Dan was waiting for me in the lobby at the precinct when I got there. I knew before he spoke that he hadn’t been able to talk Jake into going home with me.
“Did you even try?” I said.
He looked away from me. “What do you think, Ryan?” he said. “You think I want him to go to jail?”
“No—but I don’t think you’re doing much to keep him out. How did he leave the house without you knowing?” I hit my forehead with the heel of my hand. “Oh, wait, you were out in your studio. Or Ginger was showing you what a desirable man you are.”
“Stop.” Dan’s voice broke. “I’m not going to have this conversation with you. If you want to go in there and talk to Jake, nobody’s standing in your way.”
I turned toward the front desk.
“Except Jake himself,” Dan said to my back.
I whirled around. “Thanks to you. ‘Dad said I didn’t have to talk to you.’ Heaven knows what else you’ve said.”
“You don’t get it, do you? He won’t talk to you because you do all the talking—at the top of your lungs. He’s sick of it, Ryan. We both are.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets and walked away from me. It took every ounce of what little self-control I had left to go to the desk and ask to see Jake.
The female officer gave me a steely look before she picked up the phone and called for someone to escort me in. When she hung up, she said, “I’d calm down before I went back there if I were you.”
There was no calming down. There was only maintaining enough control not to shove the tank-shaped police escort aside and push every door open until I found my son. When he showed me into the room where Jake sat at a table alone, I held on until he shut the door behind him. And then I held on some more.
“Jake,” I said, “I’m not going to yell at you. I just want you to come to my house. You don’t have to think of it as home. You don’t have to think of it as anything except that it isn’t a jail cell.”
Jake was slumped so far down in the chair his shoulders barely cleared the tabletop. His forearms lay listlessly in front of him as he picked at the mole on his wrist. It was bleeding, as were several of his cuticles.
I took a step toward him. “Son, you don’t want to go to jail.”
“Don’t tell me what I don’t want to do!” He shoved himself back until the chair tilted out from under him. He staggered forward to get his balance and stood curved over the table, chest heaving under his baggy shirt. “Why don’t you get it?” he screamed at me. “I’m doing this my way, and I want you to leave me alone!”
“Your way? Your way is not to tell things that could save you— like the fact that you and Miguel Sanchez are friends.”
He flung himself from the table and stumbled to the door and banged on it with his fist. It was opened immediately by the officer who’d shown me in.
“Problem?” he said.
“Take me to jail.” Jake’s voice teetered on the edge of panic. “Take me now.”
I grabbed at the back of his shirt and caught a fistful of cloth.
“Ma’am, let go.”
“He’s my son! You can’t put him in jail for something he didn’t do.”
“What he did do was break the rules of his custody. He had a choice, and it looks like he made it.” He removed his handcuffs from his belt.
“What is it with you people and choices? I’m his mother—I’ll make the choice!”
The officer didn’t even look at me. He turned weary eyes on Jake, who was trying to yank his shirt out of my hand.
“What are you going to do if I release you to your mom?”
“Run away.”
“Then there you go. Ma’am, I have to ask you to let go.”
I didn’t have to. Jake clenched his hand around mine and ripped it away. Before I could reach for him again, he pressed his wrists together and presented them to the officer, who hesitated, cuffs in hand.
“You sure you want to do this, son?” he said.
Jake looked back at me and nodded. I came completely apart.
One piece of me screamed. Another slapped its hand on the table. Still another hurled itself at the door that closed behind my son and the officer who was taking him off to a cell.
The jagged pieces still hadn’t come together when I somehow made it out of the room and down the hall and across the lobby to the front door. That was why, when I squealed the Saab out of the parking lot, I took the corner too sharp and too fast and fishtailed off the road on the other side. I stomped down on the brake and rocked viciously to a stop, my rear bumper inches from a utility pole.
Everything shook as I pulled the car forward, kicking up divots and lurching back onto the road. I drove a block to an empty insurance office parking lot and parked sideways across three spaces. The engine died, and I let it. All I could do was lean back in the seat, feet pressed to the floorboard, and beat the steering wheel until my hands could no longer take it.
Then I pulled my fists to my mouth and choked out one aching sob after another. For the first time in my life, I wished I knew how to cry. GH
Sully put his cell phone on the desk and twirled it with his finger. He’d done the laundry, replenished his supply of Frappuccinos, changed the oil in the Mini Cooper, and answered every e-mail. And it wasn’t even noon yet.
He stopped the phone’s twirl before it could sail off the edge of the desk. It had all been an attempt at three things, and it had failed at all of them.
One was to keep him from thinking about Porphyria. She was supposed to have the pacemaker replacement this morning, but Winnie hadn’t phoned him yet.
Two was to give him the sense that he was accomplishing something, because he had still come up empty-handed in his search for Belinda or Zahira or whoever she was at the moment. He’d even tried a realtor Friday afternoon, asking in what part of town he might find a place to open an alternative counseling center.
“We could try the university area,” the broker had told him. “I know there’s already one there—Healing Choice, I think it’s called . . .”
If he hadn’t been depressed before that, he definitely was now.
The third was to steer him away from obsessing about Tess. She’d asked him to let her know how things went with the Better Business Bureau, et cetera. But had she meant that, or was she just saying what it would have seemed impolite not to say when he was leaving Tuesday night? Sun tea had turned into chips and salsa, which had led to shrimp quesadillas she’d whipped up while they asked each other impersonal questions and secretly looked for deeper meanings. At least, that’s what he’d been doing. He was pretty sure she’d done the same thing, with a lot more finesse. So maybe she did mean for him to call her. He would know in the first thirty seconds if she didn’t. If, for instance, she said, “Sullivan who?”
Holy crow, Crisp. Just do it. What are you, twelve?
He flipped open the cell, but the office phone rang. Somebody who didn’t know the clinic was closed on Saturday—but he answered it anyway, to avoid having to deal with any more adolescent angst.
“Healing Choice,” he said.
A slight pause was followed by a vaguely familiar cheery voice. “I’d like to speak with Sullivan Crisp, please.”
“Speaking.”
He was greeted with a huge sigh. “Oh, thank goodness. This is Sarah Quinn. Pachico Hills Community Church?”
“Sarah—oh, Sarah!” Sully rubbed the back of his head and groped for a way to keep this short.
“I’m so glad you left me your card,” she said. “It took me awhile to find it, or I would have called you soon—”
“What can I do for you, Sarah?”
“Are you still looking for Belinda Cox?”
Sully stopped twirling his cell phone and planted his hand on it. “I am,” he said.
“Well, it just so happens—and this has to be the Lord, because there is just no other reason why it would have come up when I was just passing through the room.”
“What came up?” Sully asked.
“Somebody who came in to see Pastor mentioned Zahira. Now, I wouldn’t even have paid any attention to that if you and I hadn’t just been discussing it the other day.” Sarah lowered her voice conspiratorially. “All I heard was him saying he thought she was long gone from around here, but that she had shown up with some kind of storefront business in Mesilla.”
“Mesilla,” Sully said, heart pounding. “Is that close by?”
“You’re practically in its front yard.”
There was a polite knock on the door.
“Listen, Sarah,” Sully said. “I’ve got somebody here, but I can’t thank you enough for this information.”
“You are more than welcome—now, you call me if you find her.”
Sully managed to extricate himself and get to the door, just as Martha was tapping again.
“Dr. Fitzgerald,” he said. “Do you live here?”
Martha’s blonde head preceded her in. “Do you?”
“I didn’t see your car out there.”
“I just got here.” Her face colored. “Actually, I was driving by and I saw your car, so I thought I’d try to catch you.” She nodded at his desk. “Am I interrupting something?”
“Nah,” he said. He forced himself to tuck the Sarah conversation away. “Sit down. Can I get you anything?”
She looked at his empty Frap bottle and shook her head. “I won’t keep you long.”
Sully motioned again to one of the client chairs as he sank into the other one.
“I just need to talk to you about Kyle,” she said.
Dang. “You still haven’t settled your differences?” Sully winced at the way that sounded. “I could sit down with the two of you.”
“No, we’ve come to terms. I handle my clients my way, and he handles his as he sees fit.” She rushed on. “And I’m almost entirely certain we are both within the parameters of the Healing Choice approach.”
Sully tilted his head. “You’re almost certain.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Martha folded her hands in her lap. Even in Saturday jeans and an oversize orange sweater, she managed to look proper. “Kyle has five clients now,” she said.
“Are you concerned that he’s taken on too much too soon?”
The current version of her smile tightened.
“I’m sorry,” Sully said. “I’m second-guessing you. Go on.” There was nothing else he could do now but hear her out.
“He’s diagnosed three of them as being possibly suicidal. From my experience here, that seems like a high percentage.”
“Did he discuss that with you?”
“I wouldn’t call it discussing,” she said. “He actually thanked me for giving him some cases he could get his teeth into.”
“He didn’t talk about them by name?”
“No. But I reviewed all those files before I gave him the clients, and I didn’t see any red flags.”
“Not everybody checks the I’ve-had-suicidal-thoughts box who should,” Sully said. Her smile changed again, and he unfolded his legs and slanted toward her. “I’m not trying to negate your concern, Martha. I’m assuming you’ve brought this to me because you want me to suggest some possibilities you might not have thought of.”
“That isn’t all.”
The office phone rang again, and her eyes shifted to it. “The answering service picks that up after hours,” she said.
“Let me check,” Sully said. If it was Sarah with more details, he wasn’t missing it.
“Sullivan Crisp,” he said.
“Okay, I lost it.” It was an obviously distraught female voice.
“I’m sorry?” Sully said.
“I screamed at my son in front of a cop. I tried to break a table at the police station. And I almost ran my car into a telephone pole. My son is in jail, and I can’t get him out because he won’t come home with me and I’m afraid I’m going to hurt somebody if I don’t get a handle on this.” Her voice finally snapped. “And I can’t. I can’t calm down. I can’t stop wanting to break things.”
“All right, Ryan,” Sully said. “Where are you right now?”
“Home.”
“Good. You probably ought to stay there.”
“You think ?”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes. I told you, I’m afraid I’m going to hurt somebody.”
He wasn’t sure how much of an exaggeration that was. He could hear things being picked up and slammed down.
“I’m not going to tell you to sit,” Sully said, “but I do suggest you get to a room where it’s soft. Pillows, stuffed animals.”
For an instant, he had a life-sized picture of Ryan Coe with a teddy bear.
“You’re getting the idea.” Her voice had already come down several decibels, but it was still shrill and serrated. It could have cut a loaf of bread.
“Okay, now, talk to me. What set you off?”
He could hear her draw in a ragged breath, and he took the opportunity to look up at Martha. She was already halfway out of the chair, pointing to the door.
“We’ll talk later,” she mouthed to him and slipped out.
“I don’t know if I can even tell you this without flipping out again,” Ryan said.
“If you feel yourself heading into dangerous territory, we’ll stop,” Sully said. “Fair enough?”
“Yeah, whatever.” She hauled in another jagged lungful of air and launched into her story. She ended with, “My son picked jail over me.”
Sully smeared his hand across his chest. The hurt wasn’t buried far beneath her anger. He could feel it in his own soul.
“I’m sorry, Ryan,” he said.
“There is nothing I can do, and I can’t stand it. I want to go down there and shake that sanctimonious broad at the front desk and work my way in from there—but I know it isn’t going to do any good.”
Sully didn’t point out that she’d be locked up, too, either there or in the psych ward.
“I also want to go scream at my ex-husband,” she said. “But that would only make him think he’s right.”
“About what?”
“He says my anger is what made Jake commit this crime, and it’s my anger that made him choose to go to a stinking jail cell instead of with me.” Her pause was full. “Is he right? Is it me?”
Sully rubbed the back of his head with his free hand. “We haven’t sorted all of that out yet. But I do know this: even if your rage is a factor, it isn’t the whole reason. I don’t think Jake’s actions are just a way to get back at you for being angry. There’s probably something else going on.”
“Then I’m not nuts. Before this part went down, I learned some things that make me even more sure Jake didn’t hurt that boy.”
“Really. Tell me your theory.”
She didn’t seem to catch on that getting her to talk some more was an attempt to calm her down.
“Jake and Miguel Sanchez, the boy who was hurt, were soccer buddies. Jake even talked Miguel into trying out for a select team even though he wasn’t in the league, and he made it. They both did. But Ginger—do you remember me talking about her?”
“The Spice Girl,” Sully said. “Your ex-husband’s—”
“His whatever. She has a son—Ian. Nice kid, considering she gave birth to him. He’s like a big brother to Jake, who worships the ground he walks on. Jake even broke the rules of his bail to go to some meet the kid was in. Anyway, Ian tried out, too, and didn’t make it. That could have put Jake between a rock and a hard place.”
“How so?”
“What if Ian wanted to mess Miguel up for beating him out, and Jake was sucked in enough by whatever power Ian has over him to take care of that for him?”
Sully didn’t say anything.
“That’s pretty thin, isn’t it?” she said. “I don’t have any reason to think Ian would even be upset. I’m told soccer isn’t his thing.”
“You’re just looking at possibilities,” Sully said. “Have you mentioned this to anybody?”
“I was just putting it together when Dan called me. I didn’t have a chance to tell him—not that he would believe me. He’d say I’m just trying to slime Ginger and her kid.”
Sully heard something fall—or be flung.
“He probably wouldn’t believe anything bad about Ian—but he’s perfectly willing to let Jake go down for it without batting an eye. I do not understand that!”
“No, you don’t,” Sully said quickly, before anything else could be thrown. “Because it doesn’t make sense. No wonder you want to throw things. I would want to throw things if it were my kid.”
“Great. You want to come over here, and we’ll throw things together?”
He could imagine her shoving her hand through her hair.
“Okay, not funny. Are you going to give me some suggestions or what?”
“I can. There are things you can do to get through the weekend— and you can call me anytime. I’ll give you my cell phone number. And then, Ryan, I think you need to pursue this with a therapist, because you’re in it for the long haul. It doesn’t have to be me—”
“Who else am I going to go to? I don’t want to start all over and tell this whole thing to somebody else. Besides—” There was another rush of air. “At least you’re not telling me I’m nuts.”
“The people who are ‘nuts’ don’t call me. They just blow up the police station.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” she said.
“Then you’re definitely not nuts. Can you come in Monday?”
“I can wait until Tuesday, unless you gave my appointment away.”
“Not yet. You sure?”
“Yeah.” Her voice had wound down.
He didn’t hear any more objects crashing. “You wanted some suggestions for the interim?” he said.
“Yeah, or I know I’ll do something I’ll regret.”
Sully mentally ran through the options. She wouldn’t like any of them; he hoped she was desperate enough to try one.
“How about this? Start with one set of muscles, tighten them up, and then consciously release them—”
“Have we met? Can you actually see me doing that?”
“Maybe not at the moment,” Sully said. “But it might help you before you go to bed.”
“What else have you got?”
“Anything you do is going to mean getting quiet and making an intentional effort to slow yourself down and stop beating up on things you can’t lick right now.” Sully shook his head. “So sit down.”
“How do you know I’m not?”
“Just a hunch. Are you sitting?”
“Now I am,” she said.
“Now think of the last place you went to that gave you a sense of calm.” He hoped she even knew what that was.
“This is getting freaky,” Ryan said. “I was just at White Sands this morning, and I think it was the first time I felt calm in my life.”
“Great. So it’s fresh in your mind. Now close your eyes—and yes, it’s going to be woo-woo. Can you deal with that?”
“I guess I’m going to have to. All right, they’re closed.”
“Go to the place. And try to not only see it, but experience it with all your senses. Listen for whatever sounds you remember.”
“That was the beauty of it. There were none.”
“Then savor the silence. Feel the air on your skin or the sand between your toes—whatever you experienced tactilely.”
“Okay. Go on.”
Sully frowned slightly. She was obviously doing a checklist, but at least the edge in her voice was rounding off.
“Do the same with taste and smell. Just be there in every physical way you can.”
She was quiet for all of ten seconds before she said, “Okay, then what?”
“Do you still want to tear up the police station?”
“Actually . . . no.”
“Then it’s working.”
“Yeah, but for how long?”
“Until the next time you get that feeling, and then you do it again.”
“I’m going to be spending a lot of mental time at White Sands.” “Good.”
Ryan let another long pause form, and Sully waited her out.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll take that cell phone number you offered. As long as you’re sure you don’t mind having your ear chewed off at two in the morning.”
Sully grinned. “It’s what I do.”
When she hung up, Sully went out to the patio and gazed over the top of the adobe wall where the sun was turning the aspen leaves to copper coins. It was barely noon, and both he and Ryan had already found themselves at their respective crossroads. He was sure she would go to White Sands in her mind.
He just wasn’t sure where to go in his.