Chapter 23
No way was Mitchell going to just walk away to leave Dove to grieve alone. He got why she’d felt like she had to make that choice. In some ways, she’d been alone since the day she was born. Her mother and father had had their bond, before her and through her, too.
And when she’d grown up, been old enough to forge her own relationships, she’d been—due to the way she’d been raised—an outcast in her own society.
The woman had understanding beyond anything Mitchell was ever going to know, but he knew one thing. In order to heal, she needed family. Lots of it.
She also needed the news he had to give her. Maybe more than the rest.
It was that with which he was armed, just before sunset that night.
He’d read the note she’d had Welding give to him after she’d insisted on leaving the hospital—through a back door—on her own.
The detective had already dropped her off at home before driving back to the hospital to deliver her short missive to Mitchell.
Our time is through, Mitchell. I’m not who I thought I was, nor one who, with eyes opened wide, can continue to pretend. Please believe that while most of what I said wasn’t real, my gratitude to you was, is and always will be. I wish you the best life has to offer. Dove.
Whether Welding had read the note scribbled on that back of a blank hospital prescription sheet, he didn’t know. Didn’t care. Peter was a good man. Had done his job with professionalism, compassion and seriously impressive skill.
Mitchell could hardly blame the guy for being attracted to Dove.
In jeans, a button-up long-sleeved shirt and boat shoes, he presented himself at her front door with her container of leftover greens in one hand, and her satchel over his shoulder. Her suitcase was in his car, too, if things digressed rapidly to the point of her asking for it.
Neither bag was packed. He hadn’t been able to look at her things, not without tears shed. And he wasn’t comfortable yet being that kind of guy. Even knowing he could be was taking some getting used to.
She looked out the window before opening the door to him.
Applauding her caution—she didn’t yet know the security detail that was supposed to have been switched from her father’s house to her own had been dismissed—he was also patting himself on the back for thinking of the satchel and greens as a way to get her to give him a second of her time.
The things themselves wouldn’t matter to her. Burdening someone else with her mess would.
She’d taught him more than she’d probably ever know during her time with him.
Without looking at him directly, she took the bowl from his hand saying, “I’ll wash this and get it back to you” and then reached for the satchel.
He didn’t give that up as easily as he had the container that he only wanted back if he had her to go with it.
“They found a match for the spit on your father’s shirt,” he said baldly, completely unlike himself, and yet seemingly right, too. He’d rather have had his speech all thought-out, but with Dove, planning didn’t work.
Living authentically did. And while he had no idea how to do that, he at least got that he had to just let it all come out of him as it willed, with no forethought.
The way her hand reaching for the strap of the satchel faltered gave him hope. The first bit he’d had since he’d seen her pulled out of the totaled truck earlier that day and had been told she’d be okay.
“With enough evidence to prove that Fletcher hired him?” she asked, not meeting his gaze, but not shutting the door in his face, either.
“No,” Mitchell said and, seeing her shoulders close in, quickly added, “Because Fletcher didn’t do it.
Not your studio. Not untying Ladybird, or watching your house.
He wasn’t the one who took your father, leaving him out on the embankment, nor was he responsible for your near abduction.
” He had no idea why he was listing it all out. He just felt a need to do so.
A need driven by her. By her reactions to his words. The more he said, the more she seemed to be listening. To be taking it in.
And if there was one thing he knew about Dove St. James it was that what she took in came out right.
“Who was it?” she asked, when he sensed that he needed to fall silent. “Why?”
He didn’t answer. Just watched her. And, eventually, she met his gaze. Holding on long enough to ask again, “Who? Why?”
That’s when he knew what he had to say. “Can I come in, please? It’s going to look odd to your neighbor staring at us from her porch down there if I stand here much longer.”
Such a Mitchell thing, concerning himself with every aspect of a situation, looking for negative consequences. And yet, fitting that him doing so got him exactly what he needed from Dove in that moment.
“Please,” she said, “come in.” There was no… Dove in her tone. Just propriety. He took note.
Followed her into the room just off the door.
A living space with a couch, a chair. A table with a small television set.
And a full wall of bookcases that had books lining it, books on the shelves in front of other books, books sideways on the edges of shelves.
Books stacked in rows on both sides of it.
He wanted to smile. But couldn’t. Not without Dove sharing the moment with him.
So he sat on the chair, lowering her satchel to the wood floor by his feet. She sat, too. On the end of the couch closest to him. He took that as a good sign.
“It was Oscar Earnhardt, Dove,” he told her. And then, as quickly as he could, he got the rest out there for her to access it all when she was ready.
“Once I knew you were okay, I was sitting in the waiting room until I could see you, and Eli started asking me about everything I could remember from the crash.”
He stopped, watching to make sure she was up to hearing such details, and saw her watching him with an intentness he hadn’t seen from her before. “Eli was at the trauma center?” she asked.
“Of course.” The answer rote to him. But to someone like Dove, who didn’t know that family came running in times of tragedy…
“He was there, first to see how you were and—” he added something he never would have admitted before Dove, or to anyone but her “—to see how I was holding up…then to get all the details he could. The entire local ABI office and of course Shelby police department were working on the accident.”
She swallowed. Blinked. And though his mind told him to stop, to give her time, he trusted something deeper and kept on talking.
“I remembered the truck, remembered having seen it before, at the bar…the day we saw Oscar. Welding put out an APB on his car and person, found him at the closet clinic to Shelby, compelled a DNA sample and had forensics start running the rapid DNA. Welding called another officer to sit on Earnhardt until he could be booked and headed back here to pull up every description of every crime scene, checked them against Oscar’s known whereabouts during each incident, and by the time Oscar was stitched up and his broken leg had been set with a cast, Welding had the warrant for his arrest and the prosecutor standing by to press charges. ”
He’d skipped some interim stuff. But she had the gist of it.
“But…why?” Mouth open, she was staring at him. And for a second there, he had a glimpse of the woman he’d slowly begun to understand had changed him forever.
“First place, he was drunk—partially why he escaped the crash with no internal or head injuries. But after a few minutes with Peter Welding, he confessed to the rest.” Mitchell paused before addressing her question.
And then, when he meant to state the facts, said, “He was a man not in touch with deeper truths, Dove. He didn’t understand that the power to change his life came from within himself. ”
She blinked. Twice. Hard. Trying not to cry.
The conclusion was pretty obvious. What he didn’t get was why Dove would hold back tears.
It wasn’t her way. And he said, “He blamed everything bad that his drinking had brought onto him on you and your dad. Your father for firing him because how could he? He drank right alongside him. And then you because his wife was your client and he says you filled her head with crap. If you hadn’t done, she’d never have kicked him out or filed for divorce. ”
Why he was just putting it right out, almost as though placing blame himself, he had no idea. He just had to get it done. Have her hear it all at once because she was going to find out at trial, anyway.
“His wife… I never gave her any advice at all,” Dove said, as though that was the key point in the moment.
“She came to the studio for exercise, quiet exercise, as she called it. I didn’t even know she’d filed for divorce until after Dad told me.
I knew she was troubled. I told her I was available if there was anything I could do—more because of Dad’s friendship with Oscar than anything else.
But she said that Oscar needed our friendship more than she did.
And that…” she paused, frowned then said, “…she’d gotten far more from me than she’d paid for.
” With a blank look, she stared at Mitchell, as though he had answers she couldn’t access.
“I’m guessing she learned how to find her inner peace through your example,” he told her.
And then, for no logical reason whatsoever said, “I know I have, Dove. Before you came barreling into my office I was living a two-dimensional life. You showed me that the way I feel matters as much as how well I think. That trusting one’s instincts matters as much or more as facts.
That loving is far more than doing. It’s living through heart as much as mind. ”
He was beginning to sound like a damned greeting card.
And had one more thing to say. “You mentioned once that you were led to me so that I could help you. Well, you were only partially right, Dove St. James. You were also led to me so that you could help me.”
She started to sob then. Big, painful, ugly sounds that, strangely enough, sounded a bit like heaven to him.
A heaven that acknowledged pain and suffering, that wouldn’t stop challenges and couldn’t always spare tragedy but that would be there always.
With warmth, a steady hand, healing. And more joy than there would ever be sorrow.
And he had Dove to thank for showing him it was there.
She’d come close to losing her way. Would never have believed there could be a time when she’d be unable to access understanding. Unable to feel. To believe.
And yet…even then…her spirits had been there. She hadn’t had to believe in them. They’d been there anyway. In the form of Mitchell Colton.
Lying with him in his bed that night, Dove couldn’t find the passion for lovemaking, but she found everything she needed. A safe place to grieve. To be. To breathe.
Her head on his chest, her arm around him, his arms holding her close, was as close to heaven as she was going to get in that lifetime.
“Right before the crash, my father told me that I should have just let him die and be with his wife.” The memory stabbed her, but not as deeply as it had when she’d first heard the words.
“He got his wish,” she said softly. Wishing she understood better, but knowing that, in some space, at some time, she would.
She’d had a dark night of the soul. Her mother had taught her about them.
She just hadn’t recognized what was happening at the time.
Maybe due to the crash. To the shock of losing her father on top of everything else.
To an emotional blow out that prevented her from accessing her cortex.
And maybe a dark night wasn’t really dark without that total separation.
Because within the darkness, light shone the brightest.
“I want more than just sex,” she said. It was truth. And she wouldn’t deny it its say. She was who she was. Probably more so after all she’d been through. Had yet to get through.
Her father’s funeral. Cleaning out his house. Selling his business.
“Yeah, well, you have no idea how relieved I am to hear you say that.” Mitchell’s response was so unexpected and sincere-sounding she raised herself up to look him in the eye.
“I love you, Dove St. James. I want more than just sex. I want a lifetime. Forever. However we can make it work. Marriage, no marriage. I don’t care. Just together. A couple. For the rest of our lives.”
She didn’t try to stop the tears that fell.
The effort would be ludicrous. But she did smile through them.
A day ago, she might have struggled with his declaration.
Needing to meditate over it. Right then, after suffering the dark night, she just trusted.
More deeply, more fervently than she ever had before.
“You don’t need to worry about the forever part, Mitchell,” she told him, meaning far more than the single lifetime he spoke about. “I knew almost from the beginning that we were destined to travel through life together.”
“You did not,” he said, frowning. “You were the one who said no commitment, no expectations.”
“I didn’t say I knew we’d be lovers or a couple. Just that we were soul mates.”
Shaking his head and grinning, he said, “Soul mates. I can see I have a whole lot more to learn.”
He might have. And might not. Mitchell was Mitchell. The world needed him.
But not as much as she did.
And that was as it was meant to be.
“I just figured something out,” she told him.
“What’s that?”
“The deepest level of truth and learning isn’t inside yourself. It’s in joining your deepest heart with another’s.”
“It’s called home, Dove.”
She kissed him then. Needing more than words. More, even, than understanding.
She needed to rest. To heal.
Because finally, she’d come home.