Sully checked his calendar one last time before he shut the computer down. There was no doubt Martha would handle things flawlessly while he was away, but the specter of things unfinished still haunted him. He was getting a little paranoid about missing the obvious. Another topic he wanted to discuss with Porphyria.
He slid the laptop into its bag and did a final eye-sweep of the office. His gaze fell on the picture on his desk. Automatically he picked it up to pack it as he always did when he traveled, but the frame felt too heavy in his hand.
“What’s wrong, girls?” he said to it. “Tired of being on the road?”
Lynn and Hannah did not, of course, answer. They simply continued to delight in each other, unaware of what he had tried to do for them, and untouched by it. It didn’t matter to them.
Perhaps it never had.
A prim knock brought him back and pulled a grin out of him.
“You’d better get yourself in here and say good-bye to me, Martha.”
She pushed open the door—the hair, the pantsuit, and the portfolio all in their usual order. But today’s variation on the smile appeared to be the real one.
He nodded her to a chair and took the other one. “Frappuccino?” he said.
“What in the world is a Frappuccino, anyway?” She shook her head at him, hair still immobile. “No, thank you. I just wanted to see if there’s anything else you want me to do while you’re gone.”
“Just the interviews.”
“I wish you’d let me wait until you get back, and we’ll do them together.”
“Since I did such a great job last time?”
Martha folded her hands on the portfolio in her lap. “I hope I’m not overstepping my bounds by saying this.”
“Jump right over them, Dr. Fitzgerald. Matter of fact, it’s time we knocked them down anyway.”
“I just think you’re being too hard on yourself about Kyle. He was very convincing.”
“He didn’t convince you. Which is why you should be the one to hire his replacement. Have you gotten in touch with Carla Korman?”
“I just talked to her.”
“And? Is she interested in coming back?”
“She said she’d think about it. She’s pretty gun-shy.”
“We can’t blame her. I think if anyone can convince her, though, it’s you.”
Martha’s face colored to a proper pink. “So what time is your flight to Nashville?”
“Tomorrow morning at six.”
“Ouch.”
“I have a room in El Paso for tonight. I’ll head down there after I take care of a few things.” Sully leaned onto his thighs. “Listen, I just want to thank you again for all you did to help me.”
“There’s no need, Sully. Just come back, that’s all I ask.”
“I intend to. Meanwhile, I have no worries about you holding down the fort here. Oh, and by the way, if you feel like it’s time to let Olivia go, I trust your judgment on that.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Olivia? I would have gone completely over the edge if she hadn’t been here while all of that craziness was going on. I’m working with her on developing some decorum. She’ll be all right.”
Sully grinned. The image of Olivia becoming a mini-Martha was the most delicious thing he’d thought of in days.
It was close to noon by the time Sully pulled into Tess’s street, but he slowed down before he reached the house. If he didn’t get it together, he really was going to stutter like Porky Pig when he saw her.
He’d called a few hours after Kyle was arrested and her voice had sounded just as he remembered it—like a bright silk scarf slipping across his soul. It was afterward that he dissected it. Of course she was happy he’d been cleared. So was the barista at Milagro, for that matter. But hadn’t she seemed a little guarded? Not quite as—something?
The longer he’d stewed over it, the less sure he was that she wanted to hear from him again, much less pick up where they’d left off. He finally resorted to an e-mail to let her know he’d be going out of town. She’d replied within five minutes with an invitation to lunch.
He was now in front of the house, which meant he had to either get out and go to the door, or drive around the block again. He didn’t have much faith that that would make him sound any less like Porky anyway.
And then the door opened, and she was there. Silky and smiling.
“Are you afraid you’re going to get stopped for speeding, Crisp?”
“I’m sorry?”
“If you’d driven down my street any slower, you would have been going backwards,” she said as she nodded him inside. “Was it something I said?”
“It was everything you said.”
“About what?” She closed the door behind them and slid her hair back to look up at him.
“You really want to do the whole small talk thing?” Sully said.
“You don’t want to know what we’re having for lunch?”
“What are we having for lunch?”
“Steaks. Well done.” She put her arms around his neck. “Now, where were we before they carted you off to jail?”
“A lot’s happened since then. You might want to refresh my memory.”
“I can do that,” she said.
She kissed him, and proved him wrong. She wasn’t guarded. She wasn’t anything—except in love.
Porphyria opened her eyes the moment Sully entered the room. Winnie had told him not to expect much response, but her voice was stronger than it had sounded on the phone, and the expression that greeted him when he got to her bedside was vintage Porphyria— marvelous lips in an almost-smile, eyes knowing everything. She even managed to look queenly in a hospital gown. Winnie said Porphyria had eschewed the tangle of hanging bags and tubes and beeping machines. Nobody had argued.
“My, my, Dr. Crisp,” Porphyria said. “I think you’ve fallen in love.”
Sully grinned. “My lady love says I’m translucent. She must be right.”
“No, I just know you.”
“Yes, you do. Like no one else does.”
“Except maybe you yourself.”
She closed her eyes, and for an instant Sully thought she had drifted off. He curled his fingers around her hand, cool against his own sweaty palms.
“Tell me what you found out about yourself,” she said.
“That I am not, nor will I ever be, perfect.”
Her eyes opened. “You’re going to have to go deeper than that, son. I don’t have time to fool around.”
Sully held on harder. “I prided myself on being a good judge of character, but I can’t trust only that now.”
“Go on.” She licked at her lips.
“Do you want an ice chip?”
“I want you to tell me what else you’ve learned.”
“I have carved a life out of helping people choose healing, and now I know how hard it is to make that choice.”
She nodded, wise old-soul eyes still on him from a place already far away.
“That’s what I know,” he said.
“Mm-hmm.”
He was fine until she did that. Now he could feel his face struggling. “What mm-hmm?”
“That’s what you know in your head, Dr. Crisp.” She pulled her hand, still wrapped in his, to her chest. “What do you know here?” “That I don’t want to be alone anymore.”
She squeezed, her hand so weak it tore at his heart.
“And that I don’t have to be.”
“Mmm.”
“And that I’m not.” He brought their hands to his lips. “And I never was. It was all God, all along, wasn’t it, Porphyria?”
“Still is, Sully. It’s always about surrender. I’ve spent my whole life learning to succumb to it. It’s the hardest thing God asks of us.” She pulled her mouth slowly, painfully, into her magnificent smile. “But you know what I always say, son.”
Sully closed his eyes and nodded. “Until we’re dead, we’re not done.”
“And you know something, Sully? Look at me, son.”
He did.
“I think I’m about done.”
“No—”
“I waited for you, but now you have to let me go. That’s what I’ve always done for you.” She gave their hands a weak shake. “Do it, son.”
Sully unwrapped his fingers from her hand, obedient as a boy, and laid it on her chest.
“I’m going to rest now,” she said. “You, though—you go on.” The magnificent smile lit up her face. “Because you’re healed, Sullivan Crisp. But you aren’t done.”
“Far from it, Dr. Ghent,” Sully said. “I still—”
He stopped. There was no mm-hmm on her lips. No Talk to me, son in her eyes. The soft lids closed. A peace beyond him slipped over her face.
“I’m not done, Porphyria,” he whispered. “It’s all God now.”