I’d promised I would call Sullivan Crisp at nine Wednesday morning to check in. It was more like 8:45, but I was between assignments and I needed to hear his voice sooner rather than later so I would know I wasn’t crazy. I felt like a different person than I was before Saturday, and I had to make sure that was real before I went on with the plan that had begun to take shape in my mind during the night.
Dr. Crisp was breathless when he answered the phone, as if I’d caught him on the run.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I called too early. If this isn’t a good time . . .”
“No, no—this is perfect.”
I could hear him moving around, but he settled in quickly. I warmed my hands around the cup of coffee I’d just picked up at the Milagro drive-through. Even though I’d parked in the sun in the parking lot and the temperature was in the upper fifties, I was still shivering. That seemed to be my new natural state.
“I thought I was done crying,” I said. “Then I saw Jake yesterday, and I started all over again.”
“How did it go?”
“That depends.” I spilled it all, succumbing to tears again when I related Jake’s statement: I didn’t do it for Ian. “For so long I believed that he didn’t do it. And then I had myself convinced that Ian somehow made him get behind the wheel and run over Miguel. Jake took out all of that at the knees.”
“Did he?”
“Yes.” I shoved the tears off my cheeks with my jacket sleeve. “Jake’s telling the truth.”
“But there’s still the possibility that he didn’t do it at all.”
“Then why didn’t he say that? I know—he’s scared. He thinks somebody else will get hurt—like it’s all on him.”
He let that one sit. I’d figured out that he did that when he knew I already had the answer.
“I know,” I said. “He doesn’t take after anybody strange.”
“I’m sorry?”
“My mother used to say that. It’s like ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’”
“Now that one I know.”
I could hear him grinning.
“Jake might have learned from you to take responsibility for everything and everybody—or that might just be his nature. In either case, Ryan, it’s like anger. Sometimes it serves you—and other people, and God—well, and sometimes it doesn’t.”
“Remind me again when anger has served me well.”
“Whenever you’ve stood up against something that wasn’t right. Jesus never said getting angry was inherently bad. He showed anger himself on a number of occasions.”
I had to admit those were some of my favorite Gospel passages.
“But,” he said, “it never works as a way of being. And neither does a misplaced sense of responsibility, which Jake seems to have.”
I closed my eyes. This was the point where I always hit a wall— where I couldn’t completely buy into what he was selling.
“Talk to me,” he said.
“I’ve come a long way.”
“Absolutely you have.”
“I don’t want to rip up the upholstery in my car right now. I told my son everything he needed to hear. I made it all about love instead of about anger.”
“Yes, you did.”
I knew he could hear me crying, and I didn’t care. “But if you’re saying I have to let this go, I can’t. If he did do it, I have to find out why and how. Otherwise, Jake’s lost—and I can’t lose him again.”
“You don’t have to let it go. I don’t usually do this, but I’m going to give you a direct piece of advice.”
“Please,” I said.
“The only thing that seems to be holding Jake back from telling you what happened is his fear that if he does, he’ll jeopardize someone else’s safety.”
“Right.”
“So if you can get him to let go of that responsibility, he’ll probably let the rest of it go too.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” I said.
“Two things. One, you take the responsibility for him. I suspect he hasn’t been able to be a kid for a while now, just like you at his age. And it sounds like you’ve already made a start in getting him to trust you to be his mom.”
“I hope so.” I wanted it to be so, because Sullivan had just given me permission to go ahead with what I’d planned. Almost. “What’s number two?” I said.
“You show him how to surrender—I’m talking about surrendering to God. That’s what you’re starting to do, isn’t it?”
“I’m working on it.” I wiped my nose. “I guess that’s sort of an oxymoron, isn’t it? Working on surrendering?”
“It’s a start. Why don’t you explain it to me the way you would to your son?”
“You mean pretend you’re Jake?”
“You did great with the sandbox.”
“You are a strange man,” I said. But I clung to the kindness in his voice and closed my eyes. “Just talk to him?”
“Yeah.”
I drew in a breath and tried to see my son, bowed over himself in pain. “Jake,” I said, “I’m doing everything I can to sort this out and help you. I understand why you feel like you can’t talk about it, and I’m trying to respect that.” I stopped. “How am I doing so far?”
“If I’m Jake, I’m already talking.”
I swallowed hard. That was the easy part. I wasn’t sure I knew where to go from here.
Until an image came to me, no longer gauzy and distant, but so sharp it cut through everything. In it, my hands were in fists that slowly uncurled until they lay flat and free. I didn’t see the Humpty Dumpty pieces I’d thought were there. There was nothing. I’d been holding on to nothing.
“Jake . . .” I said. “I can’t promise you I can get you out of this, whether you talk to me or not. But I know God can set us both free somehow, if we just stop trying to do his job for him.”
I didn’t know where it had come from. I just let it be there—for so long I almost forgot that Dr. Crisp was on the other end of the line until he said, “If you say that to him, you won’t lose him. No matter what else happens.”
I felt a peace that lasted until we hung up and a finger of anxiety crooked at me. It was one thing to say it to a man who seemed to be able to turn anything into healing. It was another to even think I could do it.
I don’t know how far I would have gone with that if someone hadn’t tapped on my passenger-side window. I twisted around to see J.P. peering in at me. She pointed to the lock.
“I didn’t think you’d ever get off the phone,” she said as she slid into the seat next to me.
“I was talking to my therapist.”
“And now you’re going to talk to me. No—make that, I’m going to talk to you.”
“Okay,” I said.
“You look terrible, by the way.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re obviously not eating. We’ll take care of that in a minute.” I didn’t argue. I could only think about how much I’d missed her. How much I cared about her, about all three of them.
“Look, J.P.,” I said. “I hope you understand why I can’t let you all keep helping me. It looks like that threat didn’t come from the Hispanic community. I never actually thought it did. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a danger.”
“You know, that’s the only thing I still don’t like about you.” J. P. shook the ever-present tendrils out of her face, exposing the moisture in her wonderful blue apostrophe eyes. “You think you’re the only one who knows how to be tough. And you’re wrong, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
“Besides, this isn’t about the bomb or the threat. It’s about Alex.”
“Alex?” My heart was too tired to pound, but I could feel the sudden fear in my teeth, my hair, my fingernails. “Did something happen?”
I grabbed for my phone, but she put her hand on top of mine. “No, nothing happened. But I was watching him at soccer practice yesterday.”
“I couldn’t go. I had just been to see Jake in jail, and I couldn’t—”
“Ryan, shut up. I know. Dan told me. And all I could think about was how this is affecting Alex. He was dying of loneliness, and I couldn’t stand it.” She blinked several times, but the tears stayed. “I want to take him home with me until this thing is over. If you and Dan will let me.”
“We can’t put you in that position.”
“I’m putting myself there.” She stuck her hand up. “You would do it for me. I know you would, and that’s all I’m going to say about it.”
It was all she had to say. I said yes.
Sully was on his office patio, gazing at the Organs and marveling at the same magnificence that existed in mountains and in tiny, feisty women like Ryan Coe, when his phone rang. It was a 615 area code, but it took him a moment to realize it was Porphyria’s niece’s number.
“Winnie,” he said. He was already standing up, the mountains forgotten. “What’s happening?”
“You’re not going to like it,” she said.
“Doesn’t matter. Tell me.”
She sighed, long and hard, and Sully was suddenly sorry for her. She’d been at the hospital with Porphyria for weeks, shouldering everything. He swallowed back his guilt.
“Aunt Porphyria has an infection. I can’t even pronounce it. It’s something she picked up in the hospital.”
“And it’s serious.”
“Yeah. It is. She’s not dying, okay?” she added quickly. “But at her age, it’s hard for her body to fight bacteria.”
“I’m coming back there,” he said.
“She said absolutely not.”
“She can say anything she wants, but I—”
“Please, Sully, it will only upset her, and that wouldn’t be good for her right now.”
He sank into one of the patio chairs and smothered his face with his hand. “Can I talk to her?”
“Absolutely. She wants you to call her later, when the antibiotics have had a chance to kick in.”
“That’s our Porphyria.”
“Yeah. So listen, later, okay? I need to go.”
Winnie hung up, but not before he heard her start to cry.
Sully glanced at his watch. It was almost four. His plan was to head to Mesilla before darkness set in. He stood up and went to his laptop on the desk to check his appointment calendar, see if there was anything he needed to clear so he could head for Nashville tomorrow. He could hear Ryan Coe saying it: why did anything else matter but love? Whether he saw Belinda Cox tonight or not, he was going to Porphyria tomorrow.
The calendar came to life on the screen, and Sully glanced over it, already certain there wouldn’t be a problem. He snagged on what appeared to be a four o’clock appointment. Who was M. Shannon?
He picked up the desk phone to call Olivia, just as he heard Martha’s efficient tap on the door. At least this time he had an excuse.
“I have a four o’clock,” Sully said when she heeded his call to come in.
“I know,” she said. “I’m it.”
Sully glanced at the screen. “I’m seeing an M. Shannon.”
“Martha Shannon Fitzgerald.” Martha pulled up one of the client chairs and sat firmly on it. “It was the only way I could get ten minutes with you.”
He stifled a sigh and came out from behind his desk to take the chair across from her. Maybe he should get this thing out of the way so it wouldn’t be hanging over his head all the way to Tennessee.
“You want to talk about Kyle,” he said.
“I know you don’t, but we have to.”
“All right. Tell me what you want to tell me.”
Sully knew he sounded patronizing—he saw it register in her eyes, flickering in the anger he’d seen there only once before.
“You don’t notice Kyle’s faults because he’s young Sullivan Crisp,” she said. “He looks like you. He models his therapy after you. He drives the same model car you do.”
Sully felt some anger in his own eyes. “Martha, that has nothing to do with my dealings with Kyle. What faults are you seeing that I apparently don’t?”
“I checked into the clinic where he last worked, in Little Rock.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because unlike you, I am still concerned about the number of clients he diagnoses as suicidal. There was another one this week.” She drew herself up in the chair. “In Little Rock, nine of his clients were hospitalized in two months. That raises a red flag for me.”
“I’ll grant you that seems like a high rate.” He didn’t point out it was better than missing suicidality and losing a patient. “What exactly do you want me to do with this?”
“I just want you to talk to him. See if there is something going on with him that makes him so quick to suspect clients want to kill themselves.”
Sully caught his lip in his teeth. Maybe it was simple: because Kyle himself had almost taken his own life. But he couldn’t tell her that. “I certainly can’t do it,” Martha said. “He treats me like a hasbeen.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Martha stood up. “I’m not asking for sympathy, Sullivan, but I’ll tell you this: if you are going to put him in charge of this clinic when you leave, I won’t be staying.”
Before Sully could respond, she marched out and gave his door an uncharacteristic slam. He breathed in the anger she left behind.
All right. Tomorrow, before he left for Nashville, he would talk to Kyle. But right now, he had to go have it out with Belinda Cox and then meet Tess at her place as they’d planned. Especially now that he was leaving town. After last night, he couldn’t see himself taking off for even a few days without telling Tess.
For three hours they’d sat at a table at Meson de Mesilla, where Sully didn’t care that he couldn’t identify what he was eating. All he saw, all he tasted, were Tess’s eyes as she listened to him pour out the story of Lynn and Hannah and his journey since then. With no trace of pity, she took it in as if she’d known them. As if she knew him. By the time the coffee arrived, he was sure she did.
When the waiter had brushed off their tablecloth with a whisk broom three times, they migrated to the plaza, where Sully noticed the temperature’s dip into the forties about as much as he had the garnish on the dessert. He coaxed out Tess’s story then. How she’d struggled in her twenties to have her art taken seriously, only to become involved with a guy who blocked her creativity at every turn under the guise of not wanting her to be hurt or disappointed. That relationship had segued into another with a man who was an artist himself, romantic and supportive and, it turned out, married. For a while she retreated into a New Age group, where the anything-goes philosophy left her feeling rudderless.
“I went back to my Christian roots after that,” she told Sully as they leaned against the creamy-white wall of San Albino Church and watched the moon rise over the plaza. “Funny how the thing you’ve been looking for was there all along.”
Sully turned sideways to face her, his shoulder pressed to the wall. “Have you found everything you were looking for?”
“Who has? Spiritually, it’s a continuing journey.”
“Absolutely.”
“Careerwise, I love what I do.”
“Do I hear a but in there?”
“Isn’t there always one?” She tilted her head and smiled at him. “Are you doing your psychologist thing with me?”
He put up both hands. “I’m totally innocent.”
“No, you just can’t help yourself. It’s okay—I can’t see a face without wanting to draw it, or wondering what it’s going to look like ten years from now.”
Sully feigned horror, and she laughed. It was a lovely thing, and he wanted to make her do it again.
“Yeah, there is a but,” she said. “Every time I get involved with a man, my art seems to suffer. It doesn’t matter whether he’s artsy or not, even the Christian ones—and I don’t date anyone who isn’t— they just don’t get it, get me.” She shook her head. “It’s probably just me. I may be expecting too much.”
“Or the men in your life have expected too much of you.”
“Okay, now you are being the therapist, Crisp.”
She put her hand up, and Sully folded his fingers around it.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey what?”
“Thank you again for coming here with me.”
He waited for the verbal poke, or the eyebrow before she said, You needed somebody to keep you from bursting into Mesilla like a bull in a china shop.
It didn’t come. She let her fingers curl over his. “It was my pleasure.”
“Really?”
“Do I look like I’m lying?”
“I hope you’re not. I hope you want to do this again. Just for pleasure next time. Can we do that?”
“Shall I pencil you in?”
Sully shook his head. “No. I’d rather you put me in ink.”
She gave his hand a squeeze and tugged away, but she was still holding him with her eyes. “I want to ask you one question,” she said.
“Anything.”
“Do you have a picture of Lynn and Hannah?”
Sully nodded.
“Of course you do. That’s a ridiculous question. And it isn’t the one I was going to ask—do I get another one?”
Sully resisted the urge to stare. He’d never seen her act nervous before. Dang. She was probably gearing up to say, Let’s just keep this professional, shall we?
“What I want to know is—would you like for me to do an age progression on them, so you’ll know what they might look like if they were still with you?”
Her voice had taken on a husky sound. Sully felt his own throat thicken.
“You don’t have to answer now,” she’d said. “Just something to think about. It would be an honor to do that for you.”
Sully looked now at the framed photograph of Lynn and Hannah. He’d caught them in a rare moment of serenity, Lynn gazing down at Hannah, whose tiny hand was reaching up to touch her mother’s face. Lynn had coaxed out one of the baby’s first smiles, lopsided and tentative. Even in her despair, Lynn couldn’t help the look of delight on her own face.
Sully hadn’t given Tess an answer. He’d been too overcome by the offer, too caught off guard to be able to say whether he would want to know exactly what he was missing. But now as he ran his finger over their faces, it was clear. This was the moment he wanted to remember. To know what more of those moments might have looked like was too much to bear.
He brought the picture to his lips and kissed them both.
“I’m sorry, girls,” he whispered. “I’m going to make sure this doesn’t happen to someone else. I promise you.”
But as he set the frame back on his desk, the uncertainty rose in him again. Was that the only reason he was doing this? Or did he want to shout into Belinda Cox’s face until she hurt the way they had? Was he out to stop her, or to ruin her? Now that he was so close, he couldn’t see where he was going.
He shook his head. More procrastinating. Just do the next God-thing.
It was almost dusk. He knew it would be completely dark by the time he got to Mesilla, and he didn’t trust himself to find Belinda Cox’s house without the address. He had emptied the contents of his pockets on the desk before he remembered that Tess was the one who’d written it down and probably still had it in her purse. He had to grin to himself as he dialed her number. It wouldn’t hurt to hear her voice before he took off to do this thing.
“Crisp,” she said. “So—how did it go?”
“It didn’t yet. I need the address, and I think I left it with you.” “You are hopeless. Just a sec.”
He heard her put the phone down just as Kyle appeared in the doorway. Sully motioned him in and furrowed his brow at the duffel bag he had slung over his shoulder.
“You going somewhere?”
“Out of town for a couple of days,” Kyle said. “I’ve cleared my calendar.”
“You ready, Crisp?”
Sully put up a finger to Kyle and tucked the phone into his neck while he located a pencil.
“Okay—go.”
“Nineteen twenty-five . . .”
“Nineteen twenty-five . . .”
“Calle de Santo.”
“Calle de Santo.”
“You on your way now?” Tess asked.
“Yeah.”
“You sound . . .”
Sully glanced at Kyle, who had wandered discreetly to the patio door. “I sound what?”
“Like anybody would sound when they’re about to do something like this. I’ll be praying for you.”
Sully closed the phone against his cheek.
“So this is it, huh?” Kyle said.
“Yeah. I found the woman I was telling you about. I’m finally going to get this done.”
“You sure?”
Sully’s neck jerked as he looked up.
“Never mind. You know what you’re doing,” Kyle said.
“You want to say something.”
“Naw, I should keep my mouth shut.”
“Hey. Come on.”
Kyle nodded. “Look, this is huge, man. You just look like you need to be sure you’re ready before you go wherever it is you’re going.”
“Mesilla.”
“It’s just a feeling.”
Sully nodded. “You’re right. I need to make a call before I go.” “Then I’ll get out of your hair.”
He was almost out the door before Sully said, “So you’re going out of town?”
“I just need to go back and settle a couple of things in Little Rock. My house just sold. I’ve notified all my clients.”
“Have a good trip.”
Kyle tapped the doorjamb, then hesitated. “I wish I could be here for you.”
“You already have been,” Sully said. “Go. We’ll celebrate when you come back.”
Kyle gave him a thumbs-up and left. Anxiety pulsing, Sully picked up the phone again. Those antibiotics had to be kicking in by now.
Porphyria answered on the first ring.
“Dr. Crisp,” she said, “can you explain to me why if you are not sick when you check into a hospital, you will be before you get out?”
Sully knew his smile was watery. “They have to stay afloat somehow, Dr. Ghent. I want to know what’s going on with you.”
“It’s simple. I’m going to watch all this medicine go into my veins, and then I am going home.”
He wanted to believe her. He might have if she hadn’t coughed long enough to have to put down the phone and catch her breath. When she picked it up again, he’d changed course.
“Winnie told me. I just wanted to hear it from you.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“What?”
“You never could lie to save your soul, Sullivan Crisp. You’ve got something on your mind.”
“You.”
She answered him with a velvet silence. He could imagine her closing her eyes, pressing her magnificent lips together.
“I want to run something by you,” he said.
“I know, and I don’t know why you’re shilly-shallying around about it.”
“I know where Belinda Cox is.”
“Ah.”
“I haven’t seen her yet. I’m on my way there. But dang it, Porphyria, I think I’ve lost sight of why I even need to do this. I keep telling myself I just want her to know the danger she’s putting people in, but it sounds like everybody she’s been associated with has already told her that, and she doesn’t get it.”
“Everybody isn’t Sullivan Crisp.”
“You’re saying I could have some kind of influence nobody else has.” Sully rubbed the back of his head. “I don’t see that. She could be too far gone.”
“I think you knew that ever since you went to the church, but you kept looking.”
“Yeah, but why? Every time I think about confronting her face-to-face, I don’t like what I see.”
“In her?”
“In myself.”
He could hear her breathing, as if it were an effort. Guilt lapped at him, but Porphyria wasn’t going to let him stop now.
“What ‘self ’ do you want to be when you talk to her?” she said. “I don’t even know.”
“Then don’t you think you better find out before you go do this thing? Personally, I only know one Sully-self when it comes to dealing with twisted human beings.”
“And that would be . . . ?”
Porphyria gave a soft grunt.
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“No. You just need to wrap you up in some God, now, and sweat out an answer.” She coughed again, longer and with more wheezing than before.
Sully gripped the phone. “I’m coming there,” he said. “I’m going to get this behind me, and then I’m coming to Nashville.”
“All right, son,” she said. “I’ll wait for you.”
When they hung up, Sully looked through the light-shimmering patio door. The sun was already hissing out behind the hills, but Porphyria was right. Before he went to Mesilla, he had to see the Sully-self who could walk into Belinda Cox’s house and be what she needed . . .
He stopped, hand on the door.
What she needed. What Dr. Sullivan Crisp would do for her if she came into his office.
Sully turned and stared at one of the red-padded client chairs. It wasn’t hard to figure out why he’d never thought of Belinda Cox the way he did any other messed-up person he came in contact with— someone who’d fallen prey to bad theology or suffered a traumatic experience or hauled a load of guilt that wasn’t hers to carry. It was always about Lynn and Hannah. About his need to make it right somehow.
But what about now? What about who he’d become through all of this?
You just need to wrap you up in some God, now, and sweat out an answer.
Sully pushed through the patio door and let the New Mexico air cocoon him.