I said, “what happened to your cell?”

“Never had one,” Jake mumbled as he churned to his side. “We're the only kids in the United States that don't have them.”

I stood up so I wouldn't ask the question that tore at my lips. At the door, I stopped and turned to look at his back again, already rising and falling in even breaths. I couldn't let it pass altogether.

“You weren't in that alley alone, Jake,” I said. “Whenever you're ready to tell me who was with you, we can start to beat this thing.”

He didn't answer.

The soccer game was another winner, on almost every level. Without Jake, I could sit with the soccer moms, who picked up right where we'd left off a week before. Poco basically didn't let go of my hand the entire time. J.P. wanted to know every detail of what was happening with Jake. Victoria smiled one long smile at me, though she did toss her hair out of her face long enough to inform me that Ginger was being evicted from her apartment that day. I tried not to let that distract me from watching every move Alex made on the field. I didn't want to think about where Ginger was going to live now; I hadn't gotten full-blown angry for several days, and I wanted to keep it that way.

Alex scored a goal. So did Cade. Bryan blocked several of the other team's attempts. And little Felipe ran around like an eager terrier, missing the ball half the time and still getting hoorahs from his teammates and his coach.

I watched Dan too. He seemed gaunt and tired, but he put the same energy into high-fiving and cheering and coaxing that he always did. I wondered if that was holding him together the way my picture making and bizarre therapy sessions and tangled nights of God-talks were keeping me from flying apart.

I left the bleachers in time to buy Alex the customary contraband soft drink and met him at the end of the game. As he gulped, eyes dancing, I said, “What do you say you come to my house and we practice in my yard today? I think I've forgotten everything I've learned.”

“Mom,” Alex said, “you haven't even learned that much yet.”

“Hey, cut me some slack!” I nudged the bottom of his cup. “So what about it?”

He pushed the straw up and down.

“What's wrong?” I said.

“I kind of already told Felipe I'd go over to his house.”

“Oh.”

“I didn't know if, you know, because of Jake . . .”

“It's okay, Alex. Don't ditch Felipe. I'll catch you next time.”

“You sure it's okay?”

“Absolutely. And look, this thing with Jake is going to be over soon, and things will get back to normal—whatever that is.”

Alex sucked down some more carbonation and looked at me. His brown eyes were no longer dancing. “Is it really gonna be over soon?”

“When I find out what happened, Jake will be cleared, and we can look for our normal.”

He stared at his straw. “What if you can't?”

“If the court says he's guilty, he'll get some kind of punishment. It might just be like what he's doing now.”

“Which is nothing. Is he going nuts?”

I laughed. “No. He's doing pretty well, actually.”

“I'd be going nuts.”

“I know you would.”

He sucked the cup dry, complete with the obnoxious boy-noise, without looking at me. “If they say he has to go to jail, will you tell me?”

“Uh, I think you'll know, Alex.”

“I just want to know right away.”

“Then you'll be the first.”

“Hey, Alex!” another boy-voice yelled.

“Go,” I said.

I hitched my bag up on my shoulder and watched him tear toward Felipe and grab him in a headlock.

“Where's Jake?”

I turned to find Dan at my side, shaking out his hair and repositioning his ball cap on top of it.

“Asleep,” I said. “I'm on my way back to him right now.”

“Do you have time for breakfast?”

I tried not to let my chin drop.

“I just need to talk to you,” he said. “And we both look like we could use a decent meal.”

“Okay,” I said.

After ten minutes of preparing myself in the car as I followed Dan, we pulled up to an adobe dive that proclaimed it had the best
huevos rancheros
north of the border, and I was no closer to knowing what I was supposed to do with this. Pre-Crisp, I would have gone in armed to the teeth with invective. But my last talk with Sullivan made me doubt that was the way to go. We just hadn't gotten far enough for me to know which
was
the right direction.

Dan looked even more drawn and worn close up. He had what resembled carry-on luggage under his eyes, and their golden brown was shot with road maps of red. But it was his mouth that exposed him completely. There had always been something peaceful about Dan's lips—even in repose they formed a small smile, as if he knew of the joy that lay beneath almost anything.

That expression had driven me to slam cabinet doors when he'd continued to wear it despite near bankruptcy. I'd have given anything to see it there now.

With the waitress off to shout out our order in Spanish, Dan turned his worn-out face to me.

“How is Jake? You probably think I'm being a coward not seeing him. What was it you used to say . . . I'm avoidant?”

I rubbed uncomfortably at my chin.

“I'm falling apart over this,” Dan said, “and Jake doesn't need to see me losing it. He needs to be with somebody who can tough this out with him. And that's you.”

It's about time you saw that,
something in me wanted to say. Smugly. With a smirk and a side of
If you'd figured that out a long time ago, maybe . . .

Maybe what?
a different something in me said. Maybe we'd still be right where we are?

“I actually don't think you're being a coward or avoidant or passive-aggressive.” I almost smiled. “Remember that one?”

He almost smiled back.

“It's killing me not to be able to say that I yelled and screamed and shook Jake, and he finally told me everything.” I put up my palm. “I didn't—I couldn't—not the way he was when he came out of jail.”

Dan's eyes filled.

“He's doing better now,” I said quickly. “I did find out he has a gift for photography.” I told Dan about Jake's pictures, and he seemed to bask in it.