Healing Waters (49 page)

“Here's our tea,” Deidre said. Her eyes sagged at the tray Francesca placed on the ottoman coffee table. “You ladies drink and try to rest. We're set up in the dining room if you need us.” She touched Francesca's elbow. “I'd like to ask you a few questions, Ms. Christie.”

When they were gone, neither of us touched the teapot snuggled in its lace-trimmed cozy. Even the attempt at comfort caught in my throat. Was the kidnapper taking care of Bethany's needs? Did he know she liked warm milk with nutmeg before she went to sleep? Would he tell her how many more wake-ups before she could come home?

“Dear God,” I said. “Dear God, please.”

“I said don't talk to me about God.”

I didn't look at Sonia. “I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to Him.”

“Why?” Sonia folded her arms across her cave of a belly and rocked. “You can't trust Him. What is He doing right now?”

“He's stopping me from slapping you right across the face.”

Her head came up.

“And,” I said, “He's keeping me from losing my mind.”

“Don't count on Him for that. He tried to take mine away.”

Sonia stopped rocking and bulleted her eyes to the wall. I took a step toward her and, despite the palm she put up, another.

“What happened with God while you were in the hospital?” I said.

“I faced reality, Lucia.”

“What reality?”

“That I am going to look like a freak for the rest of my life. That all the people I trusted have abandoned me. That one of them did this to me.” She formed the misshapen smile. “Dr. Ukwu thought I'd made such progress in coming to terms with all of it. I thought I did too. I'm scheduled for my first autograft next week to try to create a face that won't drive people screaming from the room. I worked on my physical therapy so I could achieve some expression other than this zombiesque stare. I talked about my disaster of a childhood so I could learn how to be a decent mother.”

She turned her eyes to me. “All because I finally discovered that God is going to do nothing for me. I thought He was in total charge, but I found out He wasn't—or if He was, He was a cruel, heartless being, and I could not let myself believe that. But now—”

Her mouth spread into a stiff slot. “Now I know He is. I was ready to make everything up to Bethany, and He took her from me.” A long, deep growl tore from her throat. “And I can't even cry. My face won't let me. My eyes won't let me. God won't even let me cry,
sorella.
”

“Then I'll cry for both of us,” I said.

“You can't cry for me!” Sonia beat her fists against her thighs. “I can't make you live my life for me anymore!”

“I didn't say for you
.
It isn't all about you. I'm crying for
us.
For
our
Bethany. And if we don't see this through together, she has nothing worth coming back to.”

Sonia's eyes fired at me. “And how do you think we're going to do that?”

“The same way I've gotten through everything else in the last month: by saying
Dear God
over and over until something comes out of me that makes sense.”

“Pray? Look what praying did to me.”

“I don't know anything about that,” I said. I was crying so hard my words came out in agonized chunks. “I just know I'm still holding it together because God hears me.”

Sonia dug into me with her eyes. “You don't really think God's going to send her back to us.”

“I don't know,” I said. “I just know He's with her.”

Sonia fell against the sofa back. Turning her eyes to the ceiling seemed her only way to shut me from her sight. She wrapped herself in her own arms, and I went back to the window, where I sobbed a prayer for us. For
we
.

GH

Sully didn't know how he'd gotten to the bridge, or how long he'd stood there pressed into the railing before its unyielding steel cut off his breath. Below him the Cumberland was brown and churning in the wake of the storm. He couldn't blame it anymore. It had only taken what Lynn had given it.

So. The turn down Why Road was the wrong turn all along. It led nowhere. He would never know—and perhaps Lynn couldn't even explain it if she came back at that moment. She was sick. She didn't have the help she needed to heal the pain she didn't understand.

Sully strangled the railing with his fingers. One thing he did know. For the first time, he understood why Lynn or anyone else would choose oblivion in a green, ugly river over this kind of suffering. Could he blame her for not being able to live with it, when right now he didn't know if he could either?

“Why couldn't you come to me?” he whispered to the water. “Why did you listen to that woman instead of to me?” A sob caught in his throat and would come no further. “Why did you believe everything was your fault?”

Why do
you
, Dr. Crisp?

Sully looked over his shoulder before he realized the voice came from inside himself—and yet not himself. He leaned over the railing, body tilted to the river.

The pain is in the blame,
it said
. But there is no blame, Sully. There
is only Me.

Sully heard it, as clearly as the train whistle and the swish of a bicycle and the drip of leftover rain from the girders. As he pulled back from the railing, he knew. It wasn't the river's voice in him. It was God's.

“You all right, sir?”

Sully looked over his shoulder again and this time saw a young policeman who had pulled onto the overlook on a bicycle.

“Are
you
?” Sully said.

“Excuse me?”

“Are
you
all right?”

The boy-cop's hand crept not too subtly toward the radio on his belt. “I'm fine, sir. I'm more concerned about you.”

“I'm not going to jump, if that's what you mean.” Sully turned his back to the railing. “Stay fine, my friend. Hold on to
fine
as long as you can—because this world can break your heart.”

“I'll do that.” The officer beckoned to Sully with his fingers. “I'd feel a lot better if you'd step away from there.”

“I think I will.” Sully gazed once more into the Cumberland. “There's nothing more for me here.”

He was almost to the Buick, with the policeman still keeping a cautious distance behind him on the bike, when his cell nagged from his pocket. Sully let it ring a second time. He was no longer waiting for information he thought he wanted to know. That itself was an empty realization that made him fish the phone out and answer it, just to fill the aching space.

“How is Sonia?” Porphyria said.

“Sonia,” Sully said. He tucked the phone under his chin and pulled out the car key. “I didn't see her when she got home from the hospital. I'm headed back to her place now, but I thought I'd let her sort of reenter the atmosphere before I—”

“You don't know, then.”

Sully stopped, key in the lock. “Know what?”

“I hope you aren't too far away,” Porphyria said. “Because they're going to need Sullivan Crisp at that house.”

The sunset silhouettes of journalists and their cameras set a surreal scene when Sully pulled up to the driveway. No less eerie was the police barrier that blocked his way, or the accusing light thrust into his face when he opened the car window.

“Mrs. Cabot knows I'm coming,” Sully said. He shielded his eyes with the flat of his hand. “I called ahead. Sullivan Crisp.”

“May I see your ID, please?”

As Sully fumbled for his wallet, a second voice barked from the other side of the flashlight. “We've got some guy out here, says he's Sonia Cabot's father.”

“Is he for real?”

“I doubt it. He looks like a loser.”

Sully nudged the arm resting in the car window with his license. While the officer examined it, he craned to see the person the second cop treated to the glare of another Mag light—a bulky man, perhaps formerly muscular but now spongy with age and inertia. His hardgray hair curled over a forehead plowed into deep creases, and his eyes addressed the glare with a squint Sully suspected was more from halfmad worry than the insult of the light itself. The knot of a mouth cinched it. If he wasn't Lucia Coffey's father, he should have been.

“Sorry, dude,” the officer said to him. “Mrs. Cabot didn't say anything about her father. You get permission from her and we'll talk.” “You're clear, Dr. Crisp,” Sully's officer said. “Sorry for the delay. We just have to check everybody out.”

“Of course.”

The policeman shot the light away from his face and went toward the barrier. Sully leaned out the window.

“Mr. Brocacini?”

The bulky man jerked his head toward Sully. “Yeah?” His voice had the pinch of a man near panic. “Do I know you?”

“No,” Sully said. “Do you want me to tell your daughters you're here?”

“Dr. Crisp, move on, please, sir.”

Sully let the car drop into gear and looked in the rearview mirror. Tony Brocacini's face collapsed as he nodded.

GH

Sonia and I were sitting across from each other in the breakfast nook, over a plate of fruit and cheese Francesca had assembled, when Sullivan brought Dad in and disappeared to the kitchen.

Though grayer and more lined than he had been at our mother's funeral, our father looked less beaten. I knew it was fear, not alcohol, that made his eyes seem unfocused.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I had to come.”

Sonia only stared at him.

“I got something to say, and then you can throw me out if you want.”

“I don't have the energy to throw you out,” Sonia said.

“And I don't want to,” I said. I slid further into the booth and patted the seat. “Sit.”

Dad looked at Sonia. When she didn't protest, he fell heavily onto the bench beside me.

“I know this ain't the time to play the prodigal father,” he said. “You got enough to handle.” A sad something bleated from his throat. “I wouldna come if Chip hadn't called me.”

“Chip called you?” I said.

“He does every now and again.” He grunted. “Recovering addicts understand each other.”

It was my turn to stare.

“He's all the way up in Oregon. He wanted me to make sure you were okay.”

“Where were you?” Sonia said.

Dad studied his hands, which he'd spread on the tabletop, I suspected to control their trembling.

“I been here in Nashville since before you got home from Philly. Been staying at a motel.”

There was no attempt in his voice to coax out guilt, but it stabbed me just the same.

“Chip just wanted me to tell you it's gonna be all right.”

“I love these reassurances based on absolutely nothing,” Sonia said. All the strain crowded into her eyes, because it had no other place to show itself.

“Why didn't Chip call me himself?” I said.