Free Healing Sands by Stephen Arterburn, Nancy Rue

happened?”
    â€œWhat?” My voice screeched higher than the structure he was still looking at.
    â€œWhat if he did run over that boy? For some reason we can’t even fathom?”
    â€œAre you serious ?”
    â€œIf 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.”
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œIt isn’t that.”
    â€œThen you actually think he’s guilty! What could possibly make our sweet son capable of something that heinous?”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œYou 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.”
    â€œYou are out of your mind!”
    â€œAm 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.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œBaby, 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.
    â€œHe 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.”
    â€œI’m sure the world is waiting with bated breath,” I said.
    â€œNew 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?”
    â€œThat’s just wonderful.” I dug my fingers into my temples. “But I’m a little more concerned with my son right now.”
    â€œIt seems to me that you should have thought of that before.”
    â€œGinger.”
    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.
    â€œHow about we continue this conversation at another time?” Dan said to me.
    â€œLike 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.
    â€œIs everything all right out here?” he said in a voice that was deep and take-charge. He looked over my shoulder into