Healing Sands (8 page)

I charged past giant banjo players welded together from hubcaps and bicycle pedals and less easily identified scraps of metal. Around baseball players fashioned from railroad ties and hunks of stone. Between two stoneware masks that were taller than I was. Every piece fed my fury, until by the time I reached Dan's doorway I could have disassembled his kiln brick by brick with my teeth.

Dan was already in baggy jeans and the same white muslin too-big shirt he'd worn to work in ever since I'd known him—back when I thought what he did was romantic. I had grown to despise it, just as I had every bucket filled with broken pieces of tile and every stack of unpaid bills. He stood back from a tall swirl of metal, hands on his narrow hips, as if he were waiting for it to speak. I spoke first.

“Why did you tell Jake he doesn't have to talk to me about this?” His eyes traveled up the metal structure that nearly reached the ceiling. “Because there's nothing to talk about.”

“There is
everything
to talk about. He's going to go to prison if we don't find out what happened.”

“How do you know that what happened isn't exactly what it looks like happened?”

“What?”
My voice screeched higher than the structure he was still looking at.

“What if he did run over that boy? For some reason we can't even fathom?”

“Are you
serious
?”

“If he did, Ryan,” he said, tears brimming in his voice, “don't you think he needs help, instead of a lawyer or a private investigator or whatever else you have going?”

I was stung by the piece of that which was right, the piece I hadn't thought of. I sucked in air. “Okay, we'll get him help, too, somebody that can get him to talk. Poco just told me about a clinic here in town we can take him to. It's Christian, supposedly the best.”

“I wasn't talking about professional help.” Dan ran his hand along the metal. “I was talking about family. He needs the people who love him to guide him.”

I spewed out all the air I'd just sucked in. “No, Dan—you just don't want to fight it. It's easier to let Uriel Cohen try to get him probation than go after this thing.”

“It isn't that.”

“Then you actually think he's guilty! What could possibly make our sweet son capable of something that heinous?”

“I think I'm looking at it.”

I could only stare at him as he turned back to his metal— thing—and picked up a square of sandpaper.

“You were wrong when you said it was
my
fault Jake got into trouble,” he said. “I think it was you. You and your anger made him ‘capable.'” He pressed the paper to the metal, rubbed with it, let it drop to the floor. The tears had reached his face. “I think that's why you can't allow him to be guilty—because if he is, you'll never recover from your
own
guilt.”

“You are out of your mind!”

“Am I, Ryan? Or would that be you?”

He jerked his chin toward my hand. My fingers were clenched around a shard of metal that teetered atop a pile of pieces waiting to be chosen. My arm was drawn back to hurl it.

“I have supper ready.”

The late afternoon sun formed a halo on Ginger's curls before she stepped in and sparkled her eyes and her teeth and her skin at Dan. She was absolutely carbonated until she took in the scene.

“Baby, are you all right?”

She cast me an accusing glance. I let go of the metal and listened to it smack against the rest of the pile on its way to the floor.

“He doesn't need to be upset,” she said in a voice higher than anything I could aspire to. “He has an important project to complete.”

“I'm sure the world is waiting with bated breath,” I said.

“New Mexico State is.” Ginger wafted an arm toward the towering hunk of metal. “They commissioned this and five other pieces. They're going up all over the campus.” Her eyes narrowed to well-calculated slits. “Or didn't you know?”

“That's just wonderful.” I dug my fingers into my temples. “But I'm a little more concerned with my son right now.”

“It seems to me that you should have thought of that before.”

“Ginger.”

Dan put his hands on her shoulders from behind. She grabbed onto both of them, chest heaving as if she and I had just gone at it with the boxing gloves.

“How about we continue this conversation at another time?” Dan said to me.

“Like in about ten minutes—alone,” I said. “I'll wait at the house.”

I stormed out of the studio and stepped almost straight into the arms of the boy I'd seen playing soccer with Jake. He seemed larger than he had among the lumps and humps of adobe forms. A shock of rich hair fell over his forehead like an ad for Abercrombie and Fitch.

“Is everything all right out here?” he said in a voice that was deep and take-charge. He looked over my shoulder into the doorway to the studio and then back at me, eyes concerned. “Jake thought he heard somebody arguing.”

“You stay out of it.” I snapped myself past him.

Jake was there, arms folded across his chest.

“Listen to me, son.”

“No,” he said. “I'm sick of listening to you. You have nothing to say that I want to hear, so just . . . just . . . shut up.”

“Excuse me?”

“Just leave me alone. That's what you're good at, isn't it? Leaving?”

For once I was too stunned to speak.

“Jake, dude, you might want to lighten up,” said the boy behind me.

“It's okay, buddy.”

The kid fell silent at the sound of Dan's voice. I found mine.

“Dan,” I said through my teeth, “this is out of control.”

“I think you're the one who's out of control,” Ginger said. “You come in here all—”

“Bag it. I'm going.” I turned and stabbed a finger toward Dan. “But we're not done.”

My heart slammed as I made my way through the ranks of the all-metal band, and so did the voice in my head. When did Jake go from monosyllabic grunts to a stream of obnoxia? How did that Ginger person insinuate herself into my boys' lives? And when did I get kicked to the curb as the one to blame for it all? I was almost to my car and halfway to a stroke when an outside voice overtook me.

“You just stay away from him—are we clear?”

I turned around in time to see Ginger snatch a piece of irrigation hose from the base of a soaptree.

“What are you
doing
?” I said.

She brandished the hose at me. “I want you to stay away.”

My anger teetered toward laughter. “I don't know what you're going to do with that—wait, let me get a garbage can lid so I can defend myself.”

She looked at the hose as if she'd just realized it was there. She let her arm drop to her side. “I just can't stand to see them all hurting like that. I get a little crazy.”

“Ya think? Does Dan know his girlfriend is a nutbar?”

“They're so upset anyway, and then you come in here and stir everything up.”

“It needs to be stirred up,” I said. But I put up my hand. “I'm not going to discuss this with you, of all people.”

“All right, then, I'll talk.” She took a step toward me, out of the shade, where despite her lowering her weapon, I could still see a trace of wildness in her eyes. “Don't ever talk to my son again the way you just did back there.”

My urge to guffaw disappeared, and a fire went up my backbone. “Jake is
not
your son.”

“I'm talking about Ian.”

“I don't even know who Ian is.”

“You told him to stay out of it!”

“Oh—that Ian. He doesn't have any part in this.”

She took another step. “No, see, you are so wrong there. Ian is the only one who's going to get Jake through this. He's the only one Jake talks to—because he
cares
about him.”

“What is he, seventeen?”

“Sixteen—and more mature than most grown men I know.”

“I don't care if he's a child prodigy, lady—he's not part of this family.”

“And you are?”

“Oh, please.” I turned and clawed for the car door handle.

“No, see, you're done here,” she said. “You're never going to have a relationship with any of them, so why don't you just let us handle Jake, the way we've
been
doing for the last—”

“Forget about it.” I yanked the door open. “I'll be back.”

“Didn't you just hear a single thing I said?” With a heave she hurled the hose across the sculpture park, barely missing a metal monster strumming his ukulele.

I slammed the door and fishtailed the car out of the driveway.

I was shaking so badly I only drove around the bend in the dirt road, out of sight of the house, before I stopped to put my forehead on the steering wheel.

Five minutes ago I'd been almost amused by the woman waving a piece of garden hose. Now all I could see was myself, with a shard of metal in my own hand. Her mad-woman tirade couldn't out-shout the words Dan had put on me.

You and your anger made him capable of this.

Was he right?

What if he was? What if I had?

The only thing I knew was that I didn't want Jake to look at me—or himself—and see a woman throwing pieces of art in uncontrollable rage.

I dug in my purse for Poco's phone number.

CHAPTER SEVEN

S
ully was passing the break room late Monday morning when an aroma pulled him in.

“When did we start a gourmet restaurant in here?” he said.

Martha looked up from the table where she was parked with a salad and a magazine and pointed wordlessly to the microwave. Kyle pulled out a plate of something bubbly and expensive-smelling and wafted it onto the table across from her.

“Seriously,” Sully said as he strolled to the table. “What is that incredible smell?”

“Veal Florentine,” Kyle said. “Get yourself a plate.”

Sully shook his head. “There's too much green in there for me.” “And nothing in it is fried.” The corners of Kyle's mouth twitched. “Don't you people from Alabama like everything breaded and boiled in grease?”

“You're not that kind of Southerner, are you?” Martha said.

Sully eased into a chair, still studying Kyle's lunch. “I'm the kind of Southerner who likes to know the ingredients in what he's eating.”

“But if it smells this good, who cares?” Kyle took a forkful and smiled, close-mouthed, as he chewed. Martha looked expectantly at Sully.

“How's it going so far, Kyle?” Sully said.

“I'm settled in, ready to work. Now all I need are some clients.” Kyle looked at Martha, who looked at Sully, who had never seen such smooth triangulation.

“I've given Kyle two clients to start with,” Martha said.

“A seventy-two-year-old man grieving for his wife who died two weeks ago. He'll need me for about three sessions before every widow at the senior center starts baking him pies.”

“Or you start baking them,” Sully said, eyeing the dessert Kyle was unwrapping.

“I don't cook,” Kyle said. “I just order out.”

Martha folded her hands neatly on the tabletop. “The other client is an unhappy woman who I think will respond to Kyle.”

“She's a schoolteacher. Of course she's unhappy. Look—” Kyle chipped at a flake of tissue-thin pastry with a tine of his fork. “I know every client deserves full attention no matter how small the problem may seem to us . . .”

“And that small problem may only be the tip of a much larger iceberg that has been forming for years,” Martha said.

“I just want something a little more intense. That's the way I like to work, you know? Get in there and make a difference.”

“You'll get your chance, tiger,” Sully said.

“When you've shown what you can do with the less-intense cases.” Martha glanced quickly at Sully. “I hope I'm not stepping on your toes.”

“Listen, we're a team—and since I'm not going to be here more than a couple of months, you two are the core of it.” Sully looked from one of them to the other. “So I think your first session ought to be with each other. See if you can work this thing out.”

“Is there a ‘thing'?” Kyle said.

“We'll deal with it, Dr. Crisp,” Martha said. “Right now I need to look over some files.”

She tucked her Tupperware into a zippered insulated bag and showed remarkable restraint when she clicked the door closed behind her.

“She doesn't think I have enough experience,” Kyle said.

“Did she say that?”

“No, but—”

“Then that'll be a good place to start with her.” Sully grinned and nodded at Kyle's shirt. “Now, where
I
want to start is with this getup you're wearing. Dude, you don't have to wear a tie and cufflinks around here.”

Kyle laughed. “You think I oughta loosen up? Go for the Top-Siders and the Hawaiian shirt like you?”

Sully shook his head, still grinning. “Nah. Wear a three-piece suit if you want to. Eat sushi. Just work out your deal with Martha.”

“Got it. You sure you don't want some veal?”

Sully stood up. “I was thinking about a bean burrito from Chihuahua's.”

“You're killin' me,” Kyle said.

Sully actually downed
two
burritos, picked up a Grande Frap with whipped cream from Starbucks, and sat in his parked Mini Cooper and called Porphyria. She should be done with her physical by now.

“Here's the scenario, Dr. Ghent,” he said when she answered. “I have an experienced, highly intuitive therapist who plays by the book and a young hotdogger with less experience than enthusiasm, but a whole lot of potential.”

He waited for the mm-hmm so he could fix the twinkle on her face in his mind.

“Could you hold on for one second, Sully—just one second now—”