Chapter 17
Gwen watched in terror as Colin collapsed, the import of the loud bang only now registering on her consciousness. “Colin!” she screamed, the wrenching sound of her voice like a stranger’s as she reached for the door handle and moved to get out.
“Stay in the car!” Becky grabbed Gwen’s arm and yanked her back to the seat.
“I have to help him!”
Rowan was frantically unzipping his luggage. “I have a gun. I have a gun.” He pulled it out and continued rifling through the bag. “Bullets. Bullets. Shit!” He found the box and loaded the weapon quickly.
Why did Rowan have a gun? Wasn’t he just on an airplane?
Gwen held out her hand. “Give it to me.”
“No.”
“I’m a better shot than you are!”
Rowan stared back at her, frozen with indecision. Another shot rang out along the beach.
“Give me the gun!” Gwen yelled.
He slapped it into her hand and she was out the door, running toward the scene on the boardwalk, weapon drawn. The noise of the surf covered her footfalls as she quickly cut the distance in half and the shooter advanced on the bench, his back still to her.
Jerry was slumped at an unnatural angle, unmoving, but Colin was now behind the bench and Jerry’s eerily still form. He must have moved there when she was getting the gun.
Close enough now to get off a shot, she stopped running and trained her weapon at the shooter just as he rounded the bench toward Colin and saw her.
Gwen pulled the trigger, her destiny hanging in the balance as the bullets made their way across the sand-covered boardwalk. The instant became a moment that stretched out and held, seagulls squawking in the distance, allowing her a glimpse at what might come to be.
She could see herself and Colin, sitting on the porch swing at her house, love a living presence between them. She felt the warmth of sunshine on her arm as if she was really sitting there, and a contentedness in her heart like she’d never before experienced.
His brown eyes laughed into hers and she smiled. A breeze blew so sharply that she turned around, Colin disappearing in an instant. The sunshine still warmed her skin on a glorious summer day, but Gwen was alone on the swing, gently rocking. David stood before her on the porch.
“What do you want, Gwen?” he asked.
“I want Colin,” she whispered, her heart singing with the admission. “I want to be a wife again. I want to be a mother.”
David smiled at her, and she was filled with understanding. Her story would continue, and continue to be attached to and honor this man, even as she came to love another.
The warmth of the sunshine turned hotter and hotter, becoming a searing heat that burned her arm.
Gwen looked down and saw blood, then raised her head to watch the shooter fall backwards to the ground.
Then Becky was there, saying something Gwen couldn’t hear, and Rowan ran to the bench to check on his brother’s unmoving form.