Healing Waters (51 page)

Egan folded his fingers around Roxanne's wrist. “Come on. Let's go.”

“He's right, Roxy.” Georgia took her other arm, and Roxanne let them pull her from the set, though she shot me through with her eyes until she was out of sight.

“Are you all right?” Deidre said near my ear.

“I think so,” I said.

“Then let's go home.”

“If you'll wait a minute you can have a DVD of this,” Headphone Man said. “I've got the whole thing for you.” He unclipped my microphone. “Including that last segment with the ALM crew. We won't be airing it, but you might like to use it sometime.”

“For what?” I said.

He shrugged. “I don't know, as a PR clip for your next gig. You really know how to get to the bottom line.”

I felt my knees buckle. “You're right, Deidre,” I said. “We need to go home. I think I need some tea.”

“I knew I'd make a convert out of you.” She squeezed my arm. “I think you just made one out of me.”

GH “That Francesca woman told me Dr. Sullivan Crisp was making sweet tea in here,” Wesley said from the kitchen doorway. “'Course, she looks like she's been up all night, so she's probably hallucinating.”

Sully turned from the stove. “I make killer sweet tea.”

Wesley's eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “I hope whoever's clock you cleaned knows what time it is now.”

“Wesley,” he said, “so much has happened since then, I'd forgotten all about it.”

She set a bag on the counter. “Miss Lucia is gon' need some fresh vegetables—and chocolate. She's got to have chocolate.”

Sully gave the sugar water a meditative stir. “You're a sweetheart.”

She put her hand to the back of her neck, and all humor drained from her face. “This goes beyond chocolate, doesn't it?” She blinked hard. “How is Lucia doing? How are they both doing?”

“As long as they keep talking they do remarkably well.” Sully shrugged. “But what does
well
mean in a situation like this?”

“It means you don't rip somebody's lips right off or throw yourself in that river out there.” She moved toward the coffeepot. “Where are they now?”

“They're up in Bethany's room with their dad and one of the FBI agents, going through Bethany's things to see if they can find any kind of clue.”

Wesley stopped in midpour. “You need to back that truck up. Did you say
their dad
?”

“He showed up last night.”

“And is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“Good, so far as I can tell,” Sully said. “I've only had a brief conversation with Lucia.”

Which had amounted to her asking him to please stay close to her family. That in itself was healthy, but far more indicative of her progress was her appearance on CNN. At the end of the interview, Sully had let go of the grief that had been locked up in his own soul since the bridge the night before.

Wesley finished filling her cup. “Do you know if she's heard from her husband?”

“Indirectly. He's supposedly on his way here.”

“And we don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing either.” Wesley put up her hand. “I know you can't talk about that. So—they're up there looking for clues?”

Sully shook his head at the coffeepot she offered him. “I think that's more to provide them with a distraction than out of any real hope they'll come up with something. Not unless they can find a motive.”

Wesley sat at the counter with her mug. “Lucia and I have been over that so many times. Doesn't seem like Sonia's done anything bad enough that somebody would want to get this kind of revenge for it. Not that there's anything bad enough in this world that justifies taking somebody's baby.”

“They just have to
think
it's bad enough.” Sully kept his eyes on the tea syrup. “It's amazing what can make sense to a person when she's in pain.”

“Do I smell sweet tea?”

Marnie's voice beamed into the kitchen. It was more nasal than Sully remembered, obviously due to recent crying, judging from the pink puffiness around her eyes. She lightened the room nevertheless, and Sully grinned at her.

“You start brewing a masterpiece and suddenly everybody's your best friend,” he said.

“I'm so glad you're smiling. This is the worst day ever.” Marnie dumped a slouchy purse, a wad of keys, and an oversized pair of sunglasses on the counter and put out her hand to Wesley. “I know we met before, but I was so stressed-out back then, I don't remember your name. Not that I'm any less stressed-out now. I can't even remember
my
name.”

“You're Marnie,” Wesley said, “and I'm Wesley. You better sit down, girl. You look like you're about to fall out.”

Marnie lifted herself easily onto a stool and pushed back two hunks of brunette with her hands. “I just had to look at a criminal through a window that they promised me he couldn't see me through, but it's hard to believe that when he's looking right at it and you know he's tried to kill somebody before.”

Wesley didn't ask her what she was talking about, for which Sully was grateful. That explanation could take more time than anybody had.

“Was it the guy you saw at the airport?” Sully said.

Marnie shuddered. “Yes. It was so horrible looking at him and trying to understand how anybody that knew Sonia would ever have anything to do with someone like him. I mean, when I worked for her, I got so disillusioned with her that I quit, but even then I, like, stayed four more days. I should have stuck with her instead of going to work for Roxanne.”

Sully left his mixture on the stove and leaned on the counter across from her. “You went to work for Roxanne? At ALM?”

Marnie ducked her head. “She called me after I got to my parents' and asked me to come. I worked there for all of a week, but she was . . . Well, let me just put it this way.” She lowered her voice. “Sonia was hard to work for after she got hurt, but Roxanne made her look like my fairy godmother. By the way, Dr. Crisp”—she widened her eyes at Sully—“I've been listening to your podcasts and, yeah, they make more sense than anything Roxanne has to say.”

“I never trusted that woman when I saw her on the TV,” Wesley said.

Sully smothered another tired grin.

“I shouldn't have either, when she was just, like, right there to step into Sonia's place after they were best friends.” Marnie took a much-needed breath.

If she hadn't, Sully would have taken one for her.

“But it didn't take me that long”—she snapped her fingers—“to see that she doesn't have Sonia's integrity, or her compassion— hel-lo-o. The second day I was there, Roxanne fired this girl because she found out she used drugs, like, four years ago. She didn't care that the girl—who is so sold-out for Jesus, by the way—hasn't touched anything all that time. She just said she couldn't let her be associated with ALM.” Marnie pressed a hand to her chest. “Then there's Sonia, who hired Chip
because
he was a recovering addict so she could help him. And that wasn't just out of guilt, either.”

“Guilt?” Wesley said. “Why would Sonia feel guilty because her brother-in-law was a former junkie?”

“Because Sonia was the one who turned him in.”

Sully's eyes clinked with Wesley's. Hers widened before she turned back to Marnie.

“Sonia turned him in to whom?”

“The medical board, I think. She did it anonymously—I was the only one who knew about it—and she only did it because she didn't want him hurting anybody else. That's just Sonia.”

Sully switched the stove off. He wished he could turn off his rising anxiety as easily.

“Did Chip know she blew the whistle on him?” he said.

Marnie twisted a strand of hair around her finger. “I accidentally told him one night when we were talking. I thought Sonia had told him herself by then, so I was just talking about it, and then he acted all surprised and I felt bad. But he said it was okay—she'd done the right thing, and now he was on his way to healing.” Marnie's eyes filled. “That's what she did for people, and even though sometimes she was hard on us and it just seemed like anything you did wrong or that went wrong was because you weren't right with God—and I'm not so sure about that anymore—but besides all that, she helped
so
many people who were
so
screwed up—”

Sully stopped listening. This could not have been there all along, right under the nostrils of everyone from the FBI to Sonia herself.

“Marnie,” he said.

She put her hand to her mouth. “I'm sorry. I'm talking about all this stuff, and poor little Bethany—”

“Did you ever tell Sonia that Chip knew she was the informer?”

“Oh, gosh no! He and I made a pact not to, because he said it was all behind him and he didn't want her to ever feel bad. We bonded over that. In fact, right after that was when he started talking about how I was too talented to just be working for Sonia, and I should come to Philadelphia with him when he went home to Lucia, and he'd help me find a better job up there.” She smeared aside the tears that pooled under her eyes. “What freaks me out is that I could have been burned or even killed on that plane too. I wouldn't have even been as hurt as I was if I'd gotten off with him. I still don't know what God was doing.”

Sully didn't know what God was doing either. But with a sick heart, he knew what Chip Coffey was doing.

Marnie took the Kleenex Wesley pressed into her hand and blew her nose.

Wesley made what Sully knew was a pretense of joining him at the stove to check on the progress of the sweet tea. “I wish I didn't know that, Dr. Crisp,” she said.

“Me too,” he said.

“What are you gon' do about it?”

“The only thing I can do.”

“Oh, Lord, Lord, Lord,” she said.

He couldn't have said it better himself.

“Does this have any significance?”

I looked up from the Cinderella box I held on my lap on the floor and let out a cry.

“What, Lucia?” Sonia said.

I snatched Bethany's rag from the young FBI agent and pushed it into my face. “That's hers.” I ached anew at the thought of Bethany trying to sleep without it. Of finding out that the “friend” she trusted enough to climb into a car with was not going to bring her home to get it.

“She loves this thing,” I said. “She wrapped it around her neck when she slept, and I was always afraid she'd be strangled.”

I felt a hand on my back as I sobbed into it.

“Do you know what that is?” Sonia said.

“It's one of her BFFs,” I said.

“It's the baby blanket you brought to her when you came to take care of her for me. What's left of it. Every nanny tried to get rid of it, and she would just have a fit.”

I felt Sonia lay her face against my spine.

“It was the one thing I stood behind her on. I have been the worst mother.”

I pulled a program, still faintly sticky with some child-treat, from the box in my lap and twisted toward Sonia. “Do you know what this is?”

“That's from the circus,” she said. “I took her in the spring when it came here.” She ran a finger across a shriveled balloon and a paper rosebud whose pink had run onto the bottom of the box and left a stain.

“I took her to a little tea room for her birthday and we had a tea party, just Bethany and I, and Chip. She wanted Uncle Chip to come.” Sonia worked to swallow. “He brought her home, and I went to the airport to fly off someplace. I was always flying off, Lucia.”

I watched the spasm of grief go through her as she stared down at the few and tiny pieces of herself that her daughter had kept like precious stones. It was a grief I couldn't share with her.

“Could you please leave us alone for a minute?” she said to the agent.