Read Online Healing Stones by Stephen Arterburn, Nancy Rue - Free Book Online Page B

It stabbed at me—that there was only one person who could ever help me sort, who could distill any craziness into its inevitable saneness. That was Rich.
    It had been that way from the beginning, in New York, when I was an idealistic theology student at NYU and he was a firefighter with his boots planted firmly on the asphalt.
    â€œWhat’s with this?” he’d say to me when I hung up after an angst-ridden phone call with my mother. “Your mother is your mother. All you owe her is your love and your respect. You don’t owe her your way of life.”
    Why, I asked him, hadn’t I come to that conclusion myself?
    â€œBecause you need me, Babe,” he’d said.
    Over and over again. Because it was true.
    The road blurred like foggy glass in front of me as I drove home, a forlorn collection of vegetables in a bag beside me. The only thing that made sense was to go to Rich and lay it out: the scene with the police, the horror at myself that I’d let this happen. No matter what it cost, I needed Rich.
    I always had.
    I blinked back the fog and sat up in the seat. All right. I always did better with a Plan of Action, a POA, as Rich called it. Go back to the house, fix his lunch, make him listen as I told him about this latest knot. At the least he wouldn’t want the trauma of my arrest for the kids. He’d know what to do.
    But I felt the color drain from my face as I approached the house and let the engine slow to a whine.
    A police cruiser was parked in front of our house.
    There was a POA for this, the default every firefighter’s wife fell into when a police official came within a hundred yards of her home. I peeled myself from the seat and somehow made my way through the garage. Rich had been burned. Christopher had wrapped his pickup around a tree. Jayne had tumbled from the stage. Once tragedy has entered a life, there is no end to the things that suddenly become possible.
    I was nearly choking when I got to the great room and found Rich there. With Detective Updike and his sidekick.
    The officer looked so incredibly smug, I wanted to hiss. I managed to dig up my professor voice and the determination not to humiliate my husband any further.
    â€œDetective Updike,” I said. I nodded at Boy Cop, who still had that ridiculous hand near his service revolver as if I were going to bolt for the kitchen knives.
    They both nodded back. Rich wouldn’t look at me.
    â€œWe were asking your husband some questions about Zachary Archer,” Updike said. “But he ran out of answers.”
    â€œThat’s because this doesn’t have anything to do with him,” I said.
    I crossed to stand beside Rich and felt his urge to step away. His face barely masked the confusion I knew was there.
    â€œWhat do you want to know?” I said.
    â€œAfter we talked to you at the yacht club yesterday—”
    Rich stiffened.
    â€œâ€”we looked around—”
    Updike nodded to the officer, who produced a bag. I watched as the cop reached in and pulled out what appeared to be two wet rags. A guttural sound gurgled in my throat.
    â€œYou recognize these, then?” the young officer said.
    Everything in me recoiled as, with an obviously perverse kind of pleasure, he unrolled my bra and camisole.
    â€œWe fished these out of the inlet, under the gate at the yacht club.” His eyes glittered. “I take it they belong to you.”
    â€œAll right, you made your point.” Rich jabbed his chin toward the cop. “You got something to say, say it—or get out.”
    Detective Updike put a hand up to the junior officer and looked at Rich. “We’re almost done here. Mrs. Costanas—these are yours?”
    I clamped my knees together. “Yes,” I said.
    â€œAnd how did they end up in the water?”
    â€œI kicked them in.”
    â€œYou want to explain that?”
    I tried to harden. This man was a jerk, and I hated him. “No, I