Healing Waters (54 page)

But Chip's face frightened me even more. It grew harder and more intense with every ripple we bounced over. One thing I knew: I had to keep him talking, or his anger would burn a hole in this entire thing before I got to Bethany. If she was even where we were going. Something to say—something that wouldn't make him more suspicious.

“How did you learn so much about boats?” I shouted over the frantic flapping of plastic.

“Kent. I haven't been selling medical equipment, Lucia. I've been trying to get you out of that place.” He made a hard right, and I thrust out a hand to keep from being thrown into the side of the boat.

“Sorry,” he said. “That's why we're taking Kent with us. He's waiting.”

No, he wasn't. He was in an interrogation room with Agent Ingram. Was that a good thing? Or was that hitch in the plan going to send Chip over the edge he already walked like a tightrope?

He gave me a harsh smile. “He's great with boats. Not so great with wife-snatching. He was a white-collar criminal, like me.”

“Wife-snatching?” I said.

“He was supposed to ‘kidnap' you and bring you to me, but Dr. Wisp aborted that mission.”

“He was after
me
?” I said.

“When that didn't work, I came for you myself, but once again I was foiled by Dr. Wisp. What is that jerk's name, anyway?”

I didn't answer him.

“He put some bad ideas in your head, Lucia. That whole ministry crowd is like that.” He jerked the boat to the left and sent us sailing hazardously close to a red buoy that swayed in alarm. “Don't worry—the boat we're leaving in won't do this.”

I didn't say anything more as he made another fishtailing left and pulled back on the throttle. The boat bobbed like a cork, and I closed my eyes and fought back nausea. I opened them when it stilled and found us in a dark cove whose only occupant was a smallish yacht. Chip unzipped the cover beside him again and peered out.

“Yo,” he whispered hoarsely. “Mussen.”

There was, of course, no answer. I couldn't stay in the seat.

“Can we just go aboard?” I said. “I have to go to the bathroom.” Chip muttered something about Mussen, but he nodded. “You can get to the platform on the stern from the back of this one. I gotta drop anchor. Be careful.”

I wasn't. The minute I got outside the cover, I crabbed my way across the platform and leaped to the bigger boat, setting the smaller one rocking like a cradle. I heard Chip swear as I tore at the latch on a glass door and slid it open. Shiny teak and white leather blinded me like a spotlight in my face, and I knew in that flash where Sonia's money had gone. How—when—it didn't matter. I called out Bethany's name as I hurled myself through the cabin, yanking open cabinets with brass latches on the way.

“Bethany! Bethany—are you here? It's Aunt Lucia Mom!”

The boat moved sideways, and for an awful moment I thought we were under way, until Chip's voice cut me from the door.

“Lucia—stop!”

He swore at me again, but I plunged ahead and pulled open a long hatch, so hard I felt a muscle tear in my shoulder. I stumbled forward into a bed that filled a cabin. Nestled into its satin pillows was a round child, curled into a motionless ball.

“Bethany!” I screamed.

She didn't move. Chip's arm came around my throat and jammed me against him.

“What did you do to her? Chip—did you kill her? Did you kill this baby too?”

“Shut up, Lucia! Shut up!”

His arm tightened at my neck and cut off my words and my breath. I tore at his skin and kicked until the black in my eyes flecked the cabin.

“Help us!” I screamed into my chest. “Help us!”

Chip's arm left my neck with a jerk, and I slithered to the bed. Before I could crawl to the too-still form on the pillows, Chip was on top of me, tearing at my shirt.

“Are you wearing a wire?” he shouted. His hand found the microphone, and he ripped it off, tape, flesh, and all. With his other hand he pinned me to the bed. “You too? You betrayed me too?”

I opened my mouth. Beside me Bethany stirred.

She was still alive.

That was the only reason I gave Chip one more lie. “They made me, Chip,” I said. “Agent Schmuck, right?”

He went still.

“I just wanted to make sure you had Bethany. I knew she'd be safe with you.”

“You're lying—just like your sister. Just like all of them.”

He got to his knees and pushed the wires into my face. With a force that could only come from a mother bear, I brought up my knee and slammed it into his gut. With a yelp he rolled to the side and clutched his arms around himself. I snatched Bethany into my arms and staggered with her out of the cabin, through the galley, eyes on the glass door. Chip had left it open. I just had to get through it and they would see me—

But I only got as far as the stern platform when I heard Chip storming behind me.

“Help!” I screamed. “Help us!”

The cove answered with silence.

“Bethie—wake up, baby—wake up.”

Bethany stirred again in my arms, but not enough. Chip flailed for me. As his hand caught my sleeve, I pulled her against my chest.

“We're going swimming, Bethie,” I said. And with her dead weight heavy in my arms, I plunged over the side. As we sank below the surface, I could still hear Chip raving. But at least I knew he wouldn't come after me.

By the time we came up, yards away from the yacht, Bethany kicked and grabbed. Her voice was drug-thick as she screamed.

“Bethie, it's okay!” I shouted to her. “I won't let you go—remember— I'm your BFF! I won't let you go.”

I believed in miracles at that moment, because she went limp in my arms.

“Good girl,” I said. “I won't let you go.”

“Can we float?” she said.

I didn't have enough air to answer her, but my nod seemed to be all she needed. Sleepily she rolled onto her back, and I held on. Beyond us a motor roared to life, and I whipped my head around in fear. But it wasn't the yacht. It was a boat with a guiding light easing into the mouth of the cove—with a squarish woman on its bow.

“Here! Over here!” I shouted with the last of my breath. “It's Agent Schmacker, Bethany—we're okay!”

Bethany just smiled. “I hope she brought J. Edgar,” she said.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

S
onia finally fell asleep, just as Bethany was waking up. The sun laughed through the rounded part of her window and teased at both their faces. I watched from the futon as Sonia's scarred one turned from it in exhaustion, and Bethany's cherubic one met it in sleepy glee.

“Aunt Lucia Mom?” she whispered.

“Yes, Bethie.”

“I'm staying home now, right?”

I sat up and tugged at a dark curl and assured her she was—just as her mother and I had every time she'd awakened in the night with a startled cry.

“And you're not going away, right?”

That was a question I could only partially answer. At
2:00 AM
Sonia had asked me to stay—as her sister, her friend, her baby girl's Aunt Lucia Mom. I didn't know if in the harsh realizations of the day the offer would still stand. There was so much for us to sort out. A lifetime of tangles.

“Not today,” I said. “Shall we let your mom sleep and go get some breakfast?”

“May I look at her?”

I stopped halfway up from the futon. “You mean your mom?”

She nodded shyly. It came to me that she had not seen Sonia in the daylight in weeks. Since before she knew she was allowed to see her “without her face.”

“Do you want to look at her?” I said.

Again she nodded.

“Then you go right ahead,” I said.

Bethany gave me one more blue-eyed look before she leaned over her mother and pulled the covers from her neck. I held my breath. Had we come as far as I dreamed we had?

She didn't say a word. Like the rest of us, perhaps she could find no words for what she saw. But as I watched, she unfolded her chubby fingers from a pink fist and reached for Sonia's cheek. With a touch so light it could have been an angel's, she ran her finger along a rosy, raised scar. And then with her little red bow of a mouth, she kissed it.

I didn't move. I couldn't. I had just seen God.

Harry the Heron was guarding our river when I walked out onto the dock. He didn't lift himself from his perch, and I was grateful for that. I could use his wise, quiet company.

I'd left Sonia and Bethany discovering each other in the Princess Room.

Francesca had finally gone home, looking as drained and normal as the rest of us. When she said, “I'll call you, Lucia,” I hoped she would.

Though Wesley phoned hourly, she was at her house, hugging James-Lawson at regular intervals. She said she was about to get on his last nerve.

Deidre and her team were gone until tomorrow, when the debriefing would begin again. For now they were satisfied with Chip's confession and had assured me that he would never see a day outside a prison. I hadn't even begun to process that yet.

I couldn't do it alone. Sullivan Crisp would help me for a while longer, he'd said. But he had to move on. He would make sure I had someone I could connect with. When he'd left for the guesthouse at dusk, he'd turned to me and grinned the one-side-at-a-time smile.

“I know you're in pain,” he said. “But, Lucia, I hope you keep dancing with the stars.”

I tilted my head back and looked for the stars now. A few were venturing into the evening sky, shyly at first, then twinkling with confidence.

“I want to dance, God,” I whispered. “But I don't have a partner.”

It came at me like a fist, that thought, but I thrust my arm up to ward it off. I hadn't had a partner for a long time. Maybe Chip had never been one. I had no tears for him. I had only a sudden, aching loneliness, and I closed my eyes and let myself sway with it.

“You always were a wonderful dancer.”

I turned and watched the once-strong silhouette make its bulky way toward me on the dock.

“I wish you'd take it up again,” Dad said when he reached me.

“I think I've started to,” I said.

“What made you ever stop?”

“I guess I had the wrong partner,” I said.

He grunted as only a disgruntled Italian father can do. “You were doin' the wrong dance,” he said.

I looked at the life-weathered face, dimming with age and the twilight. “You were wrong, Dad,” I said.

“You don't have to tell me that.”

“No, you were wrong when you said I married you. You are nothing like Chip.”

His head ducked. “Thank you for saying that.”

“I think you just did what all we Brocacinis did. We were all afraid to be who we were, and we ended up doing somebody else's dance.” I nodded at Harry, who still stood alone on his misplaced tree. “I think when you do that, you always end up dancing alone.”

“You got too much love in you for that, Lucia Marie.”

The pain rose in my chest again, and I rubbed at it with my hands. “I don't know where to dance yet, Dad,” I said. “Or with who.”

He watched me for a moment, hands parked in his pockets, before he pulled them out and held one toward me. “Will you start with me, Lucia Marie?” he said. “Because I would love to dance with my daughter.”

And so, with the stars winking on and Harry the Heron watching with envy, I danced with my father by the water. Not like a fawn. Like a woman whose rhythm was merely
Dear God—dear God
.

GH

GH “I'm going to miss you around here, Dr. Crisp,” Porphyria said.

Sully grinned at her. “You know what they say about house­guests: after three months, they start to smell.”

Porphyria smiled back at him, sunlight freckling her face through the leaves that canopied her veranda. “I think the saying is three days.”