Chapter Ten
T he next day, as Aubrey clicked off on her cell-phone call with the detective, she leaned her head against Jacob’s shoulder outside the private room Emma had been moved to.
Still shaken with disbelief that it could have been Kinsey all along, she wrapped her arm around Jacob’s waist as Aaron leaned against the wall nearby beneath a Fourth of July banner and photos of the staff’s celebrations from years past. Little red, white, and blue flags were strung across the nurse’s station.
The nurses were already passing out slices of a patriotic flag cake someone had baked.
All that seemed surreal against the backdrop of what they’d learned.
“How did we not see it?” she asked. “That she was so angry or…or jealous of my relationship with Emma?”
“She never showed you any of that?” Aaron asked.
“No. Not really. We weren’t really friends, but she must have been holding in all those feelings.
When they finally came out, it was a big, awful mess.
Jacob, we were right about the mix-up. She apparently thought it was me in that car, driving.
It was me she was angry with.” Jacob wrapped his arm around her shoulder.
“And the house? That was just pure out-of-control Kinsey, understanding that she had royally messed everything up. Poor Emma paid the price.”
“At least now we don’t have to keep looking over our shoulders,” Jacob said. “Thanks to you, Aaron, for putting it together about her car.”
Aaron folded his arms across his chest. “Dumb luck, I guess. They’re arresting her, right?”
Aubrey nodded. “She admitted to everything. But because she was up on that cliff, possibly to harm herself, they’ve put a thirty-six-hour psych hold on her at a hospital over in Portland.
Also,” she added, “possibly because she first claimed she was talking to an angel out there on the cliff. Who also claimed to be talking to Emma.” Aubrey shook her head.
“Can you believe that? As if it weren’t bad enough, she almost killed Emma, but she has to drag her into her fantasy confession.
Later, she acted like she had no idea what they were talking about when they brought it up. ”
“It’s going to break Emma’s heart to learn it was her,” Jacob said.
The worry written on Aubrey’s face said it all. “I hope,” she whispered against his shoulder, “I hope she gets the chance to learn what really happened. Then at least we’ll have Emma back.”
*
Connor and Emma, who had been listening silently, left them then and moved into her new private room.
This room was much better than the ICU had been, with a big window spanning one wall, where the spectacle of the sunset over the Pacific would be a nightly ritual, and a cozy chair and lamp sat in one corner for guests.
Her color looked better. She looked, Connor thought, like she was sleeping. But waking she was not.
Emma stood over the bed, staring at her body. She wasn’t urging herself to wake up. Nor hoping she wouldn’t wake. She was caught between those two things, with him, squarely in the middle.
He understood the emotions churning through her. With everything that had come at her in the last few days she was dizzy with feelings even he couldn’t decipher. Feelings that included a messy, conflicted sadness regarding him. That was all his fault.
She moved past him to stand at the window, looking out at the green summer trees and the hills surrounding the hospital. She wanted out, he sensed. Out of here. Away from the possibility of dying. She wanted to be flying again. Looking down from above without worry.
“Do you think,” she asked him, “I’ll be stuck here forever? In this in-between place?”
He moved beside her at the window. “I dinna think so, lass.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“There’s a finite end to this. One way or the other. At least Marguerite promised me so.”
“Right. The Council for you. But what about me? What if,” she began gingerly, “what if I’m damaged and I can’t—What if I said that I wanted to stay with you? To go. Not stay here.”
Now it was his turn to stare out the window without really seeing. “Even if ye could choose for yerself, Emma, that’s no’ how this works.”
“Then how does it work?”
He swallowed hard. “If goin’ was your path, I’m afraid I’ve got a few hundred years on ye in experience. Our paths would diverge. You and I…well, we wouldn’t be possible.”
“You’re saying I can’t choose?”
“Most would stay if the choice was theirs, no? But every life has a season. Whether it’s summer or winter, autumn or spring that draws that life to a close, it’s the right time to start again.
The absolute right time. And it’s without regret.
Because now they know, behind them, the angels are watchin’ over those they loved, helpin’ them find their own way. ”
“My gran believed that,” she said. “But…I still miss her.”
“I know. Emma,” he began, “my hope is if ye stay, you’ll forget me and this time together. It’s just as well if ye do.”
“And if I go?”
“Then you’ll move on. Free from me as well.”
She stared out at the changing sky. “I see. So, tell me the truth, then. Why did you kiss me back there on the dock? Was it just…to let me go?”
“Ye don’t really think that, do ye?”
Emma leaned against the window ledge. “What should I think?”
He glanced at his wrist: +94 percent. “That our time is almost up and whatever ye needed to push ye forward here is nearly done.” But that felt like a half-truth because he sensed some season had passed in him as well, though he couldn’t say what that meant.
“I kissed ye for selfish reasons—none of which were about lettin’ ye go, I’m sorry to say.
If ye asked my superiors about my behavior, then you’d likely to get an earful from them.
And worse. But I don’t care. What I know is you’re free to move forward now, without my bitterness—or accusation—draggin’ ye down in whatever ye choose for yerself.
That’s the best I could do for ye here.”
Disappointment filtered through her expression as she glanced out the window at the sky, turning a deepening shade of blue and pink and red.
“Look. It’s nearly sunset. They’ll be setting off the fireworks at the park.
I say we go before that clock on your wrist strikes midnight and our coach turns back into a pumpkin. ”
“Coach?”
“Never mind,” she said with a smile, taking his hand. “Just take me to the park, kind sir. It’s stifling in here, and I need the air.”
He tried to memorize the feel of her fingers against his, the dark color of her eyes, and the way she smiled up at him just now.
He would need that memory for later, when he wanted to replay this moment in his mind.
Council or no Council, rules or no, he would not easily rid himself of the memory of these last few days.
No matter what white lies of kindness he told her.
“As ye wish, mo ghràdh . As ye wish.”
*
The usual Fourth of July buzz resonated in the evening air at the Schooner’s Bay Community Park, where hundreds of people had been celebrating already for hours.
Savory-smelling smoke from smoldering barbecues drifted on the air along with the sulfur tang of dozens of sparklers being waved around in the dark by children, whose decorated bikes were scattered around the field, abandoned for now.
The twenty-piece orchestra stationed in the central gazebo was playing familiar Fourth of July fare, and around the grassy park, children chased one another in games of tag and keep-away.
Parents, drinking wine and hot chocolate from flasks and thermoses, gathered with neighbors and friends to listen to the music.
Emma felt the tension in her shoulders release a fraction at the sight.
This felt…normal. A night she would have taken for granted only a few days ago.
But now she saw all of it differently, as a moment to be savored.
Remembered. The easy comradery of friends making time for one another, stopping to enjoy the moment. Smell the fireworks, so to speak.
She pressed four fingers against her mouth. She’d come to this place year after year, and yes, she’d enjoyed the show, but it hadn’t struck her until now how important the friendships that were built on moments like this were. How much time they deserved. How much appreciation.
But even more than that, being separated from all of them made her realize how much she missed them. How much she would miss them if things went the wrong way for her.
And yet the world went on spinning without her in it. Those friends’ lives continued while she watched from afar. As it should be, she supposed.
It reminded her of the first time she’d gone to Paris, the city of lights, whose history was as ancient as it was rich.
There she’d stood, in the Place de la Concorde between the bronze fountain full of gods and an Egyptian obelisk, in a street full of Parisians, all going about their lives as they did every day, while she, on the other side of the world, had until that moment been completely unaware of their lives or their struggles.
And they of hers. She didn’t matter a bit in the greater scheme of things.
She’d felt so small and insignificant then, but also like a single, solitary cog in the great wheel that was this planet.
That feeling surged again in her now. Emma the outsider. Emma the insignificant. Yet now she saw she was part of something much greater than she could have imagined.
As they walked among the spread-out blankets, deftly avoiding small children and leashed dogs who often noticed them walking past, Mayor Marks took the microphone at the gazebo. “Who’s ready for some spectacular fireworks? Anyone? Anyone?”
The crowd roared with applause, and he quieted them finally with a gesture. “But first, can we please say thank you to this amazing orchestra? Aren’t they incredible folks?”
Again, the crowd showed their appreciation.