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    Healing Sands
    Healing Sands
    Healing Sands
    Ebook510 pages8 hours

    Healing Sands

    By Nancy N. Rue and Stephen Arterburn

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    About this ebook

    With her life spinning out of control, Ryan Coe just wants to find a place where she can rest.

    Ryan Coe feels lost. Her marriage is over, her kids are living with their dad, her God-life is silent, and her patience is practically nonexistent. To top it off, her once exciting job as a photojournalist has been reduced to taking pictures of enchilada festivals and B-level actors. But when she arrives at the scene of a crime and sees her son's face through her zoom lens, her world crashes. Her only mission: to find out who really did this and why they framed her.

    But before she can help anyone. Ryan's got to get her anger in check. She turns to Sullivan Crisp's Healing Choices clinic, but even that doesn't go according to plan. Quirky and unusual don't even begin to describe Sully, and Ryan soon realizes he isn't the quick-fix therapist she was hoping for. Between his unorthodox counseling and a group of women who are the first real friends she's had in a long time, Ryan begins to realize it's not control she's looking for, but something much more powerful.

    • Inspirational contemporary read
    • The third book in the Sullivan Crisp series, but can be enjoyed as a standalone
      • Book one: Healing Stones
      • Book two: Healing Waters
      • Book three: Healing Sands
    • Includes discussion questions for reading groups and an excerpt from Healing Waters
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThomas Nelson
    Release dateDec 13, 2009
    ISBN9781418583842
    Author

    Nancy N. Rue

    Nancy Rue has written over 100 books for girls, is the editor of the Faithgirlz Bible, and is a popular speaker and radio guest with her expertise in tween and teen issues. She and husband, Jim, have raised a daughter of their own and now live in Tennessee.

    Read more from Nancy N. Rue

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    • 4/5
      I love the character of Sully. And I like the way this book doesn't hit you over the head with the Bible.

    Book preview

    Healing Sands - Nancy N. Rue

    HEALING SANDS

    Title page with Thomas Nelson logo

    © 2009 by Nancy Rue and Stephen Arterburn

    All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

    Published in Nashville, Tennessee. by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

    Published in association with Alive Communications, 7680 Goddard Street, Suite

    200, Colorado Springs, CO, 80920, www.alivecommunications.com.

    Page design by Mandi Cofer.

    Thomas Nelson books may be purchased in bulk for educational, business,

    fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail

    SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.

    Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Rue, Nancy N.

      Healing sands / Nancy Rue and Stephen Arterburn.

        p. cm. — (A Sullivan Crisp novel ; no. 3)

    ISBN 978-1-59554-428-5 (pbk.)

      I. Arterburn, Stephen, 1953– II. Title.

      PS3568.U3595H4 2009

      813’.54—dc22

    2009036772

    09 10 11 12 13 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

    Information about External Hyperlinks in this ebook

    Please note that footnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication.

    For Dale McElhinney, who has the heart of Sullivan Crisp

    Contents

    CHAPTER ONE

    CHAPTER TWO

    CHAPTER THREE

    CHAPTER FOUR

    CHAPTER FIVE

    CHAPTER SIX

    CHAPTER SEVEN

    CHAPTER EIGHT

    CHAPTER NINE

    CHAPTER TEN

    CHAPTER ELEVEN

    CHAPTER TWELVE

    CHAPTER THIRTEEN

    CHAPTER FOURTEEN

    CHAPTER FIFTEEN

    CHAPTER SIXTEEN

    CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

    CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

    CHAPTER NINETEEN

    CHAPTER TWENTY

    CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

    CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

    CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

    CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

    CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

    CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

    CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

    CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

    CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

    CHAPTER THIRTY

    CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

    CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

    CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

    CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

    CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

    CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

    CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

    CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

    CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

    CHAPTER FORTY

    CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

    Reading Group Guide

    About the Authors

    CHAPTER ONE

    I did not, as my ten-year-old son described it, freak out over everything back then. It took something big. The problem was, something big happened daily. At times hourly.

    That particular hour it was a waste-of-time photo shoot. I told my editor at the Sun-News that before I even pulled away from the movie set at White Sands. I was still ranting about it into my Bluetooth as I pulled out onto Highway 70 and headed across the Chihuahuan Desert toward Las Cruces, straight into the eyeball-searing sun.

    Why anybody wants to make a film in the middle of a gypsum dune field is beyond me, I said. Two hundred and seventy-five miles of nothing but white.

    I know shooting there in the middle of the day is a nightmare, Frances said. I thought they were going to let you take inside shots of rehearsal.

    Evidently, ‘they’ didn’t know what they were talking about. Or they just said that to get us there, with no intention of giving me access to the set.

    I took a long drag out of my water bottle and attempted to stick it back into its holder on the console. I missed and the thing tipped over, still open, onto the floor on the passenger side. Right into my unzipped camera bag.

    So—what happened?

    After they discussed it to death, I said, they finally decided I could interview Darnell Pellington.

    Who?

    Exactly. I kept my eyes on the highway and groped on the floor to retrieve the bottle. He’s one of the co-stars.

    You were supposed to get—

    I know, okay? I wasn’t going to break out the 400 and do the paparazzi thing.

    The typing stopped, and Frances sighed into the phone. So what did you get?

    Ten minutes in Darnell’s trailer while Ken interviewed him. In light so low all the people tromping through needed miners’ helmets to see where they were going.

    So you’re telling me it was a bust.

    I finally got my hand on the water bottle and fished it out of my bag, empty. Look, I’ll send you what I got as soon as I can get Internet access. There’s probably something salvageable.

    Frances gave me the short grunt she delivered when she could take the time to laugh. I’m sure it’s more than just salvageable. Anyway, no big deal. It’s just a secondary story.

    Oh. That made me feel infinitely better. I abandoned my attempt to assess the damage to my camera and focused ahead on San Augustin Pass, rendered invisible by the afternoon sun on my Saab’s dirty windshield.

    At least you got to see White Sands, Frances said. That your first time?

    Yeah, I said. And hopefully my last. Everyone had raved to me about the mile upon mile of pure white sand in the middle of a New Mexico desert, its unique beauty, blah blah blah. Personally, if you’ve seen one sand dune devoid of vegetation, you’ve seen them all. I’d been too busy crawling around with a light meter on the floor of what could have passed as a FEMA trailer; I couldn’t exactly appreciate the splendor. Besides, the silence out there made me nuts.

    Well, sorry about the assignment, Frances said. You’re on till three?

    Yeah. I’m headed back to the paper now.

    I’ll see what else I can come up with.

    That was Frances Taylor’s version of good-bye. I climbed the pass and fumed.

    If she gave me another city official’s daughter’s wedding or the fiftieth fiesta of the year, I was going to have an embolism. I’d lost count of how many times in the last six weeks I had questioned the wisdom of taking this job instead of . . .

    There was no instead of. Photography was all I knew, and I was lucky to get a position when most newspapers were downsizing. It wasn’t the kind of photojournalism I was used to, but it served my only purpose: to be close to my boys.

    The Saab chugged over the pass that cut through the gargoyle peaks of the Organ Mountains. As I began the drop into the Mesilla Valley, I punched in Dan’s number. I was in a borderline foul frame of mind already. What better time to call my ex-husband?

    What’s up? he said, in lieu of hello.

    The hair on the back of my neck, I wanted to say.

    I thought I’d come by and see the boys when I get off work at three.

    His silence was long and, in my view, calculated to set my teeth on edge.

    Alex will be here, he said finally. He’d probably like to see you.

    Which means you don’t think Jake would.

    Did I say that?

    You didn’t have to.

    I could imagine Dan running the back of his hand across his forehead to wipe out me as much as the dust of whatever thing he was creating. I knew he wasn’t smearing off sweat, despite the eighty-five-degree September heat. Dan Coe never got worked up enough to perspire.

    Look, I said, how is Jake going to get past this thing he has about me if we don’t spend any time together?

    I can’t force him.

    He’s fifteen—you’re thirty-nine. Who’s the grown-up here?

    So I make him see you. You think that guarantees he’s going to talk to you?

    "If he doesn’t see me, that’s going to guarantee that he won’t. "

    I wish you’d just give him some time. Wait him out.

    I squeezed the steering wheel. That was Dan’s solution to everything. You’re going broke? Give it time. You see that your marriage is disintegrating? Wait and see.

    I think it’s a good idea for you to see Alex today, though, Dan said. He starts soccer practice after school tomorrow, so a lot of his free time’ll be taken up after today.

    He’s playing soccer? I tried to imagine my sprite of a ten-year-old doing anything athletic. All I could conjure up were his wiry arms and legs and his enormous brown eyes. And the charm-your-Nikes-off smile I missed. So much.

    He played last year too, Dan said. He’s good. So is Jake.

    The message was clear: if I had been around for the last twelve months, I would have known my boys played soccer, and now loved tamales, and . . .

    Look, I’ve got to get back to work, Dan said. You want me to tell Alex you’ll be by?

    Tell him I’ll take him out for Chinese. Jake too.

    They hate Chinese, Dan said.

    I bit back a Since when? I knew the answer. Since I’d left their father and they’d chosen to live with him. Since I had become mama non grata.

    My phone beeped. I have another call coming in, I said. I’ll be there around three thirty.

    It was Frances.

    Okay—get over to Third Street, she said. Her tone brought me up in my seat. It’s in about the worst zip code in the city, but—

    What’s going on?

    A Hispanic kid was mowed down by a white guy in a pickup truck—looks like it might have been a hate crime. If that’s the case, it could be A-1, three-column, possibly four, so shoot looser than you would otherwise.

    I’m on it, I said.

    You know where it is?

    Yeah, I lied and veered into the parking lot of an abandoned pottery shop. I can get there in ten.

    When she hung up, I punched the address into the GPS I’d dubbed Perdita, which means lost. Frances had a tendency to make assignments sound bigger than they were, probably because nothing much happened in a city whose marketing hook was One of America’s Top 100 Retirement Towns. My six months in Africa had made me something of a cynic about what we Americans consider picture-worthy.

    With a map on Perdita’s screen, I pulled back out onto 70 and pushed the speed limit toward town. This could be a chance to do what I loved, which was to make pictures that moved people to think, got them to feel unexpectedly. Or at least wake up from a siesta long enough to see that life was not all about prizewinning jalapeños.

    God, I said, give me the story I’m supposed to tell. It was what I prayed en route to every assignment. I wasn’t always sure God particularly wanted me to tell the story of the Chile Festival or the mayor’s son’s confirmation, but it worked often enough to keep me showing up.

    Frances had exaggerated about the zip code, I decided, as I pulled in behind a Las Cruces Police Department cruiser. What qualified as a bad part of town here would have been upscale to some of the people I’d photographed. The address was a few blocks over from the Downtown Mall, a six-block interruption in Main Street, which, except on Wednesdays and Saturdays when the Farmers and Crafts Market convened, was little more than a ghost town. This was Thursday.

    The area that surrounded me as I climbed out of the Saab was just as ghostly and a little more run-down. Every other storefront stared vacantly onto the street, while the rest listlessly advertised shoe repair and beer/cigarettes and homemade Mexican food. The only one with clean windows and a freshly painted sign was an establishment that promised to cash paychecks.

    As I crossed to the passenger side to pull out my camera bag, I still couldn’t see where the actual accident had taken place. An ambulance was parked on the corner. Its lights flashed in alarm, and its engine waited impatiently at high idle, yet there was no sign of the paramedics. I had more gear in my trunk, but for the moment I decided to take only my bag from the floor. The bottom was damp, but the camera itself was dry. That bottle, thankfully, must have been emptier than I thought.

    I hung the camera and my press badge around my neck and slung the bag containing another lens over my shoulder. Only when I got around the ambulance did I see that there was an alley behind the row of stores. A police cruiser blocked it, but I walked past like I belonged there. It was always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

    A quick scan told me I was the first photographer on the scene, although even as I maneuvered my way around a line of reeking trash cans, I saw the van for the only local television station cruise past. Right now the police were too occupied to notice the media, but they would once the TV cameras got hauled in. I had a few opportune moments.

    The alley was lined with one of those thick adobe walls New Mexicans loved, and I pulled myself up onto its rounded top. I squatted to maintain a low profile and surveyed the scene.

    It was hard to tell what the damages were, with people in uniforms swarming like ants around what I made out to be a faded blue pickup truck. Its fenders were dented, but the rust in the creases told me that hadn’t happened today. Even the bumper hanging off the rear looked as if it had settled into its off-kilter position some time ago.

    The swarm of officers sorted itself into two groups. One concentrated on the cab of the truck, the other hovered on the ground behind it. That clump suddenly rose as a gurney came to life and was pushed off through the gravel in the direction of the ambulance with a sense of urgency that pulled at my camera. I took a shot I knew I wouldn’t use. The paramedics around the gurney shielded the form they carried, and I didn’t even try to get a glimpse of the face.

    The siren wound up, a sound that never failed to slit my heart, and I turned my attention to the truck again. The group around the cab was intent on whoever was inside. Two policemen stood in the bed, plastered to the rear window. Three more manned the front from the alley, and one guarded each of the two side windows. I snapped a few shots and zoomed in on the officer on the driver’s side, who was talking in that too-calm manner I’d seen negotiators use when they were trying to defuse a hostage situation. Whoever the perpetrator was, he wasn’t giving up easily.

    With the victim gone, the area behind the truck was momentarily clear. I slid from the wall and got as close as I dared. What I saw sucked the air from me. Blood spattered the tailgate and clung to a clump of dark hair on the bumper. The ground was soaked with more of the same.

    It didn’t matter how many horrendous crime scenes I saw, I was always surprised at how cruel human beings could be to each other. The only way I kept going was to remember my mission: to keep people from becoming desensitized to violence.

    I took one shot before I shivered away from the bumper and focused on the gouges that had been dug into the dirt-and-gravel alleyway by the truck’s tires. There was something aggressive, even brutal about them, as if the driver had used his pickup as a weapon. I managed to get several pictures before I heard the inevitable.

    I’m going to have to ask you to step behind the tape, ma’am.

    I clicked once more before I lowered my camera.

    I’m sorry, I said. There wasn’t any tape when I got here.

    There is now.

    The officer’s face was so grim, I didn’t argue but dutifully followed his pointing finger to the yellow tape he’d just strung across the entrance to the alley. When the action was as important as his expression suggested, the reaction would be more so. The better pictures were always of the moments after.

    He lifted the tape for me, and I ducked underneath. By then the TV crew was calling out inane questions, and Ken Perkins from the Sun-News was right in there with them. I looked for another vantage point from which I could take readers where they themselves couldn’t go.

    The question was, where? The wall was too obvious now, so I took stock of the back entrances to the stores that formed the alley. People were stuffed into the doorways of some, including the restaurant several doors from the corner. If I joined them, I could get a full frontal of the truck, and none of the officers seemed to care that the doorway folk were technically in front of the tape.

    Nor did those folks themselves care when, after hurrying through the now-empty restaurant, I squeezed my way among them into the back opening to the alley. The aura of fear and shock surrounded them like a shell of ice.

    I was farther away from the truck than I’d been before, which meant switching to a longer lens. The group of cops still flattened against the vehicle didn’t seem any closer to extricating the driver, so I had time.

    The brittle conversation among the people I was crunched in with took place in Spanish, of which I knew little beyond Como esta usted? Fortunately, their faces were telling the story.

    Two round-cheeked girls about Alex’s age clung to the doorframe, their brimming dark gazes volleying between the truck and the adults they stood with. The hands of a sturdy middle-aged woman shook as she pressed them to her mouth. Another rocked her body, eyes squeezed shut. A square man in a stained white apron showed no emotion at all except in the tightened stare that never wavered from the faded blue truck.

    I opted against the longer lens and stepped back from them, quietly raising my camera. This was the reaction. I cursed the click of the Canon as I shot their pain and their prayer, but none of them even flicked an eyelash at me. I was glad. I wasn’t sure that even in English I could say what I wanted to about the shock they were trying to claw through.

    A cry from one of the women jerked us all back to the doorway. I crowded in behind them and looked over their heads. Even at five-two I was tall enough to see that the door on the driver’s side of the truck was open and someone was being encouraged to climb out. I raised the camera again and made a guess about where to focus.

    One of the officers pushed the door closed with his foot. Two others pulled the driver clear of the truck. Below me, the praying woman cried out again, Solo es un nino!

    Was that only a boy?

    The arms being handcuffed had the lanky, awkward look of a young teenager. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen years old, and although I watched through my lens, I debated whether to take the shot even if they turned him to face us.

    But when the officer put his hands to the narrow adolescent shoulders and twisted him around, I let the camera fall against my chest. Already screaming, I shoved through the huddle in the doorway and tore across the alley.

    Get back! one of the officers yelled back at me.

    No—

    Come on, lady, said another, who thrust his arm out to block me. No press.

    I knocked the arm aside and pointed at the boy in the handcuffs. I’m not the press! I’m his mother!

    CHAPTER TWO

    White walls. Gray metal table. Glaring fluorescent light. And a police detective who probably hadn’t smiled since his swearing in as a cop in 1987.

    It was exactly the way it looks on those real crime shows. Only when you watch it on television, you can’t feel the anxiety coursing through you like barbed wire in your veins. Especially when the accused is your fifteen-year-old son, slumped like a comma in the chair between you and his father, hiding behind his hair, grinding his terror with his teeth.

    Detective Levi Baranovic sat across from us, boring his greenish eyes into Jake as if he were trying to drill out his thoughts. It hadn’t worked in the forty-five minutes we’d been sitting there, and I had to grind my own teeth to keep from screaming.

    He leaned back in the chair, and the light glared on the high forehead created by his neatly receding line of otherwise thick, coffee-colored hair. Let’s go over this step-by-step, son, the detective said, because I don’t think you understand the position you’re in.

    He leaned on the table again, long face close to the top of Jake’s bowed head.

    You were found behind the wheel of the vehicle that backed over a sixteen-year-old Hispanic boy. That vehicle belongs to the boy’s mother, and we found both it and you behind the restaurant where she works. From our first examination of the scene, we’ve determined that the truck backed over this boy with excessive force for reverse. He cocked his head at Jake. Of course, since you don’t have a driver’s license or a learner’s permit, you aren’t familiar with how a motor vehicle operates. Am I right?

    Jake’s dark, chin-length hair remained in motionless panels on either side of his face. He didn’t appear to be breathing—until Detective Baranovic slapped his hand on the table. We all jittered on our seats, including Dan, who pulled his fingers through his shorter version of Jake’s hair and let out a long, slow sigh. I wanted to slap him. Sighing—hand-slapping—reviewing the same information until I could have recited it myself. Why didn’t somebody try something that worked? I would have voiced that, but I’d already been threatened with exclusion from the room if I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.

    We only need one parent present, Baranovic had informed me when I told Jake five minutes into this to sit up and look at the detective and explain what had gone down out there in that alley. Since then, I’d sat silently wearing down my molars and tracking the sweat that rolled straight down my back.

    Have you ever driven a vehicle before today? the detective asked.

    Jake shook his head and kept his gaze on the table. With his hands in his lap, he began to pick at a mole he’d always had on his wrist.

    The truck struck Miguel Sanchez and then pulled forward and stopped. Did you just sit there while he was unconscious on the ground? Detective Baranovic reached his fist across the table, and for a mother-bear instant I thought he was going to punch my son, but he used it to lift Jake’s chin.

    Jake’s dark blue eyes were blurred with fear, and moisture had gathered beneath them, though from sweat or tears I couldn’t tell. Otherwise, he was as pale and still as one of his father’s statues. So was Dan.

    Jake tried to pull away, but the detective’s fingers held his jaw.

    I just want to look at you, son. He dropped his hand. You don’t strike me as racist. But you see, we have a pigmentation situation here. Miguel Sanchez is a U.S. citizen. When a white boy comes in and deliberately runs him down, people start making noises about something racially motivated. Now— He gave a tight shrug. I can’t do much about the fact that all the evidence points to you as the perpetrator of this crime, which I see as attempted homicide—

    He put his hand up to me before I could get my mouth open, but I grabbed Jake’s arm anyway. Jake pulled away, leaving me with a vise grip on the sleeve of his black sweatshirt.

    Talk to him, Jacob! I said. You’re being accused of murder! Jake shrugged.

    Baranovic stood up, hands on the table, and loomed over Jake. He wasn’t big, but his presence was. So you’re telling me you don’t give a flip about this kid, is that it?

    Jake shook his head.

    That’s not it, or you don’t care?

    That’s not it. Jake’s voice shot up into the hormonal, adolescent atmosphere and disappeared. He was so frightened I could hardly stand it.

    Jake, please, I said.

    Mrs. Coe—

    "He’s terrified! I’m terrified! Why don’t you let me talk to him alone—"

    No. Dan put his hand on the back of Jake’s neck as if he were retracting him from a brood of vipers.

    Am I going to have to ask you both to leave? Baranovic didn’t raise his voice, but his tone had an edge that could have sliced a rock.

    I put my hand over my mouth and waved him on.

    If this was somehow an accident, he said to Jake, or Miguel provoked you in some way, you need to tell me. That will make it a lot easier on you when I take this to the juvenile prosecutor. She’s going to decide whether to file formal charges, and if she does, then a fitness hearing will determine whether they try you as an adult in regular court. If you go in there like this—showing no remorse, with no explanation . . . He pulled up from the table. The muscles on the forearms below his rolled-up sleeves were taut. It’s going to go as badly as it can possibly go.

    Jake said nothing.

    So what happens now? Dan said.

    We have the option of sending him to county juvenile detention until his hearing, but normally we only do that with youth who are at risk for re-offending or for nonappearance in court. I can release him into parental custody. He looked back and forth between us. You folks decide who I’m releasing him to. I’m going to need some paperwork filled out.

    I stared at Dan until he let go of Jake and got to his feet. I’ll take care of that, he said.

    He patted Jake’s shoulder. You okay, buddy? Was he okay? Who was okay when they were being charged with attempted homicide in a hate crime? Did he look okay? The boy was sweating so hard he was about to evaporate, and probably wished he could.

    At least Jake didn’t assure him he was just fine, which was what Dan always wanted. Say you’re okay, and then I can go on making art and making nice and making believe all’s right with the world. Say you’re not, and I will still go on making art and— "

    I’ll be right here if you need me," he said to Jake and followed Detective Baranovic out.

    Silence frosted the room that had moments before been a sauna. Jake didn’t look at me until he suddenly seemed to realize we were alone. His face came up, ashen and twitching and no longer able to hide the fear that obviously raked at him.

    I’m taking you home with me, I said, so we can talk this thing through.

    I’d rather go to detention, he said.

    His words kicked me in the gut. You’re in serious trouble, son.

    "I know!" He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, and I watched his bony shoulders shake, sure they’d grown smaller and more gaunt in the last two hours.

    All right—we won’t go there right now. Let’s just go home where it’s quiet and try to sort this out.

    I’ll go home. He turned the stormy eyes on me. With Dad. That’s my home.

    You bet, buddy, Dan said from the doorway. Hey, it’s going to be okay.

    Jake collapsed onto his arms on the table, and I stormed out the door. In the hall, Dan stopped beside a drinking fountain and assumed the position: back against the wall, arms folded across his chest, crossing me out as his brown eyes surveyed the floor tiles. Jake had learned it from the master.

    "‘It’s going to be okay, Jake’? I said. What’s going to be okay, Dan? The food in detention? Those cool shackles he gets to wear around his ankles when they drag him into court? What are you thinking?"

    Dan dragged his eyes up to me and held them there. I’m thinking you hate to lose, Ryan. But for once, it isn’t about you.

    I was stunned, and I must have shown it. Why did he choose now to grow a spinal column?

    I know it isn’t about me, I said. It’s about what’s best for Jake. If I can get him away from here, I can get him to talk—

    Since when? He won’t even have a pizza with you and tell you about his day.

    I didn’t notice until then that Dan was covered in white dust up to his elbows, and the front of his jeans was streaked in it as well, as if he had been rubbing his hands up and down his thighs. He’d obviously torn out of his studio without even stopping to wash off the plaster.

    Something dawned on me. Where’s Alex? I said.

    He’s with Ginger.

    Oh.

    Ginger was Dan’s significant other, Alex had informed me. If my ten-year-old had used that term for anybody else, I would have been amused. I’d only seen her once, from afar, when I’d dropped Alex off one evening. She’d struck me as a candidate for Deal or No Deal, one of those women who stood around with suitcases.

    I shoved my hair off my face, though it tumbled back immediately onto my forehead and left several chopped-off, dark strands in my right eye. Look, you have Alex to be concerned with, and this is going to be huge for him too. You can’t deal with both of them, so—

    Why not? I’ve been doing it for a year.

    Right, I said. And now one of them has been arrested for attempted homicide.

    You’re saying this is my fault?

    I could only stare at the man whose voice teetered on the edge of anger. Dan usually left the anger to me.

    Jake wants to come home with me, so I’m taking him, he said. Otherwise he’s going to detention, and I don’t want that, and I don’t think you do either. I already signed the papers.

    I charged across the hall to the interview room and looked through the wire mesh glass in the narrow window. Jake still had his head on his arms, almost as if he’d fallen asleep.

    It was impossible to fathom that my son had tried to kill someone, even in light of the sullen wall he’d built between us. He was angry with me, but in that maddeningly passive way that had driven me away from his father. Surely not angry enough to take it out on—whom? Who was Miguel Sanchez?

    I pressed my forehead to the glass. Did it mean something that he was Hispanic? We had never been racist. The boys had been growing up in Chicago before Dan moved them here. Their birthday parties had looked like junior United Nations summits.

    And yet Jake didn’t deny it, no matter how menacing Detective Baranovic made it all sound. He didn’t try to pin it on someone else. He wouldn’t even confess that he’d done it.

    And I knew why.

    I watched him now as he pulled himself up from the tabletop and once again dug into his eyes with his fists while his mouth contorted. He didn’t confess, because Jake Coe had never been able to lie. Alex could get away with a fib until he was caught dead to rights, and even then I usually had a hard time believing his little prevarication hadn’t been the gospel truth. But Jake had never even tried it. When I broke up brother fights that rivaled WWE, Jake clammed up and let the chips fall where they may. And that’s what he was doing now.

    He wouldn’t confess, because he hadn’t done it.

    I tried to turn the door handle, but it didn’t budge. When I whirled around to go for the detective, I saw a petite woman with impossible breasts running down the hall, mahogany curls bouncing as she half stumbled in kitten heels toward Dan. When she reached him, he bent over to allow her bronzed arms to fold around his shoulders. She pushed his face into her neck, where I was certain he’d be bruised by the barrage of necklaces that dipped heavily into her cleavage.

    Are you all right? she said into his hair.

    This was Ginger. She pulled back and cupped Dan’s face in her hands, which I was surprised she could lift with the number of rings she was wearing.

    It’s bad, isn’t it? she said.

    It’ll be okay. Where’s Alex?

    He’s with Ian. It’s bad. You’re just so strong about stuff like this.

    Stuff like this? She’d seen Dan faced with his son’s possible incarceration before?

    I turned back to the window to see that Jake had gotten up from the table and was standing in the corner with his back to me. A mental picture formed, what I had come to know as a God-image because it emerged whole and unbidden. It was Jake at five, putting himself into time-out before I even knew the balloons had been tied to the cat’s tail, before I’d even pinned the deed on him. He was now a lopey five-foot-ten, but he was the same little boy who would take a punishment he didn’t deserve if it meant he could avoid a confrontation.

    I slapped my hands against the door on both sides of the window— but that was as far as I let my anger go. I had to have a plan, and as I stood there absorbing my son’s pain through the glass, I arranged it, shot by shot, in my mind. I would get to the bottom of this for him.

    CHAPTER THREE

    The juvenile prosecutor did indeed file formal charges against Jake that afternoon. Although the fitness hearing wasn’t until one o’clock Friday, I took the day off so I could find a lawyer. I didn’t even have a dentist or a hairstylist yet in Las Cruces, much less an attorney. Locating someone in criminal law had not been on my to-do list.

    The only people I knew to ask were my colleagues at the paper, and I didn’t want them to know about this. Because Jake was still a juvenile, at least for the moment his name wasn’t released. I turned to the Internet, where a Uriel Cohen sounded good on her Web site and even better on the phone—sharp and intelligent. She promised to meet Dan, Jake, and me at the courthouse at twelve thirty.

    I wish you’d lawyered up before they interviewed him, she’d said.

    Don’t worry, I said. He didn’t say a word.

    Until noon, I poured coffee I didn’t drink and made the bed I hadn’t slept in and studiously avoided the front page of the Sun-News. I’d told Frances I didn’t have anything worth sending her. In truth, when I looked at my shots on the laptop the night before, they told a clear story of a vicious attack on a young man that left his family and friends seized with horror.

    I finally relented around eleven that morning and skimmed the text of the front-page article. Miguel Sanchez was in serious but stable condition at Memorial Medical Center.

    Señora Sanchez probably hadn’t slept any more than I had. I could see her in my mind, where God put her—pressed to her son’s bedside, trying to push life into his forehead with her hand, whispering the will to survive into his ear. It was everything I wanted to be doing with my own son.

    But I didn’t see Jake until he and Dan slipped into the courtroom at the Third Judicial District Courthouse a mere fifteen seconds before the bailiff called our case. It might have been by design, so I wouldn’t have a chance to speak to him, but then, Dan was always late and, like today, always seemed surprised that it made any difference.

    Didn’t you get my message? I hissed to him. We were supposed to meet with the attorney first.

    I jerked my head toward the fiftyish woman with limp white hair I’d just spent thirty minutes stalling with.

    She gave Dan a quick assessment through black-framed rectangular glasses and said, We’ll talk later. This is only a fitness hearing.

    Only a fitness hearing? I wanted to scream. They’re going to decide whether to handle our son like the young boy he is or treat him like a career criminal.

    I looked past Dan and drank Jake in. He evidently wasn’t that long out of the shower. The dark hair was only now starting to curl out of his apparent attempt to slick it back, and his face looked raw, as if he’d tried to scrub off any visible signs of fear. But he’d had no success with his eyes, which had the same frightened sheen I’d seen the day before. Except for the manly Adam’s apple that moved painfully with every swallow, he could have been twelve.

    He sat so that I was left next to Dan, who smelled vaguely of Irish Spring soap and gasoline and had tried the same approach with his hair that Jake had. Except for their eyes—Jake’s were blue, like mine—they were so alike, I used to joke that I’d merely been an incubator for the child. I didn’t find it that amusing anymore.

    The judge, the Honorable John Hightower, was a boxy, humorless man with more eyebrows than hair. He cocked one of them at us from the bench.

    This is a fitness hearing to determine whether—he glanced down—"Jacob Coe is to be tried as an adult in the vehicular assault of Miguel Sanchez.

    What do you have for me, Ms. Hernandez?

    He cocked the other brow at the representative from the DA’s office, a large woman with mocha skin and enough dark hair for six women, which she tossed over her shoulders several times as she stood up, making her long, beaded earrings dance. The image of a Hispanic matriarch was completed by the command in her stride as she approached the bench.

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