The sky was barely light when we walked into the WTBG building the next morning, but it didn’t matter. I hadn’t slept anyway. Francesca had put ice cubes on my eyes and then gone at me with the foundation and the concealer in an attempt to freshen me up, though it only made me look like an insomniac wearing too much makeup.
The effort was somehow calming at the time. Now that I was there, chilled by the air-conditioning and the thought of exposing myself to millions of viewers, I was beyond comfort. Only the little cherub face in my head and the constant Dear God, please in my breath got me to the chair a man in headphones led me to. I was vaguely aware that this was the set Roxanne had used for her prayer show. The thought was slightly nauseating.
“This is going to be a live feed,” Deidre explained, while Headphone Man clipped a microphone to the lapel of the blue jacket Francesca had picked for me. I had no idea where she’d gotten it, but she said it was my color.
“You’ll see Chelsea Bowles on the screen, so just talk to her like she’s here in person, and the camera will do the rest.”
“We need to clear the set,” Headphone Man said to her.
She patted my hand and stood up. “This is brave of you, Lucia,” she said. “Very brave.”
I didn’t feel brave, so I fought for numb, something I hadn’t reached for in weeks. It was nowhere to be found. I was left with Headphone Man counting down on his fingers and a golf ball forming in my throat.
But this was for Bethany. And for the twisted people who had taken her from us. I swallowed it down and glued my eyes to the screen.
A stunning brunette with sympathetic eyes flickered into view and greeted me in a voice I almost believed.
“We appreciate your being with us this morning, Lucia,” she said. “I know this is a difficult time for you and your family.”
“It is,” I said woodenly.
She nodded as if she wanted me to say more.
“But I had to do this,” I said. “We have to find Bethany.”
I could feel my face coloring, feel the sweat forming on my upper lip. I sounded so desperate.
But then, I was desperate.
Chelsea—was that her name? Chelsea?—nodded again. “You were the first person to discover that little Bethany was missing. Can you tell us about that?”
I nodded back and began to speak and tried to forget how many people were eyeing me. I said Bethany’s name as much as I could, and that kept me moving through, kept me giving details that maybe, somehow, would nudge someone, make them think, I saw that! I saw him!
As I talked, I heard my own voice grow warmer, less stiff, more real. “Please,” I said, “please, if anyone knows anything at all that might help us find her, please call the FBI.”
“We have that number at the bottom of the screen,” Chelsea said. “Lucia, how is your family handling this? You seem so composed, but I can see in your eyes that this is frightening. What are you doing to remain hopeful?”
I paused. Was I allowed to talk about God on national TV?
“I know Bethany’s mother, Sonia Cabot, is influential in Christian circles,” she said. “I would assume that—”
“We’re praying,” I said. “That’s the only way we’re getting through this.”
Chelsea glanced down as if she were looking at notes. “Sonia Cabot has always claimed that God blesses those who are faithful to Him. Is she still able to maintain that in the face of yet another personal crisis?”
Beyond the camera, Deidre made slashing motions at her throat with her hand. Inside I moved toward that myself. I might have given a mechanical nod and ended the interview, if I hadn’t noticed someone else behind her. Several someones.
Egan. Georgia. Roxanne.
Headphone Man snapped his fingers silently for me to focus back on the screen, but I couldn’t take my eyes from them. The studio morphed from Roxanne’s Power Praying set to a faraway hospital lounge, where a row of those same people, and others like them, looked at me with dismissal in their eyes and disgust in their curled lips. Just as they were doing now, as though a woman bloated with sin could not possibly speak for God.
Except that I was no longer that woman. And Bethany was never going to be.
“Thank you so much for being here this morning, Lucia,” Chelsea Bowles said.
“I’d like to answer your question,” I said. “About our faith in this crisis.”
Her surprise was poised. “All right,” she said.
In spite of Headphone Man’s frantic motions, I looked straight at the trio, who looked as if they had just been jolted from a collective nap.
“I can’t speak for my sister,” I said. “But I can say for myself, and for Bethany, that we have never believed in the twisted version of God that Abundant Living Ministry propounded, and still claims, as far as I know.”
Egan pulled his hands from his pockets in slow motion. I met his eyes.
“The idea that God only shows grace to those who toe the line is toxic Christianity,” I said. “And believing that every tragedy that befalls us is either God’s wrath or an opportunity for a miracle is dangerous.”
I watched Roxanne march toward Headphone Man, arms swinging. I was about to be cut off. Wesley’s words swam in my head, and Sullivan’s, and Grandma Brocacini’s. Roxanne had Headphones by the arm before I landed on my own. Mine and God’s.
“I’m still holding it together because God hears me. I don’t know if Bethany will come back to us. She’s obviously being held by someone who doesn’t know a thing about that. I just keep crying out Dear God, knowing He’s with her no matter what happens.” I bored my eyes into Roxanne, who grabbed for Headphone Man’s shoulder. “Nobody can know anything more than that. Nobody.”
Chelsea Bowles broke in before the last syllable was out. “We can certainly appreciate your passion, Lucia, and we will all keep hoping that Bethany will be returned to you.”
The screen went blank, with Roxanne still tugging on Headphone Man’s arm.
“Excellent job,” Deidre said. She was on me immediately. “Let’s get you home.”
“How dare you?” Roxanne pushed Deidre aside and stood inches from me, nostrils flaring.
Georgia was at her heels, wielding a BlackBerry like a weapon.
“How dare you disparage Abundant Living on national television?” Roxanne said. “You have no understanding of what we do here—I have known that from the first time I met you.”
“Was that the first time when you said it was me and you and Marnie, saving the day?” I looked at Georgia. “Oh, this isn’t Marnie. Sorry—you all look alike to me.”
“Roxanne, leave it alone,” Egan said. “You’re not going to get anywhere with her.”
“Her?” I said. “No, my name is Lucia. Not Lucy. Not Sonia Cabot’s sister. Not the convenient nurse who will say what you want me to say. I am Lucia Brocacini Coffey—and I have a very clear understanding of what you’re about.”
Deidre let go of my arm and folded hers across her chest.
Roxanne breathed like a locomotive. “No,” she said, “you do not.”
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “Because unlike the rest of you, who bailed out on Sonia one by one when your little formula didn’t seem to be working, I stayed to watch it fail completely.”
“If there was failure, that was Sonia’s doing,” Roxanne said.
“No, ma’am,” I said. “It was yours—and yours—and yours.” I jabbed a finger at each of them in turn. Georgia gasped. Egan turned his usual cowardly shade of pale. Only Roxanne looked ready to attack—but I didn’t let her.
“God didn’t crash that plane—some demented person did. But everything you stand for kept Sonia from taking the medical treatment she needed, or the psychological help, or the legal aid. Now she’s more disabled than she would have been. She’s mentally shattered and financially ruined—and you know what the worst of it is?”
I didn’t wait for an answer. “Now she can’t even stand to hear the name of God, because you gave her a God who is cruel and cold and takes people’s children away from them.”
I didn’t realize until then, when Deidre put her hand on my shoulder and Roxanne’s face distorted before me, that I was crying. Sobbing. Weeping out the truth.
“So don’t talk to me about what I do and do not understand,” I said. “And you know what? I’ll be praying Dear God, Dear God for all of you—because that’s all I can think to say on your behalf.”
Egan folded his fingers around Roxanne’s wrist. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“He’s right, Roxy.” Georgia took her other arm, and Roxanne let them pull her from the set, though she shot me through with her eyes until she was out of sight.
“Are you all right?” Deidre said near my ear.
“I think so,” I said.
“Then let’s go home.”
“If you’ll wait a minute you can have a DVD of this,” Headphone Man said. “I’ve got the whole thing for you.” He unclipped my microphone. “Including that last segment with the ALM crew. We won’t be airing it, but you might like to use it sometime.”
“For what?” I said.
He shrugged. “I don’t know, as a PR clip for your next gig. You really know how to get to the bottom line.”
I felt my knees buckle. “You’re right, Deidre,” I said. “We need to go home. I think I need some tea.”
“I knew I’d make a convert out of you.” She squeezed my arm. “I think you just made one out of me.”
GH “That Francesca woman told me Dr. Sullivan Crisp was making sweet tea in here,” Wesley said from the kitchen doorway. “’Course, she looks like she’s been up all night, so she’s probably hallucinating.”
Sully turned from the stove. “I make killer sweet tea.”
Wesley’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “I hope whoever’s clock you cleaned knows what time it is now.”
“Wesley,” he said, “so much has happened since then, I’d forgotten all about it.”
She set a bag on the counter. “Miss Lucia is gon’ need some fresh vegetables—and chocolate. She’s got to have chocolate.”
Sully gave the sugar water a meditative stir. “You’re a sweetheart.”
She put her hand to the back of her neck, and all humor drained from her face. “This goes beyond chocolate, doesn’t it?” She blinked hard. “How is Lucia doing? How are they both doing?”
“As long as they keep talking they do remarkably well.” Sully shrugged. “But what does well mean in a situation like this?”
“It means you don’t rip somebody’s lips right off or throw yourself in that river out there.” She moved toward the coffeepot. “Where are they now?”
“They’re up in Bethany’s room with their dad and one of the FBI agents, going through Bethany’s things to see if they can find any kind of clue.”
Wesley stopped in midpour. “You need to back that truck up. Did you say their dad ?”
“He showed up last night.”
“And is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Good, so far as I can tell,” Sully said. “I’ve only had a brief conversation with Lucia.”
Which had amounted to her asking him to please stay close to her family. That in itself was healthy, but far more indicative of her progress was her appearance on CNN. At the end of the interview, Sully had let go of the grief that had been locked up in his own soul since the bridge the night before.
Wesley finished filling her cup. “Do you know if she’s heard from her husband?”
“Indirectly. He’s supposedly on his way here.”
“And we don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing either.” Wesley put up her hand. “I know you can’t talk about that. So—they’re up there looking for clues?”
Sully shook his head at the coffeepot she offered him. “I think that’s more to provide them with a distraction than out of any real hope they’ll come up with something. Not unless they can find a motive.”
Wesley sat at the counter with her mug. “Lucia and I have been over that so many times. Doesn’t seem like Sonia’s done anything bad enough that somebody would want to get this kind of revenge for it. Not that there’s anything bad enough in this world that justifies taking somebody’s baby.”
“They just have to think it’s bad enough.” Sully kept his eyes on the tea syrup. “It’s amazing what can make sense to a person when she’s in pain.”
“Do I smell sweet tea?”
Marnie’s voice beamed into the kitchen. It was more nasal than Sully remembered, obviously due to recent crying, judging from the pink puffiness around her eyes. She lightened the room nevertheless, and Sully grinned at her.
“You start brewing a masterpiece and suddenly everybody’s your best friend,” he said.
“I’m so glad you’re smiling. This is the worst day ever.” Marnie dumped a slouchy purse, a wad of keys, and an oversized pair of sunglasses on the counter and put out her hand to Wesley. “I know we met before, but I was so stressed-out back then, I don’t remember your name. Not that I’m any less stressed-out now. I can’t even remember my name.”
“You’re Marnie,” Wesley said, “and I’m Wesley. You better sit down, girl. You look like you’re about to fall out.”
Marnie lifted herself easily onto a stool and pushed back two hunks of brunette with her hands. “I just had to look at a criminal through a window that they promised me he couldn’t see me through, but it’s hard to believe that when he’s looking right at it and you know he’s tried to kill somebody before.”
Wesley didn’t ask her what she was talking about, for which Sully was grateful. That explanation could take more time than anybody had.
“Was it the guy you saw at the airport?” Sully said.
Marnie shuddered. “Yes. It was so horrible looking at him and trying to understand how anybody that knew Sonia would ever have anything to do with someone like him. I mean, when I worked for her, I got so disillusioned with her that I quit, but even then I, like, stayed four more days. I should have stuck with her instead of going to work for Roxanne.”
Sully left his mixture on the stove and leaned on the counter across from her. “You went to work for Roxanne? At ALM?”
Marnie ducked her head. “She called me after I got to my parents’ and asked me to come. I worked there for all of a week, but she was . . . Well, let me just put it this way.” She lowered her voice. “Sonia was hard to work for after she got hurt, but Roxanne made her look like my fairy godmother. By the way, Dr. Crisp”—she widened her eyes at Sully—“I’ve been listening to your podcasts and, yeah, they make more sense than anything Roxanne has to say.”
“I never trusted that woman when I saw her on the TV,” Wesley said.
Sully smothered another tired grin.
“I shouldn’t have either, when she was just, like, right there to step into Sonia’s place after they were best friends.” Marnie took a much-needed breath.
If she hadn’t, Sully would have taken one for her.
“But it didn’t take me that long”—she snapped her fingers—“to see that she doesn’t have Sonia’s integrity, or her compassion— hel-lo-o. The second day I was there, Roxanne fired this girl because she found out she used drugs, like, four years ago. She didn’t care that the girl—who is so sold-out for Jesus, by the way—hasn’t touched anything all that time. She just said she couldn’t let her be associated with ALM.” Marnie pressed a hand to her chest. “Then there’s Sonia, who hired Chip because he was a recovering addict so she could help him. And that wasn’t just out of guilt, either.”
“Guilt?” Wesley said. “Why would Sonia feel guilty because her brother-in-law was a former junkie?”
“Because Sonia was the one who turned him in.”
Sully’s eyes clinked with Wesley’s. Hers widened before she turned back to Marnie.
“Sonia turned him in to whom?”
“The medical board, I think. She did it anonymously—I was the only one who knew about it—and she only did it because she didn’t want him hurting anybody else. That’s just Sonia.”
Sully switched the stove off. He wished he could turn off his rising anxiety as easily.
“Did Chip know she blew the whistle on him?” he said.
Marnie twisted a strand of hair around her finger. “I accidentally told him one night when we were talking. I thought Sonia had told him herself by then, so I was just talking about it, and then he acted all surprised and I felt bad. But he said it was okay—she’d done the right thing, and now he was on his way to healing.” Marnie’s eyes filled. “That’s what she did for people, and even though sometimes she was hard on us and it just seemed like anything you did wrong or that went wrong was because you weren’t right with God—and I’m not so sure about that anymore—but besides all that, she helped so many people who were so screwed up—”
Sully stopped listening. This could not have been there all along, right under the nostrils of everyone from the FBI to Sonia herself.
“Marnie,” he said.
She put her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m talking about all this stuff, and poor little Bethany—”
“Did you ever tell Sonia that Chip knew she was the informer?”
“Oh, gosh no! He and I made a pact not to, because he said it was all behind him and he didn’t want her to ever feel bad. We bonded over that. In fact, right after that was when he started talking about how I was too talented to just be working for Sonia, and I should come to Philadelphia with him when he went home to Lucia, and he’d help me find a better job up there.” She smeared aside the tears that pooled under her eyes. “What freaks me out is that I could have been burned or even killed on that plane too. I wouldn’t have even been as hurt as I was if I’d gotten off with him. I still don’t know what God was doing.”
Sully didn’t know what God was doing either. But with a sick heart, he knew what Chip Coffey was doing.
Marnie took the Kleenex Wesley pressed into her hand and blew her nose.
Wesley made what Sully knew was a pretense of joining him at the stove to check on the progress of the sweet tea. “I wish I didn’t know that, Dr. Crisp,” she said.
“Me too,” he said.
“What are you gon’ do about it?”
“The only thing I can do.”
“Oh, Lord, Lord, Lord,” she said.
He couldn’t have said it better himself.
“Does this have any significance?”
I looked up from the Cinderella box I held on my lap on the floor and let out a cry.
“What, Lucia?” Sonia said.
I snatched Bethany’s rag from the young FBI agent and pushed it into my face. “That’s hers.” I ached anew at the thought of Bethany trying to sleep without it. Of finding out that the “friend” she trusted enough to climb into a car with was not going to bring her home to get it.
“She loves this thing,” I said. “She wrapped it around her neck when she slept, and I was always afraid she’d be strangled.”
I felt a hand on my back as I sobbed into it.
“Do you know what that is?” Sonia said.
“It’s one of her BFFs,” I said.
“It’s the baby blanket you brought to her when you came to take care of her for me. What’s left of it. Every nanny tried to get rid of it, and she would just have a fit.”
I felt Sonia lay her face against my spine.
“It was the one thing I stood behind her on. I have been the worst mother.”
I pulled a program, still faintly sticky with some child-treat, from the box in my lap and twisted toward Sonia. “Do you know what this is?”
“That’s from the circus,” she said. “I took her in the spring when it came here.” She ran a finger across a shriveled balloon and a paper rosebud whose pink had run onto the bottom of the box and left a stain.
“I took her to a little tea room for her birthday and we had a tea party, just Bethany and I, and Chip. She wanted Uncle Chip to come.” Sonia worked to swallow. “He brought her home, and I went to the airport to fly off someplace. I was always flying off, Lucia.”
I watched the spasm of grief go through her as she stared down at the few and tiny pieces of herself that her daughter had kept like precious stones. It was a grief I couldn’t share with her.
“Could you please leave us alone for a minute?” she said to the agent.
He looked more than happy to get away from the estrogen.
When he was gone, Sonia seemed afraid to look at me. “Lucia, I’m sorry,” she said.
“Whatever it is,” I said, “we don’t need to look at it right now.” “No—we do. I watched you on CNN this morning.”
“Oh.”
“I was so wrong about them—about me. Mostly about you.”
I tried to pretend she was making sense, but I was worn too thin to pull it off. She sighed fretfully.
“You have always been smarter than me, sorella,” she said. “And I have resented that all my life. But right now, I want you to be right. I think you are.” Her voice teetered on a narrow ledge. “I have to learn to pray all over again. I have to learn to be a mother—if I even get the chance. I have to learn to let go of my feelings, like you did right on TV.”
I pressed my fingers to my throbbing temples.
“You’ve already given up so much for me—don’t think I don’t know that,” she said. “And I can’t ask you to give up any more, but sorella . . .” She breathed so hard she could hardly get the words out. “The only person who can teach me to do that is you.”
“Sonia. Lucia.”
The tone of Deidre Schmacker’s voice brought my head up, and Sonia’s with it. She stood in the bedroom doorway, arms folded, rubbing one now-rumpled sleeve with the other hand. Her face was grave.
Sonia pulled the box to her chest. “Please don’t tell us—”
“We haven’t found her,” Agent Schmacker said. “But I have something to tell you.”
“It’s not good, is it?”
“Not for Lucia,” she said.
She put out her hand to help me up from the floor, but I got to my feet myself. I felt a sickening dread.
Deidre unfolded her arms, slowly, as if she would rather cut them off than say what she had to say. “Agent Ingram just called me,” she said. “Derrick Garrison gave us the name of the person he was working for.” She looked straight into me. “It’s a man he knows as Kent Mussen.”
The floor gave way beneath me.
“You know the name, yes?” she said.
I had to nod.
“You do?” Sonia said. “Lucia, who is that?”
Deidre shook her head at Sonia and turned back to me. “In addition to being the owner of a money-laundering operation disguised as a medical equipment company, Kent Mussen is an ex-con whose real name is immaterial now. The point is, Ingram has been interrogating Mussen for the last four hours, and he has given up the man who hired him to sabotage the plane.”
I grabbed for the bedpost to stop the slide. Please. Please, God, no.
“It’s Halsey, Lucia,” Deidre said. “It’s Chip.”
The air left the room. In its place a suffocating fear closed over me.
“That makes no sense.” Sonia was on her feet, hands groping for mine on the bedpost. “Why would Chip do that?”
Deidre Schmacker gave her a long, sad look. “Because you turned him in for dealing illegal prescription drugs, Sonia.”
She could not have cut me more deeply if she had slit my throat. I sank to the bed and doubled over onto myself. Schmacker’s words stabbed me, over and over, in places I’d covered with my blindness.
Chip vowing to take down the person who wrecked his life.
Chip pleading with Marnie to change her mind—to get off the plane.
Chip handing the pilot a cup of coffee.
Chip staying far away from the hospital.
They pierced me, those words, in my heart, in my gut, in my soul. Only one word pierced its way through my mind.
“Bethany,” I said. “Then Chip has Bethany.”
“That is possible,” Deidre said. “Do you have any idea at all where he might be?”
“He told Dad he was in Oregon—but he told me he was going to Memphis.”
My mind reeled. When I stood up to right myself, Deidre put her hands on my shoulders.
“I know this is too much to take in,” she said, “but you have to try to think.”
“I’m thinking! I have to call him.”
“His mobile phone has been disconnected. The number he called your father from was a disposable cell. Is there any other way you know of to reach him?”
I pulled away from her and searched for my sister. She stood across the room from me, Bethany’s rag clutched to her neck. Horror and hope cried out from her eyes.
For the first time in our lives, I could feel my sister’s pain—for it was mine too.
I pulled the number from my pocket and handed it to Deidre Schmacker.