I hated every word that came out of my mouth,” Lucia said.
Sully only nodded. He couldn’t trust himself to speak yet. Anger fired at will in his gut.
“It was all lies.”
Sully had heard. Lucia’s only argument to Agent Ingram’s hardcore control of the phone call was that everyone be there with her when she made it. Under his steely, disapproving glare, Sonia, Tony Brocacini, Wesley, and Sully had surrounded her in the dining room as she dialed the number.
Sully got that. Only human contact could make a cold, bloodless task bearable. Lucia had carried it out with a poise Sully knew he himself wasn’t capable of.
Chip hadn’t answered, which was divine intervention in Sully’s view, and Lucia had left the message Deidre Schmacker helped her craft. It was laden, as she said, with lies.
“Dad gave me your new number,” she’d said. “He said to call you when I was ready for our new life—and I am.”
Sully had watched her close her eyes and swallow.
“I need you. Bethany is gone—I’m sure you’ve heard that. I can’t get through this without you. Sonia has her own people. You and I need to do this together.”
When she hung up, Lucia had shoved the phone down the length of the table and careened out of the dining room. They’d all tried awkwardly not to listen as she retched in the nearby powder room.
She looked down now at the offensive cell phone in her lap. Agent Ingram had instructed her to keep it on her person at all times. He himself was a scant ten yards from their Adirondack chairs, should Chip return her call while she and Sully were trying to speak of the unspeakable.
“They want me to wear a wire if he agrees to meet me.” Lucia clamped her folded arms to her ribs. “I feel like I’m on some bad TV show.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I didn’t marry a monster. How did this happen?”
“Drugs can turn anybody into a monster. If that doesn’t do it, prison will.”
“It still doesn’t feel real.”
“That might be the only way to get through this part,” Sully said. “It’s all right to go through the motions until it’s done.”
Lucia looked him full in the face, eyes still their unyielding blue even through the swollen remnants of her tears. “And then what? What happens after I turn my husband over to the FBI—or after I find out he’s done something horrible to Bethany—or after my sister shuts me out of her life forever? What do I do with all this pain after that?”
Sully rubbed the Adirondack arm. A year ago—even a day ago—he would have told her the only way out was through. That God would help her navigate this dark, dripping tunnel, and she could emerge scarred but healed. He still believed that, but as he stood here outside the tunnel at its other end, alone, he knew that wasn’t all of it. Maybe it wasn’t enough to build the rest of a life on.
“You don’t know, do you?” Lucia said.
Sully looked up at her, ready for the disappointment in her eyes. There was instead a subtle melting of relief. “I don’t know all of what I need to tell you, no,” he said.
She began to weep, softly, with no fight in her face. “Do you know how glad I am to hear you say that?”
“You’re glad?”
“If you gave me an answer you said was absolutely true, I’d have to try to believe it. I don’t know if I can work that hard at this point.”
“I hear you,” Sully said. He leaned his arms on his knees. “Things could get a lot worse if you have to face Chip. We know that. But they’re pretty bad right now. What’s holding you up?”
She didn’t hesitate. “You. Wesley. My dad, ironically enough. Francesca and her fruit platters—how weird is that? She said, ‘Bless your heart’ to me this morning, and I think I finally knew what it meant.”
Sully gave her half a grin. “Dang. You want to tell me?”
“I think it means ‘Your pain is so bad I don’t know what to say to make it better.’ ”
“Does that help?”
This time she did pause. Sully waited—and hoped she had an answer for both of them.
“It makes me cry,” she said. “It makes me touch people and sit with them and talk about how much this all hurts.” She gazed at Sully in tearful surprise. “I haven’t gone numb one time.”
“Do you want to?”
Lucia slowly shook her head. “I used to think it kept things from hurting, but it was its own kind of pain.”
“A pain you can’t heal,” Sully said. “But I don’t think you could have taken the risk of feeling it before. You didn’t have then what you have now.”
“What’s that?”
“You said it yourself. Wesley, your dad, the whole crowd.”
A pang went through him, and left him with an answer that wasn’t there before.
“You’re finding something that a lot of us have forgotten we need,” he said. “You’re building community. You’re not alone anymore, so now you can suffer without being afraid that it’s going to take you down.”
Lucia picked up the cell phone and squeezed it before her face. “Chip’s trying to take that away,” she said. “Dear God, please don’t let him take that away.”
“There’s your final piece,” Sully said. He had barely enough control left to get the last words out. “Keep saying, ‘Dear God, dear God.’ There may still be suffering—but keep touching those people, Lucia, and He won’t let you suffer alone anymore.”
Lucia nodded and turned her face toward the river.
Sully watched her cry silently to the water and the heron and the sunlight that embraced them both.
The same goes for you, Sullivan Crisp, it said to him. Go back to touching God’s people, so they won’t have to suffer alone.
And neither will you.
“He knows it’s a trap,” I said. “That’s why he hasn’t called me back.”
In spite of the momentary, relative calm I’d felt after my talk with Sullivan, I beat back panic at the kitchen counter with a chef’s knife and an onion.
“Girl, you are going to cut your finger off, and then you’re gon’ be no good to anybody.” Wesley shook her head. “It’s only been a few hours. Don’t you be losing hope.”
I kept chopping. I had no idea what these onions were going into, but I kept thrusting the knife into them, dicing them finer and finer.
“This isn’t unusual,” Deidre Schmacker said. She refilled Sonia’s teacup.
Sonia looked up absently from the foot massage Francesca was giving her, and nodded.
“He thinks his plan is coming together,” Deidre said, “and he’s making sure every i is dotted, every t is crossed.”
“Or he didn’t believe me,” I said. “How could I be convincing? I was lying through my teeth.”
I picked up the second onion and sliced at it savagely.
My father reached across the counter and put his hand on my wrist. “I can help you with that,” he said.
“I’ve got it,” I said.
“No—I’m talking about with Chip.”
Deidre Schmacker stopped stirring her tea. “What do you mean, Mr. Brocacini?”
Dad spaded his hands into his pockets. “Chip might not be using drugs, but once an addict, always an addict.”
I stopped chopping.
“Go on,” Deidre said.
“An addict has to have a fix, and if it’s not drugs or booze, it’s something else. He’s got to have it no matter what it does to his body or his family or his job, because it puts him back on top.” Dad ran his hand down the back of his head. “You got to figure out what fix he needs right now and give that to him.”
“I thought she did,” Sonia said. “I thought Lucia was his fix.”
I listened for bitterness in her voice, but it wasn’t there.
“I think I see where he’s going.” Deidre Schmacker folded her hands on the counter and leaned toward me. “What does he want that you can’t give him, Lucia?”
I shook my head. I knew what he couldn’t give me. But he’d said I was all he wanted.
“He wants what I took away from him.”
We all turned to Sonia. She pulled her feet away from Francesca.
“He wants to be a doctor again,” she said. “That’s how this whole thing started. He thinks if I hadn’t turned him in he’d still be practicing medicine.”
I reached for the knife again. “I don’t see how that helps. I can’t promise to get his license back for him.”
“So you call him up and tell him you got something wrong with you,” Dad said. “Tell him he’s the only one who can take care of you.”
“I don’t think so, Dad.”
“You don’t know what it is to lose your identity and your selfrespect, Lucia. I do.” Dad rubbed viciously at his head. “A man like us will do anything to get that back—to feel like somebody needs him again. What did it take for me to risk having my butt kicked back out on the street when I came here?” His voice was raw. “Chip told me I could do something to help my daughter. I didn’t care what it was. I wanted it so bad I would have thrown myself in front of a truck to get it.”
“You did, Dad,” Sonia said.
“Chip will too.” My father looked at me with a face carved in regret. “Let’s face it, Lucia. You basically married me.”
Deidre drooped her eyes at me. “Pick a disease, Lucia.”
“I’m gon’ put in my vote for high blood pressure,” Wesley said. “I don’t even think that would be a lie right now.”
She was right. My head throbbed, and my blood pulled through my veins like barbed wire. I was probably pushing 180 about then.
“Can you help us with that?” Deidre said to Wesley.
Wesley made the list of symptoms I couldn’t think clearly enough to come up with, and once again my community gathered around me while I poured a fabricated plea into the phone. Once again we waited, while I whispered, “Dear God, please.”
Only this time, the phone rang. Within thirty minutes Chip’s number was on my screen. At the sound of my hello, he was saying, “Babe. Are you all right?” At the sound of his I was biting back a scream.
Deidre Schmacker sat next to me, head bent to the phone so that her hair mingled with mine. She motioned me forward with her hand.
“No,” I said. “I feel horrible. It’s probably the stress.”
“I don’t want you stroking out.”
The concern in his voice nearly choked me. Deidre squeezed my arm.
“I need to get away from here,” I said. “My head feels like it’s splitting open. I can’t take this anymore.”
Deidre pointed to the phone, and I gritted my teeth.
“I need you,” I said. “Please get me out of here.”
“I’ve got that worked out.”
I closed my eyes—squeezed the phone so I wouldn’t scream, What about Bethany? What have you done with her?
“Tell you what,” Chip said. His sandpaper voice had a confidence that grated across my fear. “The news media and the cops are probably all over the front lawn, am I right?”
“Right,” I said.
“So it’s going to be easier for you to get out than for me to get in. Are you well enough to take a cab and meet me?”
My mouth went dry. “Yes. Meet you where?”
“Drakes Creek Marina, here in Hendersonville. Dock C. Slip 14. Are you writing this down?”
Deidre was.
“You’re on a boat?” I said.
“It’s all part of the plan, babe. It’s going to be the new life I promised you.”
He paused, and for a moment I thought he’d hung up.
“Chip?” I said.
“Look, Lucia . . .”
His voice dropped, and so did my heart. Was he changing his mind?
“Just come and let me take care of you. Don’t tell Sonia or anybody else where you’re going.”
Deidre mouthed a why.
“Why?” I said. Because you want to kidnap me too? Try to kill me too? Fear rose like nausea.
“Because if we’re going to start over, we have to do it without her. She’ll wreck this life just like she did the last one.”
I motioned frantically at Deidre. What should I say?
Chip saved me the trouble. “I know you don’t get that,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything when we’re away from here. And Lucia, just so you don’t get caught up in guilt—Bethany is going to be all right.”
My heart seized. “What do you mean? How do you know that? Do you—”
Deidre waved her hands in front of my face. I sucked in my breath and my panic.
“I just know,” Chip said. “Trust me.”
Deidre scribbled a note for me. I fought back the dread and read it out loud.
“What should I bring?”
“Just yourself, babe,” Chip said. “All I want is you.”
I hung up and handed the phone to Deidre.
“And all we want is you, Dr. Coffey,” she said. “And our sweet Bethany.”
“Do you think he has her, Lucia?” Sonia said. “Could you tell?”
“He says she’s going to be all right. What does that mean?”
Deidre put her arm around my shoulder. “It means he’s still playing the game. And right now you’re about to get the ball back into our court. You ready?”
“Dear God,” I whispered. “Dear God.”