by Nancy Rue
“I’m walking you through that, remember?”
“Do it.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if I can stand what I’m about to find out about myself.”
“Demi,” Sully said, “I’ll risk it all on this: there is nothing you’re going to discover that is plain evil, because that isn’t you.”
She gripped the sides of the chair and pressed her lips together. “Then let’s do it,” she said.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Back to the post-9/11 days. You said Rich withdrew so far into himself you couldn’t see him anymore. How did you put it—as if he were disappearing before your eyes.”
“Yeah.”
“You tried to pull him out of his depression—you even uprooted your whole life to bring him here, hoping it would help.”
“Yes.”
“But it didn’t. Now—how were you feeling about yourself about then?”
“Like the most ineffectual, incompetent woman I could imagine.”
Ah, she was racking up points.
“You weren’t mad at Rich?”
“No.” She chewed at her lip again. “Okay, yes—but then I’d feel guilty because he lost so much, why shouldn’t he be depressed?”
“And hadn’t you lost a lot too?”
“Well, yeah, but . . .”
“You were losing him.”
She didn’t even have to answer. The emotion drained from her face right into the sad cave of her chest.
“And when in the course of this did Mr. Wonderful come along?”
Her laugh was unexpected. “About nine months ago now—that’s when we got to be close friends.”
“Did you tell Zach what was going on with Rich?”
“Yes, like an idiot.”
Sully buzzed.
She glared. “I won’t call myself names if you won’t make that obnoxious sound.”
“No promises.” He nodded her on.
“We were friends—good friends,” she said. “It got to the point where my friendship with him was better than my relationship with Rich. I started confiding in him—what was I thinking?”
“Buzz!”
“Stop!”
Sully tilted his head at her. “I want you to see how often you beat yourself up. I know you realize what you did was wrong. But your guilt isn’t necessarily going to get you to the answers you’re looking for.”
She sighed—a sigh so deep Sully felt it in his own chest.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s just go on.”
“What did Zach say to you when you confided in him—besides the fact that he thought Rich was a complete moron for not taking everything you had to offer?”
She pulled her knees back up, feet propped on the edge of the chair, and hugged her thighs. “That Rich was cutting off his nose to spite his face. That I was the most nurturing woman he’d ever known. That I knew how to meet a man’s needs.”
“And when did he stop talking about Rich’s needs and start talking about his own?”
Sully watched her struggle with that.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Ding-ding. It’s all so subtle when someone’s giving you a chance to be who you so long to be.”
Demi flattened her forehead against her knees. “But why did I let it go so far?”
“You’re talking about sex,” Sully said.
She didn’t look up. “I’m starting to hate that word.”
“Sex?”
“Ugh. I loathe myself when I think about being with Zach.”
“Let me ask you this,” Sully said, “and you do have the right not to play this round if you don’t want to.”
“What the heck. I’ve humiliated myself this much—I might as well go for it.”
Sully watched the top of her head. “What was sex like with Rich before the affair?”
The head came up. “What does that have to do with it? If you’re going to tell me that the reason I slept with Zach Archer is because I wasn’t—getting enough—”
“I didn’t say that, but if you want to go there . . .”
“Okay—no. It had been two years since Rich and I had—been intimate.”
Sully forced himself not to let his mouth drop open.
“But that still doesn’t excuse what I did. I’m a Christian! I know better!”
“Doesn’t excuse it,” Sully said, “but, Demi, it explains the temptation. It shows you why you were vulnerable.” He held out a palm. “It wasn’t the temptation itself that was wrong. Zach and Rich both had a hand in that.” He held out the other one. “It was giving it permission to become sin that got you in trouble.”
“I should have resisted.” Demi’s face was falling hard and fast.
“No, you should have run—as long as we’re talking shoulds. Any idea why you didn’t hightail it in the other direction?”
“It just felt good—and I’m not talking about sex—totally.” She looked down at her lap. “I liked who I was when I was with him. It was like I was the person I wanted to be.”
“It’s almost impossible to run from that,” Sully said, “especially when you have to make the decision to run alone.” He watched until she lifted her chin. “And Demi, you were completely alone.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“The right thing to do when you first felt attracted to Zach was to go to Rich, confess that to him, and ask him to help you. Give him a chance to step up to the plate.”
Demi lowered her chin until she looked straight into his eyes. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“No. I’m completely serious.”
“I don’t know what Rich would have done if I’d said that to him.” The chin began to quiver.
“Under the circumstances, given his state of mind,” Sully said, “what’s your best guess?”
She nodded, as if they both already knew the answer. “I don’t think he even would have heard me.”
“Ding-ding-ding,” Sully said softly. “I’m not giving you an out, Demi—this is the first step in your understanding yourself and forgiving yourself. And that takes us one step closer to that premise we’re looking for.”
There was no fight this time, no argument. “I’m tired,” she said. “I don’t know if I can think anymore.”
“Good call,” Sully said. “But I want you to sit for a few minutes, until you feel less raw.”
“As if I could even move.”
She closed her eyes, and Sully went to the desk and moved the stones back into their bag, leaving only one. It was the last big rock he’d collected after Kevin St. Clair left him on the beach to greet his photographer. This one Sully held until she looked up.
“You want an assignment?”
“I haven’t totally done the first one. I don’t talk to the picture.” She sighed. “Will it move me out of where I am right now?”
“We won’t know until you try.”
She let out a long, resounding buzz. Sully couldn’t hold back a laugh.
“Wrong answer, Sullivan,” she said. “You were supposed to say, ‘Absolutely. This will help you stop thinking of yourself as an incurable loser.”
“It absolutely might.”
“That’s the best you can do?”
“That’s it.”
She sat up and eyed the rock. Sully held it up in both long-fingered hands.
“I want you to take this stone with you,” he said, “and find a use for it besides throwing it at yourself. Use it for a doorstop or polish your feet with it.”
“Polish my feet?”
“Don’t women do that—use stones to get the calluses off their feet?”
She put up her hand. Her eyes were returning to their wry state. “Stick to psychology, okay? Don’t start giving out beauty tips.”
“Noted,” Sully said. “Whatever use you pick, do it when you get the urge to throw it at yourself. When you start calling yourself names or asking questions you can’t answer
except with more names—turn to this rock, even in your mind, and remember that you’ve made a mistake, but that mistake can lead to something besides stoning yourself. You can use it to figure yourself out.”
“Tell me again how this is going to get me back to my family.”
“You can only do what Jesus tells you to do: go and sin no more. Whether the rest of them put down their stones is up to them.”
She put her forehead to her knees and slowly began to rock.
“I hate this, Sullivan,” she said.
“Yeah, Demi,” he said. “I hate it for ya.”
As he watched her sway back and forth, he fought the urge that never went away, despite the years of training and the words of wisdom he himself had written. Don’t become overly involved with your client. Let her feel what she needs to feel—don’t try to take it away. The only way out is through.
But holy crow, it was hard not to lift the chin of this hurting woman and try to make it right.
So hard, in fact, that he sent Isabella’s heads out to be cleaned and the valves reseated. He had to let Demi work her way through the mire, but that approach didn’t apply to Ethan Kaye. That situation he could speed along. Time to get hot on this photographer thing.
Kevin St. Clair, Sully now felt, had nothing to do with the procuring of the photographs. He was willing to use them, but he was way too eager for people to know about his mission to actually be able to pull off a clandestine plot. He’d have wanted to tell everybody who would listen exactly what he’d planned.
The answer had to lie with Wyatt Estes, and Sully’s only link to him, tenuous at best, was Tatum Farris. Sully would rather down a bottle of pancake syrup than eat another piece of pink champagne cake, but he used it as an excuse to go back to the bakery. He’d be smoother this time.
He was staring into the case full of puffy castles, trying to work up an appetite for pink frosting, when Tatum appeared behind it, her chin barely rising above the glass top, feathered earrings swinging from her lobes. Sully wondered vaguely if anybody else even worked there.
“I’m surprised you came back,” she said. “Your usual?”
Trying not to gag, Sully pointed to a small piece in the front. She slid out the thickest one in the case. Sully could see the rest of his bottle of Pepto-Bismol in his near future.
“Why wouldn’t I come back?” he said.
“Because I was a complete snot to you last time you were here.”
He pulled out his wallet, but she shook her head at him, face impassive—her default expression.
“This one’s on me.”
Sully shrugged. “I’ll let you do that—this once.”
He sat down and swallowed hard as she came out from behind the counter and put the cake in front of him. Maybe he could cut it up and shove it around on the plate the way he used to do with spinach so his mother would think he’d actually eaten some.
“Coffee with three sugars and two creams, right?” She lifted a brow. “I don’t know why you even bother to put the coffee in there.”
“Definitely coffee. And hold the sugars.” As she headed for the pot, Sully said, “I actually came in here to apologize to you.”
“For what?”
“For prying into your personal life.”
“I don’t actually have a personal life anymore, so you wouldn’t have gotten far anyway.”
Sully nodded and cut off a small, precise piece of cake with his fork, ready for a diabetic coma.
Tatum set his coffee on the table and folded her arms across her apron as she leaned against a case full of Easter cookies. “I’m the one who should be apologizing,” she said, “although that’s not my style.”
“Really,” Sully said.
“But since you’re the first decent guy I’ve met in, like, years, I figure I at least owe you an explanation.”
Sully shoveled a hunk into his mouth, making it impossible to do anything but frown and shake his head.
“I was having one of my I-hate-men days. Nothing personal. I just got out of a relationship that was going absolutely nowhere. Two of them, actually. Anyway, to answer your question about my uncle.”
Pressing a napkin to his lips, Sully let out half the mouthful and squirreled the whole thing away in his lap. “Your uncle—oh, we were talking about Wyatt Estes.”
“Daddy Warbucks.” Tatum picked up his plate and headed for the cake case again. Sully didn’t protest, not with her taking him exactly where he wanted to go.
“Then he is generous with his money.”
Tatum grunted. “Let’s say he gives a ton to Covenant Christian.”
“Ah.”
“He also expects a ton in return, if you get me.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
She gave him a look as she approached with yet another mound of cake. “Yes, you do. As long as they run things the way he wants them to, he keeps opening his checkbook.”
“And how does he want them run?”
She leveled her eyes at him. “For an auto mechanic you sure are interested in the academic world.”
“I like to expand my horizons.”
“Yeah, well, if you’re counting on CCC, your horizons could shrivel up and disappear.”
“No kidding.” Sully fixed his therapist’s poker face into place. “That bad, huh?”
“You don’t even want to know. Uncle Wyatt may have closed his checkbook for good.” A shadow passed through her eyes. “Wouldn’t bother me. I have major issues with that place.”
She planted her hands on the back of the chair opposite Sully’s and pressed in, lips parted as if she were going to spew something across the table. But an engine firing on only three cylinders beat outside the front window, and they both looked. Tatum rocked the chair as she let go and stormed toward the door. Her shoes squealed to a halt halfway there. She thrust her arm toward Sully, finger pointed.
“Don’t go away,” she barked at him. “And don’t let him leave either. Tell him I have something for him.”
She tossed off the last part as she slapped open the swinging door into the kitchen and disappeared.
Sully rose halfway from the chair and watched a twentyish kid haul himself out of a scarred pickup truck. He seemed too tall for himself. In fact, as he lumbered toward the door, hands poked into his pockets, it appeared nothing about him had caught up to him, including his focus, which darted in six directions before he reached for the doorknob. He stepped in and blinked around the bakery.
Sully couldn’t decide whether he was unfamiliar with the place or just had bad contact lenses. At any rate, this could not be the object of Tatum’s rage.
“Tatum here?” he said, though he wasn’t looking at Sully.
“She’s in the back.”
Sully was tempted to add, “Run for your life, kid,” but he simply said, “She said not to leave. She has something for you.”
“You better believe I do.” Tatum made an entrance through the doors carrying a box almost bigger than she was. An assortment of items stuck out of the top, from a chartreuse teddy bear to a stale French baguette. Tatum marched up to the blinking kid and dropped the box without deliberation on his feet.
He yelped, but took a full ten seconds to even begin to pry his toes out.
Tatum remained in front of him, hands on hips, breathing audibly.
“What did you do that for?” he said.
“Don’t even start with me, Van,” Tatum said. “Because you do not even want to hear my list of reasons for wanting to break everything in here over your head. In fact, if you don’t get out, I may.”
Her chest visibly rose and fell, and the menace in her voice bordered on homicidal. Sully wouldn’t have put it past her to go for the baguette. He cleared his throat, but neither of them looked at him.
“I still don’t get why you’re mad at me,” he said. “I’m not the one who—”
“Yes, do announce it to the entire bakery, would you, Van?” Tatum wafted a hand in Sully’s dir
ection, and Van shrank inside his flannel shirt.
Sully was having a hard time believing Tatum had ever been involved with this guy.
Van’s chin quivered.
“Oh, please, don’t make a spectacle of yourself,” Tatum said. “Just go—and don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.”
Sully felt a pang for the kid as he hunched over the box and turned toward the door. Naturally, half the contents spilled out, as inevitable as Tatum’s eye-rolling exit to the kitchen.
“Let me give you a hand,” Sully said.
Van scooped up two books and an over-sized valentine, dropping one of the volumes before he could get it into the box. Sully leaned over to pick up a square that floated his way—a picture of Tatum, obviously in happier times. She teased the camera with her smile, even then lighting up the corner of the bakery.
“You want this?” Sully said.
Van snatched it from him and after three tries managed to cram it into his back pocket. Somehow he got out the door.
Tatum emerged from the kitchen as the three cylinders banged the pickup down Callow Avenue.
“Now you see why I hate men,” Tatum said. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
Sully watched her face smooth back into its mask.
“Thanks for staying.”
“Didn’t look like you needed any protection.” Sully quickly scraped his chair back and stood up. “What do I owe you for the coffee?”
“There wasn’t enough coffee in that cup for me to charge you.” She almost smiled.
As Sully passed the cobwebbed hardware store, he forced his focus away from Tatum’s veritable banquet of issues and back to Wyatt Estes.
Uncle Wyatt could be about to pull his funding. Did he smell another scandal? Was Kaye about to get blindsided again?
Sully wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at the smear of pink on his skin. Ugh. He hadn’t seen the last of champagne cake.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I tried to find a use for that stupid rock. I took it in the car with me to at least remind myself not to put myself down, though that didn’t work well. On Wednesday I brought it into the prep room to observe while I rolled silverware. It seemed crazy at first—what wasn’t?—until I discovered something strangely soothing about contemplating an inanimate object. At least it couldn’t accuse me.
