Healing Waters (29 page)

“How do you feel about God's love?” he said.

“You mean, like He loves us all?”

“So you think that's true?”

She gave him a real smile. She was such a pretty woman when she smiled.

“That's what Grandma Broc taught us, so I've always believed it. She never told me anything that didn't turn out to be true. However . . .”

Sully waited. That part came back to him too: the fact that about half of being a therapist was knowing when to shut up.

“What she didn't tell me, that I do believe, is that He loves some of us more than others. I guess part of my ‘theology' is that Sonia is one of those God loves more deeply than other people.”

Holy crow
. “Why is that?” he said.

“Because. She's the one with the singing voice and the magnetic personality and the way with the written word. She inspires everybody with her charm, gets people to move. She's beautiful, she's stylish.” Lucia frowned. “She's slender.”

Sully spoke with care. “And look where she is now. And where she's been.”

“Oh, I'm not saying she hasn't had tragedy. Are you kidding? But it's never been anything she's brought on herself, and God always seems to fix things somehow.”

“How about now?”

She pursed her lips for a moment. “Isn't that why ALM fired her, because God isn't fixing it, so she must have done something wrong?” “What do you think?”

“I hope they're full of crap.”

“So you don't think Sonia has ticked God off somehow and now she's being punished.”

“I don't see how she could have. I might not believe in what she's doing, but I know she's trying to help people, and she has. Thousands of them.”

“In some ways, yes. She's a good woman. And what about you? You've had hard things happen in your life, I'm sure.”

“Which,” she said, “we are not going to talk about.”

When she closed down, she closed down. He could almost hear the shutters on her soul being nailed shut.

“No offense—” She cringed. “Oh, please. Don't buzz me.”

Sully grinned. He had to say one thing about her: she caught on fast.

“You're the professional psychologist,” she said, “but I don't see what any of this stuff about what I do or don't believe has to do with Bethany and what I can do for her.”

“I think it has everything to do with it. Even people who call themselves atheists make their decisions based on what they do or don't believe.”

“Example, please,” she said.

Sully steepled his fingers under his nose to give himself a chance to think. He had to be so careful here.

“If you do believe that God loves some people more than others, where does Bethany fall on the love scale?” he said. “Will you base that on the things that have happened to her? She lost her father before she ever knew him. She's apparently been raised by nannies. Now her mother's been so disfigured, Bethany's afraid to look at her. Does that mean God doesn't love her as deeply as He does, say, Wesley's little boy?”

Sully brought his feet to the ground and leaned forward, hands working with the words. “I'm not trying to offend
you,
Lucia. I'm just trying to show you that if you do believe that, it's going to affect Bethany in some major ways. Quite frankly, I don't think you do believe it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I have an advantage in this situation that I seldom have with clients. I got to know you a little before you came to see me, and I've seen you interact with Bethany. What you're giving her in terms of love and acceptance doesn't match what I'm hearing you say.”

He saw her swallow hard. This was as far as they were going to go tonight, which was farther than he'd expected. But he didn't think she was satisfied with where they were.

“So what do I do with that?” she said.

“You want a goal,” he said.

For an answer, she pulled a small pad and a gel pen out of her pocket. She was nothing if not motivated.

“Okay,” Sully said. “What would you like to see happening for Bethany before we meet next time—say, three days from now— since, as you said, we may not have a lot of time.”

“In three days? I want to see her start having a childhood. Until Wesley brought James-Lawson this afternoon, all she did was follow me around, carrying things for me and handing me stuff.” She shook her head. “I just don't understand why she hasn't been taught how to be a little girl.”

“Sweet tea?” Sully said. His throat was parched.

“Excuse me? Oh, sure.”

He poured them each a glass while he tried to decide whether to chance what poked impishly at his brain. She took a sip and widened her eyes at him.

“You made this?”

“You watched me.”

“It's amazing,” she said, and then clicked the pen expectantly.

It was worth a shot.

“From what I can see,” he said, “you're doing a great job providing Bethany with some childhood experiences, as much as you have time for.”

“Do you think I should tell Sonia I'm not going to clean the house and handle her banking, so I'll have more time to spend with Bethany?”

“Do you?”

Lucia wrote on the pad and looked up. “What else?”

“I also recommend that
you
play a game—with yourself.”

“You're not going to make me play
Wheel of Fortune
, are you?”

“I'm not going to make you do anything, but what I have in mind is
Family Feud
.”

She groaned. “Is that the one where that Australian guy kisses all the women?”

Sully let out a guffaw. “You mean Richard Dawson?”

“I don't know. I told you I don't watch that stuff.”

“On
Family Feud
they give a category, like Things You Can Use a Toothpick For. And the family of contestants has to come up with the top five answers the audience gave.”

“There's a lot of buzzing on that show, too, if I remember,” Lucia said. She didn't write that down.

“I want you to be the audience for your family and make a list of the first five significant things you can remember in your life with them.”

“About my childhood.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “I knew you'd get back to that. Go ahead.”

“These don't have to be major events—not your family won the lottery, or you vacationed in Europe.”

“As if.”

“Just five things that come straight into your mind when you think back as far as you can go.”

She did write that, and tucked the pad and pen back into her pocket. “Can I ask you a question that doesn't have anything to do with any of this? It's about Sonia—you know, about what's going on with her right now.”

Sully took a long drag from his sweet tea glass. This required some shifting of gears.

“How do you think she did with physical therapy today?” he said.

“Wesley didn't tell me much, but she's coming back tomorrow. I guess that's positive.”

“It is if she can get Sonia involved in her healing, but she still needs to talk to a therapist, I think. She's fragile right now.”

“So what do we do?” Lucia said. “I mean, what do
I
do?”

Sully caught the pronoun switch and filed it away for later.

“I'd like to call a psychiatrist I know,” he said. “I think he'd come out as a favor to me. She may need medication to get her to a place where he or someone else can even start to help her work this through.”

“I can barely get her to take her pain meds.”

“If this goes on much longer, she may have no choice.”

Lucia gave a grim nod and stood up. “Three days from now, then? That would make it Friday.”

Sully stood up too. “Same time, same station,” he said.

She almost smiled at him. “Same game,” she said.

Sully left her putting out the tiki torches and tried not to flat-out run to the guesthouse so he wouldn't be left alone with the river. It had kept to itself while he talked to Lucia—he had to give it credit for that. But any minute now it would mock him, tell him that no matter how well he'd been able to lose himself in the session, how easily things had come back to him, how good he felt about the start they'd made—he hadn't gotten close to the pain he suspected hid under all her control.

What then, Dr. Crisp? the river seemed to ask him. What if Lucia, too, succumbs to my waters? What if Sonia throws herself into my arms because yours weren't strong enough?

What then, Dr. Crisp?

Sully took the guesthouse suite in two strides and closed the vertical blinds to shut out the river. But the only way to stop the taunting was to know why he couldn't help his wife. That was what he had come here to do, and he couldn't make the same mistake he'd made for thirteen years.

No matter where this went with Lucia and Sonia, he couldn't let it suffice for where Sullivan Crisp had to go.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I
had just about decided life didn't get any better than an afternoon with James-Lawson and Bethany. Fresh–squeezed lemonade, James-Lawson's small feet hanging off the dock next to mine, Bethany's tucked up under her like a shy kitten's—and a concerto of squeals and giggles as they watched a line of turtles sun themselves on a log and take turns sliding in and out of the water. I was as close to happy as I'd been in forever.

Until a nondescript sedan pulled into the driveway, and a squarish woman emerged from the driver's seat, in a turquoise pantsuit this time.

Bethany pointed as Special Agent Deidre Schmacker opened the car's back door and reached in.

“Is that a stranger?” she said.

Well, she's strange,
I wanted to say. But I shook my head. “No, I know her. We can talk to her.”

As if I had a choice. But I did have a choice for Bethany.

“You two can play in the gazebo while
I
talk to her,” I said. “It's going to be boring.”

“Oh.” James-Lawson nodded sagely. “Big people stuff.”

“Definitely,” I said.

I put out both hands for them each to take one and started for the gazebo. Agent Schmacker came toward us, carrying something in her arms. Something that moved.

“Hey, Miss Lucia,” James-Lawson said. “She gots a dog.”

She did indeed. A pug, to be exact, who I could hear sniffing and snorting from its almost nonexistent nose even from yards away. Just when I'd been sure she couldn't have been any less like any FBI agent I'd ever met.

Dropping the kids off at the gazebo wasn't an option at that point. Bethany matched the irrepressible James-Lawson on the enthusiasm scale.

“I see that you're being well taken care of, Mrs. Coffey,” Agent Schmacker said when she reached us, a squirming canine in her arms.

James-Lawson took his eyes off the dog long enough to inform her that
I
was taking care of
them.

“Sonia is in physical therapy right now,” I said.

“That's all right. I actually came to talk to you, and perhaps Bethany.”

I could feel my eyes going cold.

She leaned over. “Do you like dogs, Bethany?”

Bethany bobbed her head.

James-Lawson stuck out his hand. “I do, too, and my name is James-Lawson and it's nice to meet you.”

“It's nice to meet you, too, both of you. This is J. Edgar.”

In spite of my rising annoyance, I had to choke back a laugh.

“Would you like to pet him?” she said.

James-Lawson pulled back his hand. “Does he bite?”

“Oh no. And he loves kids. He's just waiting for you to say something to him.”

Bethany put her hands on her chubby knees. “Hi, doggy,” she said.

The pug leapt out of his “mother's” arms and into Bethany's. He licked and snorted until I thought she'd giggle herself to death. I felt a smile sneak across my face.

Agent Schmacker clasped her hands behind her and looked on as if she were Bethany's grandmother, there to enjoy the moment.

“Can I hold him next?” James-Lawson said.

Bethany handed J. Edgar right over and dug into her pocket, producing half a Pop-Tart. When had she stowed that?

“May I give him some of this?” she said.

Schmacker shook her head. “I don't give J. Edgar refined sugar. It would decay his teeth and make his bones weak, and I love him too much to let that happen.”

“Oh,” Bethany said.

The agent's voice was kid-kind, I had to admit, but Bethany wilted as if she'd just been scolded.

“Here.” Schmacker reached into her own pocket and pulled out a bone-shaped something. “You can give him this. It has all kinds of nutrients in it. Make him sit, though.”

James-Lawson set the dog on the ground, and the delight returned to Bethany's face as she chirped for J. Edgar to sit and deposited the bone into his grinning mouth. He took off across the lawn and looked back over one of his too-big shoulders at her.

“May I go out there with him?” Bethany said to me.

“Me too?” James-Lawson said.

“Absolutely.”

They bounded off, squealing anew and calling “Doggy! J. Edgar!”

I put my hand to my throat to force down a lump. Deidre Schmacker, too, watched appreciatively before she pulled a piece of paper from her other pocket.

“Mrs. Coffey,” she said, “this is a list of everyone who has worked for Sonia. I'll be going over it with your sister at some point, but I also thought—” She gazed across the yard where J. Edgar and the children were cavorting like Shakespearean nymphs. “I'm wondering if Bethany might be able to tell us anything.”

“No,” I said.

“Mrs. Coffey, I'm not going to interrogate her.”

“No, you're not. So far Bethany has not been told that her mother's plane crash wasn't an accident, and I want to keep it that way.”