In spite of Kyle’s pep talk, Monday morning arrived and Sully still hadn’t called Tess to get the ball rolling on Belinda Cox.
He couldn’t blame concern over Porphyria. When he finally got to talk to her on Friday, she sounded tired but alert, and pleased that he had confided in Kyle.
“It’s about time you did some male bonding,” she said. “Now all you need is a good woman in your life.”
Sully had nearly swallowed the phone, although he shouldn’t have been surprised that Porphyria could read his life even from thirteen hundred miles away.
“I don’t know if I’m ready for that,” he said to her.
“You’re always the last one to know, Dr. Crisp,” she said.
So, no, the real reason for putting off the call to Tess was out-and-out fear. The kind experienced by middle school boys with crushes on girls, who know they’ll stutter like Porky Pig if they actually speak to the object of their affection, and who are convinced the same thing will happen if they don’t.
Sully sat now with his phone in his hand as he had at least ten times over the weekend. This time he was in his office, but he’d gone through the same process in his kitchen at home, in the driver’s seat of the Mini Cooper, even that morning at the new coffee shop he’d discovered.
Yes, he could do this without Tess. Kyle had offered to help. Or he could go it alone. But what other excuse did he have to call her? And wouldn’t her trained eye for faces make her able to corroborate that anyone they saw in Mesilla was or wasn’t “Zahira”?
He looked at the picture of Lynn and Hannah.
“What do you think, girls?” he said.
Holy crow. They were still so real to him he could smell the strawberry scent of Lynn’s shampoo, feel Hannah’s soft face as she nuzzled his neck. Thinking of Tess’s hair and Tess’s face felt like infidelity.
Sully put his finger to Lynn’s photographed cheek. “I know what Porphyria would say about that,” he said to her. “I just haven’t thought of any woman but you two for so long. But, hey, it’s just a phone call, right?”
Lynn stayed as she was, gazing into their baby’s eyes. Sully dialed the number and held his breath until she answered.
“Hey, Tess. This is Sully. Sully—”
“Crisp,” she said.
Her voice sounded bright. Not like he’d interrupted her. Not like she put him on a par with a telemarketer.
“Hey, I could use a little advice,” he said.
“You sure could.” He heard her silky laugh. “We need to talk about that shirt you’re wearing.”
Sully looked down at his Hawaiian print and blinked.
“I saw you going into Milagro Coffee this morning when I was coming out of the drive-through. I was going to holler at you, but you got away too fast.”
She’d noticed. She’d wanted to holler.
Okay, he was pathetic.
“What did you want to holler?” Too cutesy? Too coy?
“I was going to holler, ‘Crisp, for heaven’s sake get a new wardrobe.’” There was a smile in her voice. “No, seriously. I was wondering how the search is going. Has the picture helped?”
“Funny you should ask,” Sully said. “That’s kind of why I’m calling.”
“Good. Listen, I’m finishing something up. You free this afternoon for coffee?”
Sully grinned at the phone. The way things were done on the male-female front had obviously changed in twenty years. He liked it.
“You read my mind,” he said. “Can you do Milagro twice in one day?”
“What—you didn’t like Beans and Bytes?”
“If you’d rather go there . . .”
“I’ve seen you pretend to drink coffee, Crisp. They don’t have enough sugar for you at that place. See you at Milagro at one thirty.”
“Can’t wait,” Sully said.
Then he hung up and felt like the nerd at the junior high dance again. He’d sounded too anxious. Maybe even desperate.
Holy crow. Mr. Authenticity was having an identity crisis.
The phone rang again. It was Ryan Coe, and she started in before he could even get out, “Sullivan Crisp.”
“Do you have any openings today?” Her voice was brittle and small.
Sully sat straight up. “You sound urgent.”
“I could physically go to White Sands, and I’d still be coming apart.”
“Then let’s see if we can hold you together.” Sully looked at his watch. It was only ten fifteen. “Does eleven work for you?”
“I’m working,” she said. “Can I just come in at three today instead of tomorrow?”
“If you want to wait that long, it works for me.” Sully held the phone tighter, as if he could keep her from slipping away. “What do you need right now?”
“You mean this minute?”
“Or sooner.”
“I need you to tell me I can handle this. And you have no idea how hard that was to say.”
“I think I do,” Sully said. “What are we handling?”
She let a small silence fall. When she spoke again, the tears broke through. “Thank you,” she said.
“For . . . ?”
“For not just saying I could handle it when you haven’t heard what’s going on.”
“I’ll never do that,” Sully said. “We’re for real here.”
He heard nose-blowing. It didn’t get any more real than that.
Ryan broke into an explanation that brought Sully to his feet and had him pacing the patio. The more she talked, the calmer she sounded and the more agitated Sully became. He hoped that didn’t bleed through the phone.
She concluded with the Spice Girl’s announcement of her betrothal to the man Sully was convinced Ryan still loved.
“I’ve tried everything you told me to do. I don’t even have the energy to throw anything. I don’t know what to do.”
“Of course you don’t,” Sully said. “Nobody does in a situation like this.” He chose his words breath by breath. “I think it’s what you’re not doing that’s working.”
“Something’s working?”
“You’re talking to me, making perfect sense. You’ve admitted you don’t know what to do. That’s a long way from coming apart.”
“You’re not inside my skin right now.”
“No,” he said. “But I’ve had times when I felt like a handful of confetti. I was sure that one more puff was all it would take, and I’d never be able to come back together as a whole.”
“And then you did.”
The statement was so firm, Sully knew she wanted to believe it.
“I did. And there was one more puff, and another, and I was still in that little pile in a hand.”
“Whose hand?” she said.
“God’s,” Sully said. “No doubt about it. But that’s hindsight. I didn’t know it at the time.”
Ryan let out a long, frayed breath, and Sully waited for the threads that hung at the end of it.
“I’m not a handful of confetti. I’m Humpty Dumpty’s shell— after the fall.”
Sully listened for her sarcastic edge, but he didn’t hear it.
“Okay, so I’m supposed to let God hold on to the pieces until I get to you.”
“There it is,” Sully said.
“We already know all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t do the job. I hope you’ve got something better.”
“We do,” Sully said. “We’ve got the King himself.”
He got her to promise she’d call him if she felt herself crumbling again between then and three o’clock. When she hung up, he held on to the phone and prayed for the strength of the almighty hand. The fall from the wall was good. But it could hurt so much.
Sully had discovered Milagro Coffee in his search for an alternative to Starbucks. They had a pumpkin spice latte that worked, and he liked the funky feel of the place. The serious customers were all tucked in the back with their laptops. The fun folks gathered in the front on brick-red faux leather couches and propped their feet on granite coffee tables. Today the offbeat arrangement of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” they had playing confirmed it: perfect place for a date. If this actually was a date. Which it wasn’t.
Ben the barista greeted him at the counter. “What kind of bagel do you want today, Doc? You haven’t tried the green chile.”
“Just that great latte you make,” Sully said.
He turned around to give the place a nervous look for Tess and found himself gazing straight into her eyes.
“Crisp, I am going to have to teach you how to drink coffee.”
“So what’s he having?” Ben said.
She glanced a smile over Sully and ordered something for him. “Have you had their paninis?” she said. “They’re the size of a UFO.”
“You want to split one?” Sully said.
“Are you buying?”
“Absolutely.”
“Throw in a turkey and provolone,” she told Ben. She looked at Sully, another smile teasing at her lips. “If you eat like you drink coffee, there’s no way I’m letting you pick the entrée.”
Sully felt himself melt. Holy crow, he liked this woman.
When they were seated across from each other at a corner table, steaming cups between them, Tess looked at him expectantly, and Sully told her about his dead ends and the phone call from Sarah. Tess gave him the undiverted attention he remembered, and the more she nodded and coaxed him with her magic eyes, the more he drew out the story. He didn’t want it to end. She might stop looking at him.
“So,” she said when he was out of details, “have you been to Mesilla to look for her?”
Sully shook his head. “I’m not sure how to approach it.”
She looked at him, coffee cup poised under her chin. Sully gave her what he knew was a sheepish grin.
“Okay, so I’m procrastinating.”
Tess returned his grin and took a sip, eyes still on him. “I know Mesilla pretty well—not that there’s that much to know. I can go with you if you want. Unless you need to do this on your own.”
“No, no.” Sully set his cup down before the foam could jitter over the side. “I’d enjoy the company.”
“Good. Because I’m not finished teaching you how to order coffee.”
Over the largest panini on the planet, they agreed to visit Mesilla at three the next day. They talked easily. Sully found out she loved jazz and had been kicked out of her high school art class for sketching a realistic version of Adam and Eve in the Garden, pre-Fall. He confessed that he flunked sixth-grade Spanish and thought jazz sounded like they were making it up as they went along. Every difference made them seem more alike. When Tess left with a coffee to go, Sully started the countdown until three o’clock tomorrow.
I managed to keep Humpty Dumpty’s pieces together—or, as Dr. Crisp had pointed out, God did—until I was leaving the Sun-News building for the Healing Choice Clinic around two forty. And then the phone rang.
I tucked the Bluetooth around my ear and continued pulling out of the parking lot in the rental car. When Dan said hello, I jammed down too hard on brakes I wasn’t used to and threw myself into the steering wheel. I pulled around the corner and parked at the curb.
“Are you okay?” he said.
“No. Just when I think you’ve changed, you pull something like this.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t even know my phone had been turned off until this morning. What’s going on? Is it Jake?”
For a minute I was stunned. His son was in jail for murder, and Ginger hadn’t given him one word of my message.
“Ryan!”
I reeled myself back in and told him everything. There was only a paralyzed silence on the other end until I got to the part about the bomb at Burn Lake.
“With two teams of kids there,” I said, “it’s a miracle nobody was in the bathroom when it went off.”
“Two teams?” Dan said. “Coach Rosa didn’t tell his kids the game was called off?”
“You didn’t tell yours either.”
“I didn’t get the call until Sunday morning.”
“What call?” I said, but then I shook my head. “Forget that. Our son is in jail for murder. Alex could be in danger, too, if that note was for real. And I’m not sure it is—something about it seemed wrong to me.”
“Can we see him?”
I stopped ranting at the sound of Dan’s voice. He was still in shock, and I wasn’t sure he’d heard most of what I’d just said.
“I tried yesterday, but you have to have an appointment,” I said. “The next one I could get was for tomorrow.”
“I want to go with you.”
“They’ll only let one person in at a time.”
“I don’t care. I’ll just be there. You can tell him I’m there.”
“If you want—”
“You shouldn’t go alone.”
That was what tore the pieces right out of God’s hand and scattered them all over the front seat of my car. I wasn’t sure how we ended the conversation. I drove to Sullivan Crisp surrounded by shards of myself.
It was 2:45 when Sully got back to the clinic, and he headed straight toward the therapy room to prepare for Ryan.
“Dr. Crisp,” Olivia said from her desk as he crossed the reception area.
“How’s it going, Liv?” he said, still moving.
“Dr. Martha wants to see you.”
“I have a client coming in.”
“Lucky for you.” Olivia immediately clapped her hand to her mouth.
Sully sighed inwardly and abandoned the door to go over to her.
“Sorry,” she said between her fingers. She lowered her hand. “It’s just—she’s all grouchy today, and I know she wants to talk to you about Kyle, and I wish she’d leave him alone.” She flounced her arms into a fold across her chest. “There. I said it.”
“What does that mean, Liv?”
Olivia squeezed her arms in tighter. “I know stuff is confidential, but she had her door open when she was talking.”
Sully waited.
“She was checking his background with somebody on the phone,” she whispered. “It’s like she thinks he lied on his résumé or something.”
Sully gave her a closer look. Tears sparkled on her lower lashes. “I think she’s looking for a reason to fire him. Only you can do that, right?”
“Nobody’s firing anybody,” Sully said. “And you’re right, stuff is confidential. You haven’t mentioned this to Kyle?”
She shook her head, sending her dream catcher earrings into a frenzy.
“Good job,” Sully said. He strode back across the reception area to the door. He now had eight minutes to get himself ready for Ryan.
But he was no sooner through the door than he saw Kyle strolling toward him, one hand in his pocket, the other swinging as if all the two of them had to do was make plans to spend a Sunday watching football. Sully felt a pang of guilt. He’d just made a date with Tess for what Kyle had suggested the two of them do. That suddenly mattered.
“Hey,” Sully said. “You have a minute?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
Sully glanced at Martha’s door, which was opening even then, and nodded Kyle into his office. He’d have to talk fast.
“Look, I just wanted to thank you for offering to go to Mesilla with me,” he said with the door closed.
“No problem. When do you want to go?”
“Well, here’s the thing—a woman I’ve been working with on this has offered to help me out.”
“Got it,” Kyle said. “I can’t compete with a beautiful woman.”
“Who said she was beautiful?”
“Isn’t she?”
“Drop-dead gorgeous.”
“Then there you go.” Kyle grinned. “Now who’s going to get extra caramel sauce on his flan?”
Kyle left, and the door opened again before it even shut behind him. It was starting to look like a turnstile.
“Five minutes, Sullivan,” Martha said. “That’s all I need.”
“If I had five, they’d be all yours.”
“Then I’ll take one.” She backed the door closed. “I have to talk to you about Kyle.”
Her arms folded. Her jaw set. She wasn’t going anywhere.
Which left Sully no choice but to glance at his watch. “I have one client, Martha, and wouldn’t you know she’d be coming in right now?”
“Yes,” Martha said, “wouldn’t you know?”
It was the first time Sully had seen anger in Martha Fitzgerald’s eyes. It matched the subtle tremor in the skin around her mouth, as if she were barely holding back. “So when can we have a conversation about this?”
“Mrs. Coe is here, Dr. Crisp,” Olivia said too loudly outside the door.
Martha jerked it open, and Olivia stumbled into the room. Martha seared her with a look that Olivia openly returned before she whirled with a jangle of jewelry and left.
“I know you don’t want to hear what I have to say, Dr. Crisp.” Martha’s voice shook. “But if you don’t, I’m afraid you are going to be sorry.”
Sully listened to her march down the hall. Maybe tomorrow he would have his confrontation with Belinda Cox and get that behind him. Then he could focus on Olivia and this thing Martha had against Kyle. Right now he had a client who was barely holding it together, and he was about to go in there with his hackles up. He ran his hand down the back of his neck. One God-thing at a time, Dr. Crisp.