by Nancy Rue
“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.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
First thing the next morning, I slipped out onto the deck for a look at the river. A pink mist hung just over the water like the opening to a fairy tale. I lingered until the sun burned through the fairy-veil and brought the day’s first breaths of heat, because what I had to face inside the house was more like reality TV.
Once in the kitchen, however, I made a positive discovery: the Cabot household loved its coffee and had every accoutrement imaginable. Some marvelous French blend was already brewed when I got to the kitchen at seven thirty, and I gazed in appreciation at the display of syrups and sugars on the counter and the milks of every fat content in the refrigerator.
I reached for the half-and-half. And then I remembered that I was now an angel.
I rolled my eyes there in the kitchen all alone, but I selected the skim milk and poured it and a single packet of Splenda into my coffee. Then I went in search of Bethany. The nearest TV was probably my best bet.
I sipped from my cup as I passed through the empty breakfast nook and tried to convince myself it tasted good. I could do this. I might even lose a little weight while I stayed here. Go home to Chip all sleek and lovely.
I’d checked my cell phone before I went to sleep the night before; a text message from him said simply: 29 days.
Bethany was curled up in one of the comfy chairs with the tattered piece of cloth around her neck. A bowl of granola sogged on the table beside her, and a video featuring dancing vegetables flickered across the big TV screen.
“Hi,” I said.
She just looked at me.
Okay. Not a morning person. I could relate.
“Whatcha watching?”
“Veggie Tales,” she said into the neck rag. She sat up straighter. “I want to watch the Disney Channel, but I can’t find it.”
“I think we can make that happen,” I said, and silently hoped I’d do better at that than I had with the candy search. Any other kid would have brought that up by now, but I had the strong sense that Bethany was used to disappointment.
I picked up a remote that had more buttons than a professional sound board and punched a few. Roxanne’s red head appeared on the screen.
“Oh, look who it is,” I said.
“I know,” Bethany said. “She’s on every day.”
“She’s going to talk about your mom today. Do you mind if we watch for a minute?”
Bethany shrugged. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to see it either. Maybe it would help me decipher the code everyone around there seemed to talk in.
Roxanne was heavily made up, even for television, and sat in a sleek set with a plain cross hanging behind her and a logo that read Power Praying with Roxanne Clemm. A tape along the bottom of the screen indicated how a person could call in with prayer requests, but today Roxanne was already at the end of what sounded like a tirade against all those who said Sonia Cabot wouldn’t overcome this latest tragedy.
“They’ll see, won’t they?” she said, gazing intently at her television audience. “Sonia Cabot will emerge from this more beautiful than ever. The Lord will remove the scars and restore her to the woman you have come to love, the one whose beauty shows us a glimpse of the face of God.”
I aimed the remote at the TV and jabbed buttons until an animated fish appeared.
“I like Finding Nemo,” Bethany said.
It was definitely better than Power Praying. And I was going to need something stronger than skim milk.
I dumped my mug in the sink and foraged in the refrigerator for that half-and-half. I opted for the whipped cream instead.
When I got to Sonia’s room, Marnie was frantically poking at her BlackBerry while Sonia paced. I busied myself making the bed.
“And I want some kind of worship service this morning,” Sonia said to her. “It’s Sunday, isn’t it? I lose track of time.”
Marnie looked at her warily.
“What?” Sonia said. “Darlin’, just say it.”
“There isn’t anybody here to do a worship service. Everybody left.”
“They’ll be back.” Sonia stopped by the window, hand on the brocade drape. “After that I want to go down to the exercise room.”
Good. And work up a sweat and get dehydrated.
I gave the sheet a yank. “Physical therapy is going to burn plenty of calories.”
“Physical therapy.”
“I called that therapist they recommended at Crozer yesterday. She’s coming Monday.” I chewed momentarily on my lip. “I’m not sure your insurance is going to cover someone coming to the house, since there’s rehab available locally. I don’t know who handles the financials for you—”
“What insurance?”
“Excuse me?”
Sonia reached back to undo her mask. “They dropped me because I left the hospital against Dr. Abernathy’s advice.”
Just when I thought the situation couldn’t get any more complicated.
“This way I can choose whoever I want,” she said cheerfully. “And I want a Christian.”
No doubt the person in question would have to sign an affidavit to that effect.
I punched a pillow into place. “Let’s get your face done so I can see about Bethany.”
“Yvonne can—”
Marnie jerked her face up from her current text message. “Bethany’s going to Sunday school. Francesca’s picking her up.”
“Good,” Sonia said. “That will make her happy.”
It would be the first thing I’d see bring a smile to that child’s face. Besides a Hershey bar. Just how I was going to acquire one was still a question.
A phone rang, and Sonia ignored it.
Marnie looked momentarily puzzled, and then laughed. “Oh my gosh, that’s the landline. Nobody calls on that.”
She reached for the telephone tucked onto a tiny table behind a chair, but Sonia shook her head impatiently.
“Let Lucia get that,” she said. “I want you to start calling people about a service this afternoon.”
So now I was the receptionist too. I made a mental note to add
• disconnect the landline
to my growing list, and snapped a hello into the phone.
“Is this—egad, is this Lucia Marie?”
I closed my eyes and turned toward the window. “Dad?” I whispered.
“It’s you, all right. Your sister never calls me anything but Tony.”
My father coughed juicily and gave me a moment to corral all my responses inside one pen. I hadn’t spoken to him for six months, since my forty-first birthday, when he’d called to tell me that I was officially over-the-hill and that he hoped my downhill slide would be more of a joyride than his had been.
He hadn’t contacted Sonia at the hospital as far as I knew, to Agent Schmacker’s surprise but not to mine. Sonia herself had said she’d not seen him since he relapsed from the rehab she’d paid for. Tony Brocacini might have been a drunk, and maybe he still was, but his strongest suit had always been his pride. I couldn’t imagine him crawling to Sonia’s bedside, begging for forgiveness out of fatherly guilt.
