Do you need a minute?” Sully said. “That was pretty disturbing.”
Lucia gripped the arms of the Adirondack like it was about to take flight with her in it. “It’s just so surreal. It’s like something you see on CNN.”
“It is something you see on CNN. But I know what you mean. I’m starting to feel like Cato Kaelin.”
“Who? Oh—you mean O. J. Simpson’s houseguest?” She shook her head. “I don’t know what that makes me.”
“It makes you somebody who has a right to be pretty shaken up by this whole thing. You want to process it a little?”
“No.” Lucia pressed the ever-present folder to her chest. “I want to talk about what you saw last night, in the kitchen, before I chicken out.”
A lump for her formed in Sully’s throat.
“What you saw . . .” she said. “I go for weeks without doing it, and then something happens, and I have to eat until I don’t feel anything but sick and gross and disgusting. Which is why I look the way I do, but I don’t care about that—what I care about is that when I look at Bethany, I see me, and I don’t want her to live this way.”
Lucia breathed hard, and Sully let her catch up to herself while he assembled his next words like the precise instruments they had to be. She was so close to getting it, but the part she didn’t want to see could cut her open if he weren’t careful.
“Do you want you to live this way?” he said.
She didn’t look at him. “I said I didn’t care about the way I look.”
“It’s not about how you look; it’s about how you live. Do you want to live this way, Lucia?”
He waited, chest aching. It was up to her, and to watch her decide was excruciating. If she couldn’t go there, they were done.
“I hate it,” she said.
“You hate what?”
“I hate my life.”
Sully hardly dared to breathe. “Ding-ding-ding, Lucia,” he whispered.
She looked at him, blue eyes startled.
“Now we can begin.”
Lucia gave a tiny, frightened nod. She’d taken a huge step into a land where she couldn’t yet trust the ground, Sully knew. He had to make it safe for her.
“Usually I try to let a person I’m working with find all the answers for herself,” he said, “but I’m going to tell you one thing that I think is true, and you can tell me if you agree.”
“Okay,” she said. She looked away.
“You have buried some things, some very hard things, deep inside you where you won’t have to feel them. How am I doing so far?”
She nodded again.
“But they aren’t dead things. They’re still alive, and because you’ve buried them alive, you have to feed them.”
“Because if I don’t, they come out and scream at me.”
“Ding-ding again,” Sully said softly. “That screaming, what does it feel like for you?”
“Like I’m going to explode. Like if I don’t get myself numb, I’m going to burst open and land like confetti all over the place.”
“And how do you get numb?”
She finally looked at him. “I eat,” she said.
Sully let himself grin. “If I ding you any more, I’m going to wear out my bell.”
“I don’t feel like much of a winner.”
“Why not? These are great insights. You’re wonderful at this.”
“Because I know you’re going to tell me I need to dig up what’s buried in there, and I don’t want to do that.”
“Nobody wants to do it, any more than they want to have an appendectomy. It’s painful.”
“That’s comforting.”
“But I’ll promise you something.” Sully put his hand on his chest. “I will try my hardest to keep it from hurting any more than it has to. We’re not going to just dig things up and let them scream at you. We’re going to find out what they have to say, and then we’ll know what to do with them so you don’t have to keep stuffing them down and feeding them.”
Sully leaned back and let her sit with that. She didn’t sit for long.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s get started.”
She had the first flicker of hope in her eyes, and Sully hated to chance snuffing it out. But one more thing had to be said.
He tilted forward again. “I want you to promise yourself something, too, Lucia.”
“What?” she said.
“I want you to promise yourself that you will do this for yourself— not just for Bethany, but for Lucia. Whatever you do for the I we talked about last time will become part of the we—you and Bethany and whoever else you love in your life. Can you promise yourself that?”
She didn’t answer. Instead she opened the folder she hadn’t let go of since she sat down and pulled out a wrinkled sheet of paper, which she looked at with the kind of tenderness reserved for precious objects.
“This is a drawing Bethany did of me,” she said.
“Can I have a look?”
She handed it to him, and Sully grinned at it.
“It looks just like you. Really.”
“It took me five minutes to figure out it was me.”
“Why?” Sully said.
“Because . . .” She sucked in air. “This person isn’t fat.”
“I think I know why that is.”
“Why?”
“Because when Bethany looks at you, she doesn’t see fat. She sees beauty.”
“I need to have her eyes checked.”
“Aw—your first buzzzzz of the session!” Sully said.
She put her hand up. “Okay—if that’s what she sees, it must be in there somewhere. So I’ll try to do this for me. I’ll try—that’s all I can promise myself.”
“Ding-ding,” he said.
“So how do I start digging?”
“We’ll do that in our next session. Before then I want you to explore a little Game Show Theology.”
She groaned. “I knew it. More Family Feud.”
“No,” he said. “Dancing with the Stars.”
She stopped digging in her pocket for her pen.
“How long has it been since you really danced?” Sully said.
“High school.”
He was surprised it had been that recently. “What did it feel like? Do you remember?”
“I was the only freshman to make the dance team. Of course, I went on a Tab diet that summer—do you remember Tab?”
“Wasn’t that a diet soda? A gross one?”
“Yeah, and I practiced blisters onto my feet, but I made it. Rehearsals and performances kept me out of the house, except when I was doing my housework.”
“Were your mother and Sonia still on the road?”
“No. My mother had to have Sonia tested because she homeschooled her, and they found out she was two grade levels behind. That was the one time my father put his foot down and made her enroll Sonia in school.” Lucia rolled her eyes. “Of course, Mother became the most involved parent in PTA history, so she barely noticed I wasn’t around that much.”
“And since it was a school activity, nobody had to pay for lessons.”
“Oh, it was expensive.” She looked a little sheepish.
“What?” Sully said.
“Well—I figured out that whenever I needed money for costumes or a field trip or something, I could get it out of my dad if I went down to Shenanigans Bar when he was only two beers in.”
Sully only let her stew in that for a moment. “So why didn’t you continue dance after high school?”
Her face clouded. “At the end of my junior year, I made dance captain for senior year.” She looked at him. “This all sounds so high school.”
“It was high school! Besides, it’s amazing how often the rest of life looks like it.”
She glared mildly and went on. “The coach offered to give me free private lessons over the summer if I would help her with her junior dance camps. And then my father got fired for being drunk on the job, right before junior year ended, and my mother had to go to work full-time, which meant I had to stay home with Sonia all summer because she was only twelve.”
Lucia shrugged as if that explained everything. Sully shook his head.
“Nothing could be worked out?”
“My dance coach said Sonia could come to dance camp for free, but my mother said no. It would interfere with her voice lessons and her piano lessons and her drama classes, which I had to drive her to.”
Sully curled toward her. “Weren’t you angry?”
“Sure—but what was I supposed to do about it?” Lucia smiled without mirth. “I’ll tell you what I did about it. I ate. All summer. I couldn’t even fit into my uniform in the fall, so I just quit the dance team.” She dropped her hands into her lap. “I don’t want to keep whining about this. It was what it was.”
“Then let’s go back to our original question: when you were dancing, how did it feel to you?”
She pulled in her chin again. “How did it feel?”
He nodded.
“I don’t know. I can’t even remember.”
“Then before we meet again, Lucia,” he said, “I want you to dance.”
I couldn’t sleep again that night.
I could have attributed it to the futon I’d dragged down from the garret above the playroom to put next to Bethany’s bed. It was like sleeping on a cement slab. Or to the fact that my niece had an adenoidal snore that was loud enough to wake my mother from her grave.
Not that Mother was really that dead. And if she were, Sullivan and I had done plenty to rouse her that evening. She yelled in my head, the way only an Italian mother can. Something along the lines of: Lucia Marie, I cannot believe you aired our family laundry to that stranger. And now you’re going to tell him more?
Actually, I probably hadn’t told him enough. I’d lied when I said I didn’t remember what it felt like to dance. I did, but how ridiculous would it sound to say, “When I danced, I never felt like Clifford the Big Red Dog, which I did all the rest of the time. I was a fawn, prancing through the forest with my tail up, able to leave the ground and land without disturbing a leaf.”
Sullivan Crisp would do more than grin if I came out with that.
I gave up on the futon and went to the window seat Bethany and I had peopled with stuffed bears and rag dolls in princess costumes of our own creation. It was a motley crew, but she loved it.
Even at this hour I could hear a boat out on the water. They busied the Cumberland all the time—wakeboard boats in the late afternoons, sending out tsunamis with their speakers blaring hip-hop— pontoons traveling at sipping speed in the early evening—the occasional houseboat at night, still bursting with laughter. This one sounded like one of the fishing boats I’d spotted near our bank just after dawn, deceptively quiet until the fishermen decided there were better prospects elsewhere and took off like some kind of marine NASCAR, hulls barely cutting the surface.
I peered through the glass and tried to see it, but the light of the waning moon was fragile, only enough for me to see the layered rock wall. I decided oddly that I was glad it was shades of gray— like maybe there was strength in things that weren’t clearly black or white. Any minute now the mother tape would tell me how much she hated it when people blamed every issue they had and every mistake they made on their childhood sexual abuse or their parental neglect. Nothing that bad had happened to me. Something obviously had just gone wrong with my personality, something I did. Some punishment from God.
Or not, Mother.
Bethany stirred in her sleep, and I went over to make sure she wasn’t strangling on that rag thing. When I came back to the window, I saw more light on the lawn. It took me a minute to realize it came from the motion-sensitive fixture out on the deck a floor below me. What was moving down there?
A chill rippled through me, and I backed involuntarily away from the window.
The author of a hate letter, looking to express his hatred in person.
Patrick Fargason, coming to avenge his gay brother.
Hudson himself, armed with his sharpened chef’s knife.
Holly, the cruel, thieving nanny, ready to break in and take the rest of the valuables.
Accompanied by Bryson and his supply of cyanide.
I pulled a pink throw around me. The lights had probably been bumped on by a deer family or maybe even Harry the Heron. Or Sullivan out for a midnight stroll. There was no need to call 911.
But it didn’t escape me that the people I’d just conjured up— Patrick, Hudson, Holly, Bryson—were all on the list Agent Schmacker had gone over with Sonia, and left for me to discuss with Bethany. She’d been right on one count: Bethany did know more about what went on around here than I’d given her credit for.
My mouth went dry. I ought to call Agent Schmacker and at least tell her about the hate letters. What she did with them was up to her. Which was exactly what held me back.
Patrick Fargason didn’t have to tell me his brother was ruined because the FBI had come to his workplace. I knew only too well how that happened, all in the name of justice.
Another light came on, this one at the other end of the deck. My fear zone gained another five thousand square feet. Bethany and I were here alone. The doors were locked and dead bolted, but the alarm wasn’t turned on. Everyone had abandoned ship without telling me how to operate it.
Stop. Just stop.
I lay resolutely down on the futon and pulled the covers up to my chin and tried to do what Grandma Brocacini always said to do: pretend you’re asleep until you are. But my mind slid into the forming of an escape route for Bethany and me.
The process had almost put me out when I heard a shout down in the yard. Under our window.
I sat up, heart like a battering ram in my chest.
The shout came again—an urgent male voice, calling, “Stop right there!”
Sully shouted again as he tore across the lawn. “I said stop!”
The figure didn’t. The man—it moved like a man—took an abrupt right turn and headed down the slope for the river. Sully kicked his heels out behind him, taking the terrace in strides that strained his hamstrings.
Ahead of him the figure seemed to go airborne and thudded to the ground with a curse.
Sully dodged the rock he’d tripped on and made a dive for the body that struggled to get back on its feet. Sully’s arms took in nothing but air until one hand hit cloth. He clawed it into his fingers and held on as the man tried to kick free. In the same instant that Sully realized he was clutching a pant leg, a heel slammed into his mouth and sent him rolling sideways.
Footsteps pounded the turf toward the river, and Sully tried to get up to go after him, hands plastered to his lower face. But Kick Boxer had too much of a head start. The sound of a motor bit into the night before Sully could even make out that the guy had climbed into a boat. It growled its way down river, leaving Sully panting on the dock.
He put his fingers to his mouth and drew back blood. What just happened? One minute he was talking about theodicy into a microphone, and the next minute he was auditioning for SmackDown on Sonia’s lawn. He looked down into the river and shivered, even in the night heat. Dang, this thing was cursed.
“Sullivan?”
He jumped a foot and wasn’t altogether sure he didn’t wet his pants as well. Lucia stood on the rock ledge, wrapped like a burrito in that white bathrobe that was about six sizes too big for her. She held a lamp, complete with shade.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” she said.
“That’s okay. I was already scared.”
“Are you all right?”
“Did you come down to rescue me?” He tried to grin, but his lip screamed in protest.
She looked at the lamp. “It was the first weapon I could find.”
“You probably would have done more good than I did. What is that, Snow White?”
“Yeah, Bethany’s into princesses. Sullivan—what was that about?” Sully wiped at his mouth again and walked unsteadily up the dock walkway to the bank. His legs were like cooked pasta.
She met him there, eyes squinted. “Ouch,” she said.
“Yeah, well, you oughta see the other guy.”
“Should we call the police?”
Sully reached for his phone. “No,” he said. “Do you have Deidre Schmacker’s number?”
“The FBI? For a prowler?”
Sully took the lamp and nodded for her to follow him toward the house. “I don’t think it was just any prowler. He had on a hood and a mask, Lucia. He made his getaway in a boat with at least 250 horsepower—and I know it was a four-cycle from the sound of it. That’s a high-end motor. It doesn’t look like an attempted burglary to me.”
“Then what? Are they still after Sonia?”
“The press hasn’t gotten wind that she’s back in the hospital,” Sully said. “The point is, the FBI should be notified of anything unusual.” He dabbed at his lip again. “I think this qualifies. Look, I probably shouldn’t stick my nose into something that isn’t any of my business . . .”
She stopped at the bottom of the steps that led up to the dock and frowned at his lip. Her face was ghostly white in the light.
“I think you’ve stuck more than your nose into it,” she said. “And I can’t handle the FBI alone.”
It would have been a perfect segue if they’d been in a session. Sully just nodded.
“I’ll get the number,” she said.