The guesthouse was larger than any main house Sully had ever lived in, including Porphyria’s lodge, though thankfully it wasn’t furnished with the same kind of grandeur as Sonia’s own living quarters. Brocade made him itch, and gold tassels on drapes brought out his Alabama-country-boy urge to use them for fishing lures. Even that elaborate cross hanging over her bed made him think of a sword about to fall.
He was grateful for the leather couches and the enormous made-for-a-man chair, which he sank into. He peeled off each shoe with the other foot before he turned on his cell phone.
Porphyria answered on the second ring and listened with her usual intensity while he filled her in.
“Where do you think she’s headed?” she said when he’d finished.
“If she doesn’t start facing what’s happened to her instead of burying her head in work nobody wants her to do, I’d say she’s headed for trouble.”
“Mm-mm-mm.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Sully said.
“Do you, now?”
“She’s doing exactly what I did. Only she’s getting there a lot faster. I can’t counsel her, obviously, but I am going to talk to her sister about a therapist tomorrow, if you don’t need the car back sooner.”
“She’s the nurse you mentioned.”
“Sonia listens to her more than she does anyone else, although Lucia doesn’t have the confidence to push her, as far as I can tell. Too bad, too, because she’s got a lot going for her.”
“Such as?”
“Beautiful face—something out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Bright. Sensible.” Sully grunted. “Hasn’t bought into the toxic aspects of Sonia’s belief system.”
“But she doesn’t stand up to her sister.”
“There’s a lot going on there. She definitely has some issues.”
“Have you already done an assessment session with her, Dr. Crisp?”
Sully heard the smile in her voice.
“I think anybody could pick up on it,” he said. “She’s fairly overweight, for one thing. Not obese, but I think she’s a closet stress eater. She takes about enough food to feed a flea and then doesn’t eat it. The only way she’s keeping that much weight on her is to eat in secret, and my guess is that’s due to some unresolved stuff of her own.”
“Sexual abuse, you think? That’s often the case with weight issues.”
“I don’t think so,” Sully said. “If they’d been molested as kids, don’t you think Sonia would have told the world by now? No, I think it’s something else.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“What ‘mm-hmm’?”
“You might not be able to counsel Sonia Cabot, but you’d sure like to get your therapeutic hands on her sister.”
“She’s just interesting.”
“So it would seem.”
Sully scrubbed at his cheek. “I’m not ready, Porphyria. I found that out on the bridge last night.”
“What you found on the bridge is that there’s more you need to find out.”
Sully had to grin. “Now there’s comfort.”
“Tell me something.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Always.”
Sully scratched at the back of his head with his fingernails. “Okay—what do you want me to tell you?”
“If you were going to advise Sonia, what would you say?”
He didn’t even have to think about it. He’d been seeing it all day.
“I’d tell her to take Egan Ladd up on his offer to let somebody else handle the big ministering for a while and concentrate on what she needs to do emotionally to deal with what’s happened to her. But I’d advise her not to—to use Rusty’s psychological term— wallow in it. I’d say she needs something she can do that keeps her in touch with God and her relationships with other people, something that moves her in a healing direction.”
“Excellent advice, Dr. Crisp.”
“Out of your mouth into my ears.”
“And so far you’ve taken most of it, much to my surprise.”
“I had to hit rock bottom.”
“Sonia hasn’t yet?”
“I’d like to see her start healing without having to go that far down.”
“So what would you tell her to do to stay in touch, as you said?”
“I don’t know yet. Her daughter might be one avenue, for both their sakes. Sonia’s not taking care of her physical needs either— there’s probably something there that needs to be happening. She’s running everybody around her into the ground. I’m not sure how long sister Lucia is going to last.”
“All good, all good,” Porphyria said. “So isn’t that what you’re doing right now?”
“Am I?” Sully unfolded himself from the chair and padded barefoot into the adjoining bedroom, where a king-sized bed invited him to flop down. He ignored it and went to the bookcase. He rubbed at the title on a spine. Delivered from Grief. One of Sonia’s.
“I’m going to have to do the podcasts Rusty wants if I’m going to have any future in this ministry at all.”
“And?”
Sully laughed out loud. “Ticks me off when you pull that therapy stuff on me, Porphyria.”
“Anger is good in therapy,” she said.
He could imagine her eyes closing, her marvelous mouth spreading. Waiting.
“I think I can get Sonia pointed in the right direction,” Sully said. “I’d like to try anyway. As her friend.”
“Good. And her sister?”
Sully put up his hand as if Porphyria were sitting across from him. “I’m not going there.”
“That may not be your destination. But don’t be afraid to drive by.”
“Speaking of driving, I need to get your car back to you.”
“I’ve got my pick-em-up truck,” she said. “You know my hind parts fit better in it than they do in that silly Buick. Just don’t be tinkering with the engine.”
He hung up and looked at the laptop he’d set on the desk—solid cherry, if he knew wood at all. He’d already downloaded the software the Healing Choice tech guy had sent him for the podcasts. Audacity, the program was called. How ironic was that?
He did have one thing he wanted to say, which had occurred to him when Egan outlined the credo of Abundant Living. What a prince, that Egan. With friends like that, who needed a personal assassin?
Sully ambled over to the computer, set it up, did a test for mic volume, and dropped into one of the swivel chairs.
“Sullivan Crisp here,” he said into the microphone. “If you ask me—and no one has in quite some time—through no fault of theirs—I just haven’t been available for asking.” He clicked Stop.
“Thank you for playing, Dr. Crisp. Better luck on your next round.”
Maybe not so self-deprecating this time.
“Crispy Critters of Wisdom, Take Two,” he said, and clicked Record.
“As you may have noticed, I’ve been out of the scene for a few months.”
Stop again. It was pretty arrogant to assume anybody had missed him. Make that Take Three.
“I’ve spent the past few months giving serious thought—well, not so much thought as experience . . .”
How lame was this?
“That is to say that I’ve taken some time to consider this thing called faith. I’ve had some opportunities to observe different kinds of faith up close and personal, and I’ve discovered that for an inordinate number of Christians, faith is equated with belief. If you don’t believe certain things, you don’t have faith.” Sully swallowed. “The only thing I believe about that is: faith has far less to do with what you say when you recite the creed or chide your neighbor with chapter and verse than it does with what you simply come to know to be true. That’s what I’m about here in these podcasts . . .”
He stared at the microphone for longer than what could be considered a dramatic pause, and once again turned himself off. At least he’d made a start. At least he had a direction.
Where it would take him was anybody’s guess. Except God’s.
I got Sonia into the bathtub and was headed to the kitchen for some tea, and hopefully a snack for myself, when Didi-the-housekeeper flagged me down at the bottom of the stairs. She still wore the perpetual smile, but it seemed to be on overtime.
“Bethany’s been fed and had her bath,” she said. “I’ve got her watching TV, but I really have to go home.”
It surprised me that anyone who worked for Sonia actually had a home. And that Didi was now actually using commas and periods.
“Who usually takes over from here?” I said.
“Well, Yvonne. Before she quit.”
“She quit? When?”
Didi averted her eyes. “She gave Egan her notice when she and Bethany came home from Philadelphia. He said he’d take care of getting another nanny, but . . .”
“Okay.” I closed my eyes and thought, with a brain so overloaded I was surprised it didn’t spill out onto the marble floor. “If you’ll just do one more thing and make Sonia a cup of tea, I’ll go up and see about Bethany.”
The way she snatched up a tote bag from the bottom step and backed toward the front door, I might as well have said, If you’ll just take that side of beef into the lion’s cage for me . . .
“Bethany will be fine while you get Sonia’s tea,” she said. “She’s used to watching videos until she falls asleep. I have to get home.”
Then—and I could put it no other way—she flew out the door. I so wanted to fly with her.
I continued on to the kitchen, thinking, Okay—first, tea for Sonia, and then a tuck-in for Bethany, who for all I knew was viewing an R-rated movie.
Marnie looked up, unguiltily, from the sit-down counter where she noshed alone on a fried chicken leg. The plate in front of her was heaped with mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans that, from the smell of them, had been cooking in bacon drippings for days. She could surely hear my stomach growling.
“This is so gross, Lucia,” she said. “But I’m starved. You want some?”
Did I breathe air? Yes, I wanted some, but I would rather have dined with Godzilla than break bread with the girl who’d done more than that with my husband. I hadn’t thought about that all day.
“I wish Sonia would hire Hudson back to cook,” Marnie said. “I don’t know why he left. He made amazing chicken cordon bleu.” She bit off another hunk of the drumstick. The girl ate like a truck driver and had a body like Kate Moss.
“I need to make Sonia some tea,” I said.
She looked at me blankly. “I am absolutely no help there. Coffee I can do. The closest I can come to tea is picking up some chai at Starbucks.”
I desperately wanted to forage through the cabinets for tea bags, but I was afraid I would come upon a box of crackers and devour the whole thing in front of her. Opting for warm milk, I found a quart of 2 percent in the refrigerator and stuck a cup of it in the microwave.
“Do you know where I might find some nutmeg?” I said.
“Are you serious?” Marnie said. “Lucia, I’m not even sure what that is.”
I wondered if Chip knew his cute little trick didn’t cook.
“It’s a spice,” I said.
“Oh.”
“Never mind.” I willed the time on the microwave to flip by faster. I wanted to get away from this child, off to the one who deeply needed somebody.
“Do you know if Egan was interviewing nannies for Bethany?” I said.
Marnie spewed mashed potatoes back onto the plate. “Are you serious? Egan?” She dabbed at her mouth with the back of her hand. “Why would he? What’s wrong with Yvonne—besides the fact that she basically hates kids?”
“She quit,” I said.
“No, she did not. Seriously?”
“Didi just told me. She said Egan was handling it.”
“Yeah, don’t tell Sonia.” Her shiny blue eyes met mine and darted away. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do, but I’m not going to give her that news.”
The microwave dinged, and I took my time getting the cup out—time enough to decide whether to keep talking to the little vixen, even if it meant finding out what I needed to know—but didn’t want to know.
Good. I was officially losing it.
“Why don’t you want to tell her?” I said finally, and with as little warmth as I could without suffering from frostbite.
She poked at the green beans with her fork. “I don’t know if I can say this to you—I mean, since you’re her sister—but I used to talk to Chip about it, and he totally understood, so yeah, you probably would too.”
Was this girl, as she herself would put it, serious?
“We totally used to talk all the time, just like this, when everybody else was in bed, and we’d come in here and eat leftovers— Hudson’s leftovers, which were to die for. Okay, I’m babbling, but you’re so easy to talk to. Just like Chip.”
And you’re so hard to listen to. I picked up Sonia’s warm milk.
“I’ll deal with Sonia,” I said. “Good night.”
Her sheer cluelessness followed me across the foyer to Sonia’s suite. Dear God, please don’t let me lose control and strangle that girl. I have enough to deal with.
Sonia’s room was quiet when I got there. She lay in bed, even though the sky was barely dark, and from the even sound of her breathing, I surmised she was asleep. Her eyes stared, sightless, at the ceiling. So much for the warm milk.
I downed it myself and thought of Grandma Brocacini and the way she always gave us a cup when we wailed that we didn’t want to go to bed, that we would never, ever fall asleep.
“This will take away all the ooja-oojas,” she would say. She made it taste like dessert, with nutmeg and cinnamon and the sweetness of her soul. It always put Sonia right out. I would fight to stay awake for a few minutes alone with Grandma Broc, when I could just be Lucia on her lap, and not Sonia’s big sister.
“How’s Bethany?” Sonia said.
I almost dropped the cup. “I was about to go check on her,” I said.
“You’re her angel, Lucia. I can feel it.”
She breathed deeply again. I put off telling her Bethany had no nanny, because tomorrow she also had no job. Perhaps she could once again take on the task of being her child’s mother—if we could get poor Bethany to look at her without becoming hysterical.
I climbed the stairs to her room and grunted to myself. If I were Bethany’s angel, I would never get off the ground at this rate. I was famished, and too exhausted to drag myself back to the kitchen.
The only light in Bethany’s room flickered from the small flatscreen television on the wall opposite her bed. Something called Hannah Montana had lulled her to sleep. I switched it off and crept to the edge of a bed big enough for a set of triplets. The cherub was curled in a pink-pajama ball amid pillows clad in tailored cream cases. Whatever she had around her neck was jarringly dingy amid all the cleanness. What was it doing around her neck anyway?
I tugged gently and held up a ragged strip of fabric that had long ago lost its color and consistency. The smell made me pull it to my nose, and when I breathed it in, something caught in my throat. A memory trying to work its way up.
It was her smell, Bethany’s special baby aroma. I had discovered it in her warm neck and her soft blankets on wide-awake nights when I rocked her colic away. I’d smelled it on my own clothes for months after I left her with Sonia to go back home. I never did wash my bathrobe. It still hung in the back of my closet.
Bethany stirred in her sleep and pawed at her neck and drew her frail, dark eyebrows together.
“Here, Bethie,” I whispered. I tucked the rag into her hand.
She pulled it up to her face and relaxed again, into dreams I hoped were better than what I’d seen her live in the daytime.
“You and me both, Bethie,” I whispered to her. “You and me both.”