Healing Waters (57 page)

“Like I said, you owe me.”

“Is she okay?”

“She's in her room with the lights out and that music on that sounds like some chick needs Prozac.” Christopher gave the hard laugh he'd recently adopted. “Which is what she always does, so, yeah, she's okay. Where were you?”

I was suddenly aware of the nakedness under my jacket.

“I had a meeting,” I said. “Has your dad called?”

“I called
him
to see if he was okay.”

“Why?” I said. My chest tightened automatically—the Pavlovian reaction of the firefighter's wife.

“Fire at that 76 station on Mile Hill Road. Heard on the radio on my way home from the library. They said it was contained, so I called him.”

I told myself I was imagining the innuendo of accusation in his voice, the Why didn't you call him? I chalked it up to the overall attitude of superiority my son had taken on now that he was a college freshman and knew far more than his father and I could ever hope to. I was forty-two with a doctorate in theological studies, but Christopher Costanas could reduce me to the proverbial clueless blonde.

“He said they got another call and he's going out on it,” Christopher said. “Even though his shift's over—you know Dad.”

Thank you, God
, I thought as I hung up. Although God helping me keep Rich out of the way until I could find out what had just happened wasn't something even I could fathom. Funny. All through my affair with Zach, I'd continued to talk to my God, asking His forgiveness over and over, every time I left the yacht club, knowing I'd be back. Now that I'd ended it, I couldn't face Him. In His place was a rising sense of unease.

Rich's Harley wasn't in the garage when I got home. Christopher answered with a grunt when I said good night outside his door. I tiptoed into Jayne's dark bedroom, but all I saw was a trail of strawberry-blonde hair on top of the covers and a rail-like lump underneath them. I kissed the cheek that was no longer plump and rosy, now that my daughter had abruptly turned into a teenager. She didn't stir, even when I whispered, “I'm sorry about tonight. We'll talk tomorrow.”

Whatever “tomorrow” was going to look like. The uneasiness rose into full-blown nausea as I pulled on an oversized Covenant Christian College nightshirt and crawled into our empty bed. Tomorrow would be the first day of a new existence—without Zach to make me okay. When I woke up, I would be completely Rich Costanas's wife again, and nothing would be any different from the first moment when I'd admitted to myself that I'd fallen in love with someone else.

Tomorrow I would still try to be cheerful as Rich silently, sullenly sat like he was walled into a dark room he wouldn't let any of us into. I would kiss him on the cheek before I left for work, and he would mumble “have a good day.” He would go to the station for the evening shift before I came home, leaving no note, making no phone call, giving me vague, monosyllabic answers when I called him. I'd stopped calling three months ago.

Tomorrow I would do the right thing: give up a relationship that made me feel alive and loved and necessary, and attempt to revive what Rich and I once had, before September 11, 2001, drained the life out of us. I'd found a reason to keep breathing. I wasn't sure Rich ever would.

And yet, tomorrow I would try. Only it would be a different person doing the trying. I was now a person who'd manufactured lies so she could meet her lover. A person who'd stripped herself down to betrayal, just to feel connected again. A person who'd been caught in the flash of a camera with her clothes on the floor around her.

I churned in the bed, tangling my ankles in a knot of sheets. I had to see Zach and find out what had gone down. And I had to make sure that he knew we were over—and I was really gone.

Though I pretended not to be, I was still awake when Rich fell into bed beside me, smelling of smoke and the Irish Spring attempt to wash it away.

“Hi, hon,” he said.

I stiffened. Why did he choose this night to sound like the old Rich? His voice hadn't held that smushy quality for—what—two years? It sounded the way it used to when he wanted me to rub his head or make him a fried egg sandwich.

“How was your shift?” I said.

“I've got bad news for you.”

My eyes came open. The answers I'd heard for months had tended toward
It was all right or The same as always.
They always implied that I'd asked a stupid question that was more than annoying. I propped up on one elbow and tried to sound sleepy. “What happened?”

“We hadda fight a boat fire—down at Port Orchard Yacht Club.”

I curled my fingers around the pillowcase.

“Does your friend—that guy who took us out that one day— does he still own that Chris-Craft?”

He didn't know. He didn't know.

“Uh, yeah,” I said—and then my heart clutched at itself. “
His
boat?”

“Had to be—total loss too.” Rich punched at his pillow and wrapped it around his neck in his usual preparation for going into a post-fire coma.

But I had to ask.

“Is Zach—was he hurt?”

“Dunno. He wasn't around. I don't think he was there when it started.” He gave a long, raspy sigh. “It was a mistake to ever leave New York.”

I struggled to keep up. “Tell me some more,” I said.

“I don't belong here, Demitria. I'm a fish outta water.”

How many times had I turned myself inside out to get him to open up? Six months ago, I'd have had our bags half-packed already, willing to do anything to bring him out of his cave. Now I said nothing, because I felt nothing—except terror at the vision of Zach as a charred version of his former self, buried in the rubble of
The Testament.

Rich sighed heavily and flopped over, leaving me on the other side of his wall of a back, the one I'd stopped trying to hoist myself over. “There's nothing we can do about it now,” he said.

I sank back stiffly onto my own pillow. “Not tonight,” I said.

“I didn't mean tonight.”

There was the edge that implied I was of no help to him whatsoever, and why did I even think I could be?

I turned my back and moved to the far edge of the bed.

The next day couldn't dawn soon enough. Most of the night I watched the digits on the clock change with maddening slowness, and planned how to get to Zach before I lost my mind.

I was up, dressed, and making coffee by six thirty. Fortunately— and not surprisingly—I didn't hear a sound out of Christopher, but Jayne slipped into the kitchen in ghostly fashion at six thirty-five. Guilt scratched at me like an impatient dog.

“Hey, girlfriend,” I said. “You're up early.”

“Mom, I'm always up at this time. I have to catch the bus at seven.”

I didn't see whether she rolled her eyes. Her face was already in the pantry, where she pawed at the cereal boxes. From the back, she was still a waif of a child, with little-girl-fine golden tresses and a penchant for long flowy skirts, an echo of the tiny days when she fancied herself a fairy princess. Her front was a different story, where late-blooming breasts and a well-rehearsed disdain proclaimed her as
teenager
.

“Silly me,” I said.

“Unless you want to take me to school,” she said into the cabinet.

Her wistfulness slapped me in the face.

“I can't today, Jay,” I said. “I have an early meeting.”

I'd made up half-truths so easily until now, but this lie stuck to my tongue like a frozen pole.

“What happened to Rachel last night?” I said.

“I don't know. She ditched me, I guess.”

“I'm sorry I didn't get your message right away. I had—a meeting.”

Jayne turned and looked at me over the top of the Rice Krispies. “Is that all you do—go to meetings?”

“Sounds like it, doesn't it?”

“Whatever.” She shook her hair back and turned the box upside down over a bowl. Two pieces of cereal bounced into it. She curled her lip.

“So—how was rehearsal?” I asked.

I tried to listen as I filled my coffee cup and twisted the lid on. If I didn't get out of there, I wouldn't get to talk to Zach before his eight o'clock.

“I got a different part,” Jayne said.

I fumbled for the appropriate reply. “I thought you were playing Mary Warren.”

“Mercy Lewis.” She gave a disgusted grunt.

“Oh, so—who are you now?”

“Abigail Williams.”

The sudden light in her always-serious brown eyes made me hunt through my faded memory of
The Crucible
.

“Isn't she a main character?”

Jayne nodded. The shyness that had disappeared with her twelfth year glowed on her face. I felt my throat thicken.

“Jay, that's amazing!” I said. “Congratulations!”

“Rachel didn't learn her lines and she kept messing around during rehearsal, so Mrs. Dirks bumped her and gave the part to me.” She tilted her head like a small bird, spilling a panel of wavy hair across her thin cheek. “Maybe that's why she left me last night.”

“Ya think?” I willed myself not to look at my watch. “Well, from now on, I'll pick you up from rehearsals.”

“What if you have a meeting?” she said, adolescence slipping cleanly back into place.

“I'm not going to be having so many meetings from now on.” The thickness hardened in my throat. I couldn't even say good-bye.

GH

I'd just turned off Raintree Place when my cell phone belted out its disco version of the “Hallelujah Chorus,” the ring tone one of my students chose for me. My heart sagged when the number on the screen wasn't Zach's. It was a college number though.

“Dr. Costanas, this is Gina Livorsi,” said the California-crisp voice on the line.

Dr. Ethan Kaye's assistant. As in president of Covenant Christian College. My boss and my friend. So was Gina. My stomach tightened. Since when was I “Dr. Costanas” to her?

“Why so formal?” I said.

“Formal occasion.” She sounded guarded. “Dr. Kaye wants to see you in his office. Soon as you can make it.”

It was already after seven. Zach liked to be in his classroom by seven forty-five—

“I have a class at nine,” I said. “I can be there after that.”

Gina paused—uncomfortably, I thought.

“He says to cancel your class and be here at eight if you can.”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Unh-uh.”

“What's this about, Gina?”

“He didn't say.”

“He didn't have to,” I said. “You always know.”

“Can you be here by eight?” she said.

My fingers tightened around the phone. “Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”

Why this summons? Something so secretive I couldn't even get it out of the secretary Zach and I had affectionately dubbed Loose Lips Livorsi?

I went cold.

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