Chapter Nine #2
And now, with his hand in hers, they walked through the parking lot—a metaphor, of sorts, for her life—still not knowing what lay ahead. Which was, she supposed, for the best. Because she wasn’t sure anymore what the right decision for herself was.
Ahead, she saw Jacob—Aubrey’s Jacob—exiting his car. She wanted to run to him, to throw her arms around him. Thank him for being there for Aubrey. She’d underestimated him. He was good for Aubrey, and she had chosen well. She wanted to tell him all of those things, but, of course, she couldn’t.
She checked her emotions, rising at the thought that she might never get the chance. She shouldn’t have been afraid to go. Not now. Now that she knew what her gran had known all along. That angels existed and she’d never be truly alone.
Connor squeezed her hand as another car pulled up near Jacob, and Aaron Pleasure got out. The midday sun cast long shadows around them.
“Hey, you’re Emma’s friend, aren’t you?” Jacob asked, reaching a hand out to him.
Aaron smiled. “I am. Aaron Pleasure. And you’re…?”
“Jacob. I’m Aubrey’s…boyfriend—for lack of a better term. I saw you here the other day, didn’t I? To see Emma?”
“Yeah. I was just coming back to check on her. They won’t tell me anything on the phone. How’s she doing?”
Jacob rubbed a hand across his mouth. “No change yet. Unfortunately. They took her off the heavy meds, but so far, she’s not waking up. They don’t really know why.”
Maybe I’m not ready to. Maybe I don’t know how any of this works. Emma flicked a look at Connor, who was watching the two men intensely.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Aaron said, shaking his head. She noticed a little gray at his temples and a few more lines on his face than he’d had the last time they’d been together. But he still had that boyish charm about him she’d always loved.
“I was hoping when I came into town I would get to see her, you know? Actually, I was hoping we could have a cup of coffee. I don’t know. See what happens? Our lives just went two different directions, but she’s always been in the back of my mind. Stupid. I guess you always think there’s time.”
Connor raised an I told you so brow at Emma. She had to agree with Aaron about that much.
Jacob nodded. “Timing. I’m sorry it worked out that way. But keep the faith. We’re not giving up. You shouldn’t, either. I know Aubrey said Emma talked about you often. Anything’s possible.”
Connor let loose of her hand just as another figure hurried out of the hospital doors. It took Emma a minute to recognize her. It was Kinsey. She seemed…upset—something in the way she marched across the parking lot.
The two men also noticed her, too. They turned to watch as she reached her SUV parked ten or more cars down from them and furiously beat the front fender with the bouquet in her hand.
She hit the car until there was nothing but stumps left of the flowers before finally climbing in and gunning it out of the parking lot.
“Whoa,” Aaron said.
Jacob blinked in shock. “What the hell? That was Kinsey.”
“Who?”
“She works for Emma. Wonder what got her all bent?”
“‘Bent’ is one word for it,” Aaron said.
Their gazes both followed Kinsey’s car as it pulled out onto the main road, squealing its tires.
“Hey, I don’t want to play devil’s advocate here,” Aaron said, “but didn’t Aubrey say that the car that hit Emma was a dark SUV?”
Jacob swiveled a look at him. “Yeah?”
“Did you happen to notice that front fender she was whacking with the flowers?”
“No. I was just kind of waiting for her to morph into the Hulk or something. But now that you mention it, it was banged up. You don’t think…”
“I don’t know what to think after that.”
“Yeah. Well. I think it’s worth looking into,” Jacob said, pulling his phone from his back pocket. “And worth a phone call to the detective.”
Emma stared after Kinsey’s car, too, cold trickling through her. Kinsey? No, it couldn’t have been her. She would never—And what about Emma’s house getting trashed? Looking like someone had…rage-stormed through it?
Rage-stormed.
Kinsey demolishing those flowers came to mind.
And then she remembered—Kinsey had a key to her house.
Of course she did. Emma had given it to her once years ago so she could feed Winston while Emma had been traveling to visit Aubrey at college.
Kinsey had done that for her several times over the years.
And one time, she remembered returning from her bedroom retrieving papers only to find Kinsey staring at the photos on her shelf of her and Aubrey.
Of Lizzy and Daniel. Of the loving family Kinsey had never really had.
A thousand jagged emotions swam through her. Disbelief, first. Anger. Followed quickly by the love she’d always had for Kinsey. For everything Kinsey had done for her company, for her personally.
Beside her, Connor, too, watched her car disappear down the road. He watched Jacob and Aaron head into the hospital.
“We need to follow her,” Emma said. “I’m…afraid for her.”
He gave her a sideways look. “Aye. So am I. But I didna expect that to be yer lead feelin’ here.”
“Am I angry? Yes,” she said, tugging him along beside her toward the road. “But I must have missed something. Something important.”
“Ye think it’s all your fault she ran ye off the road?”
“I…I think it’s my fault I wasn’t paying attention to what she must have been going through. Connor. Please. Let’s follow her.”
He nodded. “I ken where she’s goin’.”
They arrived at Kinsey’s car parked on the road that ran along the Schooner’s Bay cliffs, which led to a trail above them.
Together, they walked the trail that Emma had walked so many times before, a perilous trail with cliffs on one side and a rocky drop on the other.
This part of the trail led to a safer scenic outlook that most kids in Schooner’s Bay eventually took full advantage of as a make-out place after dark. But it had its perils. Like now.
Kinsey stood on the side of the cliff, staring at the rocks below and at the ocean of blue that stretched out before her.
There were tears in her eyes as she paced across the edge of the cliff, furiously puffing on a cigarette.
Emma saw how she might have been mistaken for a man that night in the dark with her short-cropped hair and boyish look.
Emma’s heart clenched. This was what she’d feared. Kinsey had always presented a tough exterior to the world, but she knew that inside she was fragile as a sparrow. She should have been more careful with her words, with her friendship. “Kinsey, don’t! ”
“She canna hear ye.”
“I know.” But how long had that been going on in real life? Kinsey, being unable to hear her? Or grasp how she’d felt about her? Too long. “You need to talk to her for me. Tell her what I say. Word for word.”
“Ye want me to let her see me?”
“Yes, Connor! Yes.”
“Even if I do, she willna remember me later. Or even what I say.”
“Then I’ll tell her. If I can. We’ll worry about that then. For now just, please, do as I ask. Do it for me, Connor? This one thing.”
Reluctantly, he nodded, walking gingerly toward Kinsey on the cliff.
Hearing his footsteps behind her, Kinsey whirled back in Connor’s direction, and he threw his hands up before him to indicate that he meant her no harm.
“It’s Kinsey, isn’t it?” he asked in a quiet voice.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “Go away!”
“I’m not here to hurt ye, lass. I’m here to help ye.”
“I don’t want your help,” she said, stepping closer to the cliff’s edge. “Leave me alone!”
“I’m here for Emma,” he told her.
“What?” Kinsey blinked at him, confused.
“Emma James. I know ye’ll find this hard to believe, but she wants me to tell ye somethin’.”
“Emma James is dying. She can’t tell me anything.” She tossed what was left of her cigarette over the cliff.
“Oh, but yer wrong there. She’s right here, watchin’ ye. She wants to speak to ye.”
“You’re…you’re crazy,” Kinsey said, her eyes going wide. “Stay away from me! Get back!”
“All right, then. I understand why you’d think that, but—”
“Tell her you’re an angel,” Emma said beside him. “Tell her you’re my angel.”
“ Och , that should seal the deal,” he muttered, unconvinced.
“It can’t get any worse,” she pointed out. “Tell her. Word for word.”
Kinsey was staring at him now, seemingly uncertain which option posed her the most danger, this stranger talking to himself or the rocks below.
“Ye see,” he began slowly, holding his flattened palm out to Kinsey, “I’m not exactly…what ye think. I’m no threat to ye, Kinsey. I’m Emma’s guardian. Her guardian angel.”
Kinsey’s eyes widened in fear. “Her…what?”
“I know how it sounds. But ’tis true. Believe it or don’t, but she wants ye to know somethin’.”
“Okay. I really am losing my mind,” Kinsey breathed as soil crumbled beneath the toe of her shoe. “I was right. I’m crazy.”
“No… No,” he said, repeating the words Emma spoke. “You’re not. Listen to me. Emma says she knows you didn’t mean to hurt her.”
“Emma says… what? ”
“She knows that you care about her. That ye didn’t mean it. The car…”
Kinsey shook her head, tears burning in her eyes, searching the empty space beside him for signs of Emma. “How did you—? How can you know about—?”
“I’m speakin’ for her, ye see? She knows it was you.”
Kinsey’s expression crumbled. “I didn’t. I didn’t mean it. It was all a mistake.” A sob broke her words. “A h-horrible mistake.”
“She knows that,” he told her. “She knows you’d never mean to hurt her—or Aubrey, either.”
Kinsey lowered her head. “I did, though. I did hurt her. I was s-so mad about everything. At Emma not believing in me. Aubrey just walking into every opening so easy. Aubrey has everything…I have no one. I just…I don’t know what happened.
I just lost control.” She pressed her fingertips to her skull.
“Why am I telling you this? There’s no changing things. I did what I did.”
“What’s done is done, you’re right. But, Kinsey, ’tis wrong to think Emma didna care about you.
She did. She does.” He glanced at Emma, who motioned for him to go on.
“She’s sorry for not payin’ better attention to what you wanted.
She knows it’s hard for you to accept help.
But things can get better. And they will if you’ll try. ”
“It’s too late for me. I even went to her house to tell Aubrey what I did, to apologize, but she was already gone, and then…I couldn’t help it. I messed up her house because I’d ruined everything. Now Emma’s…she must be dead because if you’re an angel—? It’s all my fault.”
“She’s not dead. And the part of her that loves ye is right here beside me. But this here…this is no answer.”
Beside him, Emma nodded, encouraging him as Kinsey inched toward the edge.
“She says she forgives ye, Kinsey, for what happened. She wants to help ye.”
For the first time, there was a shred of hope in Kinsey’s eyes. “No, she doesn’t.”
“Aye. She does. She said so herself. Right here.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Connor tipped his head as Emma instructed him what to say.
“She asks if ye remember the time it was just the two of you workin’ late and she ordered a pizza with pineapple and Canadian bacon—your favorite—and ye told her about your third foster mom.
How she’d read ye stories at night? How she was the only one who ever did that for ye? ”
Kinsey gaped at him.
“How she’d read ye the story of King Arthur pulling that sword from the stone, and how ye said that someday you’d do that? That she told ye—”
“I could be anything I wanted to be,” Kinsey finished. “How could you possibly know that?”
“I told you. Emma’s right here wi’ me. If ye have somethin’ to say to her, say it now. Go on, lass.”
She swallowed thickly, tears running down her cheeks. “This is crazytime. But…I’m…I’m sorry, Emma. If you can hear me, I’m so sorry. I wish I could take that night back. I’d give anything if I could.”
Connor held his hand out to her as a siren sounded in the distance. “Take my hand, lass. Come away from here. You’ll sort it out. It’ll be all right, ye hear?”
Kinsey glanced one more time at the rocks below, then reached for his hand just as the sandy ground beneath her foot began to crumble.
With a wide-eyed look of terror, Kinsey gasped, but Connor snagged her arm and caught her, pulling her almost effortlessly back up beside him.
With a sob of gratitude, she crumped to the ground, shaking.
The simple act of trust sent a rush of relief through Emma.
It gave her hope that Kinsey would get through this somehow. That she’d come out the other side.
Connor disappeared from sight as two uniformed police officers—a man and a woman—appeared around the bend in the trail.
Kinsey saw them, too, but made no move to run. She glanced behind her to find Connor gone. A look of disbelief crossed her expression.
“Kinsey Abbott?” the woman called, approaching her gently with her hand out. Reluctantly, Kinsey nodded. “We’d like a word with you.”