Healing Sands (38 page)

“Oh, was that The Dark Mind?” the owner said. “I thought she was a psychic.”

Angelina grunted. “Psychics try to pump you up with this great future you're going to have. All she talked about was how Satan was out to take everybody down.”

“You actually went in there?” Café Lady shuddered. “I thought it was kind of creepy.”

The front door opened again, and she picked up a stack of menus and left Sully and Tess with Angelina, who just seemed to be getting warmed up.

“So you say her place is on Guadalupe?” Tess looked at Sully. “I know where that is.”

“It
was
there,” Angelina said. “Landlord closed her down. She poured wet cement into the toilet to stop evil spirits from coming in through the plumbing.” She crossed her chest with a weathered hand. “I'm serious. He's a friend of mine. Now, he could tell you stories.”

“So she's left town?” Sully said, heart sinking.

“Not yet. She's still in her house, which unfortunately is right across the street from mine, on Calle de Santo. Looks like she's trying to sell it, although who knows what she's done to
that
place. It's got an eight-foot concrete wall all the way across the front yard.”

“Listen, thanks,” Sully said and edged toward the door.

“If you've come to get her out of town, more power to you,” Angelina said heartily. “This is a sweet little place. We don't like her kind here, if you know what I mean.”

Unfortunately, Sully did.

As they crossed the patio, Sully could feel Tess looking at him curiously. He'd have been beyond curious if he'd been her. But at the moment, everything he ought to tell her was caught in his throat with the gorditas and the anxiety.

When they climbed into the Mini Cooper, she simply said, “If you turn right here and then right again, we'll be on de Santo. You can do a drive-by.”

Could this woman get any more perfect?

He did what she said, slowing down after he made the second right.

“The way she was pointing, I think she meant it was beyond the plaza,” Tess said. “A house with an eight-foot wall in front of it shouldn't be hard to miss.”

The neighborhood was quaint and clean, its pastel adobes warm and inviting in the afternoon sun. Some of them had hay bales stacked with pumpkins and gourds on their porches. Others beckoned with padded wood benches and windows reflecting fireplace flames from within. Belinda Cox didn't belong here, just as Angelina said.

“There,” Tess said.

She pointed to a long, high wall on the right, which had been sloppily stuccoed and was interrupted only by a burnt-orange door sporting carved sunbursts. It might have been striking at one time, but the sun and the brutally dry air had blistered it beyond repair. A few feet of straggly weeds separated the wall from the road, so that if Sully had wanted to pull over and stop, even the Mini Cooper would have stuck out in the road.

“Looks like Angelina's going to get her wish,” Tess said.

Sully nodded at the
For Sale
sign planted next to the door. A slat that read
Pending
hung from it, and it gave Sully a renewed sense of urgency.

“I'll wait here if you want to try to see her now,” Tess said.

Sully shook his head and took his foot off the brake. “I'll come back tomorrow. How about some dinner?”

“Crisp, we just ate.”

“I know. I just want to sit at a table with you and talk.”

“Then that's what we'll do. I can always eat.”

No, she couldn't, and he knew it. She was just being progressively more perfect. And he wanted to tell her everything.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I
'd promised I would call Sullivan Crisp at nine Wednesday morning to check in. It was more like 8:45, but I was between assignments and I needed to hear his voice sooner rather than later so I would know I wasn't crazy. I felt like a different person than I was before Saturday, and I had to make sure that was real before I went on with the plan that had begun to take shape in my mind during the night.

Dr. Crisp was breathless when he answered the phone, as if I'd caught him on the run.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I called too early. If this isn't a good time . . .”

“No, no—this is perfect.”

I could hear him moving around, but he settled in quickly. I warmed my hands around the cup of coffee I'd just picked up at the Milagro drive-through. Even though I'd parked in the sun in the parking lot and the temperature was in the upper fifties, I was still shivering. That seemed to be my new natural state.

“I thought I was done crying,” I said. “Then I saw Jake yesterday, and I started all over again.”

“How did it go?”

“That depends.” I spilled it all, succumbing to tears again when I related Jake's statement:
I didn't do it for Ian
. “For so long I believed that he didn't do it. And then I had myself convinced that Ian somehow made him get behind the wheel and run over Miguel. Jake took out all of that at the knees.”

“Did he?”

“Yes.” I shoved the tears off my cheeks with my jacket sleeve. “Jake's telling the truth.”

“But there's still the possibility that he didn't do it at all.”

“Then why didn't he say that? I know—he's scared. He thinks somebody else will get hurt—like it's all on him.”

He let that one sit. I'd figured out that he did that when he knew I already had the answer.

“I know,” I said. “He doesn't take after anybody strange.”

“I'm sorry?”

“My mother used to say that. It's like ‘the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.'”

“Now that one I know.”

I could hear him grinning.

“Jake might have learned from you to take responsibility for everything and everybody—or that might just be his nature. In either case, Ryan, it's like anger. Sometimes it serves you—and other people, and God—well, and sometimes it doesn't.”

“Remind me again when anger has served me well.”

“Whenever you've stood up against something that wasn't right. Jesus never said getting angry was inherently bad. He showed anger himself on a number of occasions.”

I had to admit those were some of my favorite Gospel passages.

“But,” he said, “it never works as a way of being. And neither does a misplaced sense of responsibility, which Jake seems to have.”

I closed my eyes. This was the point where I always hit a wall— where I couldn't completely buy into what he was selling.

“Talk to me,” he said.

“I've come a long way.”

“Absolutely you have.”

“I don't want to rip up the upholstery in my car right now. I told my son everything he needed to hear. I made it all about love instead of about anger.”

“Yes, you did.”

I knew he could hear me crying, and I didn't care. “But if you're saying I have to let this go, I can't. If he did do it, I have to find out why and how. Otherwise, Jake's lost—and I can't lose him again.”

“You don't have to let it go. I don't usually do this, but I'm going to give you a direct piece of advice.”

“Please,” I said.

“The only thing that seems to be holding Jake back from telling you what happened is his fear that if he does, he'll jeopardize someone else's safety.”

“Right.”

“So if you can get him to let go of that responsibility, he'll probably let the rest of it go too.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” I said.

“Two things. One, you take the responsibility for him. I suspect he hasn't been able to be a kid for a while now, just like you at his age. And it sounds like you've already made a start in getting him to trust you to be his mom.”

“I hope so.” I wanted it to
be
so, because Sullivan had just given me permission to go ahead with what I'd planned. Almost. “What's number two?” I said.

“You show him how to surrender—I'm talking about surrendering to God. That's what you're starting to do, isn't it?”

“I'm working on it.” I wiped my nose. “I guess that's sort of an oxymoron, isn't it? Working on surrendering?”

“It's a start. Why don't you explain it to me the way you would to your son?”

“You mean pretend you're Jake?”

“You did great with the sandbox.”

“You are a strange man,” I said. But I clung to the kindness in his voice and closed my eyes. “Just talk to him?”

“Yeah.”

I drew in a breath and tried to see my son, bowed over himself in pain. “Jake,” I said, “I'm doing everything I can to sort this out and help you. I understand why you feel like you can't talk about it, and I'm trying to respect that.” I stopped. “How am I doing so far?”

“If I'm Jake, I'm already talking.”

I swallowed hard. That was the easy part. I wasn't sure I knew where to go from here.

Until an image came to me, no longer gauzy and distant, but so sharp it cut through everything. In it, my hands were in fists that slowly uncurled until they lay flat and free. I didn't see the Humpty Dumpty pieces I'd thought were there. There was nothing. I'd been holding on to nothing.

“Jake . . .” I said. “I can't promise you I can get you out of this, whether you talk to me or not. But I know God can set us both free somehow, if we just stop trying to do his job for him.”

I didn't know where it had come from. I just let it be there—for so long I almost forgot that Dr. Crisp was on the other end of the line until he said, “If you say that to him, you won't lose him. No matter what else happens.”

I felt a peace that lasted until we hung up and a finger of anxiety crooked at me. It was one thing to say it to a man who seemed to be able to turn anything into healing. It was another to even think I could do it.

I don't know how far I would have gone with that if someone hadn't tapped on my passenger-side window. I twisted around to see J.P. peering in at me. She pointed to the lock.

“I didn't think you'd ever get off the phone,” she said as she slid into the seat next to me.

“I was talking to my therapist.”

“And now you're going to talk to me. No—make that, I'm going to talk to you.”

“Okay,” I said.

“You look terrible, by the way.”

“Thanks.”

“You're obviously not eating. We'll take care of that in a minute.” I didn't argue. I could only think about how much I'd missed her. How much I cared about her, about all three of them.

“Look, J.P.,” I said. “I hope you understand why I can't let you all keep helping me. It looks like that threat didn't come from the Hispanic community. I never actually thought it did. But that doesn't mean there isn't still a danger.”

“You know, that's the only thing I still don't like about you.” J. P. shook the ever-present tendrils out of her face, exposing the moisture in her wonderful blue apostrophe eyes. “You think you're the only one who knows how to be tough. And you're wrong, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Besides, this isn't about the bomb or the threat. It's about Alex.”

“Alex?” My heart was too tired to pound, but I could feel the sudden fear in my teeth, my hair, my fingernails. “Did something happen?”

I grabbed for my phone, but she put her hand on top of mine. “No, nothing happened. But I was watching him at soccer practice yesterday.”

“I couldn't go. I had just been to see Jake in jail, and I couldn't—”

“Ryan, shut up. I know. Dan told me. And all I could think about was how this is affecting Alex. He was dying of loneliness, and I couldn't stand it.” She blinked several times, but the tears stayed. “I want to take him home with me until this thing is over. If you and Dan will let me.”

“We can't put you in that position.”

“I'm putting myself there.” She stuck her hand up. “You would do it for me. I know you would, and that's all I'm going to say about it.”

It was all she
had
to say. I said yes.

Sully was on his office patio, gazing at the Organs and marveling at the same magnificence that existed in mountains and in tiny, feisty women like Ryan Coe, when his phone rang. It was a 615 area code, but it took him a moment to realize it was Porphyria's niece's number.

“Winnie,” he said. He was already standing up, the mountains forgotten. “What's happening?”

“You're not going to like it,” she said.

“Doesn't matter. Tell me.”

She sighed, long and hard, and Sully was suddenly sorry for her. She'd been at the hospital with Porphyria for weeks, shouldering everything. He swallowed back his guilt.

“Aunt Porphyria has an infection. I can't even pronounce it. It's something she picked up in the hospital.”

“And it's serious.”

“Yeah. It is. She's not dying, okay?” she added quickly. “But at her age, it's hard for her body to fight bacteria.”

“I'm coming back there,” he said.

“She said absolutely not.”

“She can say anything she wants, but I—”

“Please, Sully, it will only upset her, and that wouldn't be good for her right now.”

He sank into one of the patio chairs and smothered his face with his hand. “Can I talk to her?”

“Absolutely. She wants you to call her later, when the antibiotics have had a chance to kick in.”

“That's our Porphyria.”

“Yeah. So listen, later, okay? I need to go.”

Winnie hung up, but not before he heard her start to cry.

Sully glanced at his watch. It was almost four. His plan was to head to Mesilla before darkness set in. He stood up and went to his laptop on the desk to check his appointment calendar, see if there was anything he needed to clear so he could head for Nashville tomorrow. He could hear Ryan Coe saying it: why did anything else matter but love? Whether he saw Belinda Cox tonight or not, he was going to Porphyria tomorrow.