Chapter 13 #2
Steel watched as Tracy sniffled and used her coat sleeve to wipe her nose.
At the end of the day, he didn’t care what Tracy did or did not believe about him.
He would never see her again after this moment.
But she did deserve to know the monster she’d let into her life and her bed.
“Shaw wasn’t the man you thought he was.
I’ll have my Tech send you over a file. It’s up to you to read it or trash it. Makes no difference to me.”
Jenna had a hard time reaching for her phone.
It was sitting on her end table, still on the charger from the night before.
Today had been a bad day. She wasn’t in pain, but no matter what position she was in, lying down or sitting up, she felt like she was lying on a hard, unforgiving bed of pebbles.
After many failed attempts to relax, she ended up on her back with a pile of pillows around her for support.
She’d been sleeping on and off, trying to escape the discomfort.
Lilly had been in numerous times with food, drinks, and just to sit with her while Ollie was at school.
After he came home, he used her chair lift to bring himself up the stairs before he hobbled over on his crutches to be with her.
Only Ollie could make a cast and crutches look fantastical.
She hadn’t been paying attention to their credit card statements the past few months, but to be honest, if it made Ollie feel better, she didn’t care what it cost her.
But Ollie had left to do homework and Lilly was downstairs doing something when Jenna’s phone rang.
Since Lilly had put out a message to the club that Jenna needed rest today, she could only assume it was Jack calling her.
Frustration at her slow-moving body made her cringe and gasp as her finger tips just barely brushed the device.
She wasn’t wearing her watch and her Kindle, which Lilly had set up for her on the attachable bed arm and with the page-turning remote earlier, didn’t accept phone calls.
Her phone went quiet. Jenna sagged, her chin wobbling that she’d missed the call.
After his call two mornings ago, he’d been texting her on and off. She wasn’t sure if he’d sent any messages today because she had yet to be on her phone.
“…not your fucking operator, Jackie! Let me see. She’s probably sleeping.
” Lilly’s voice echoed up the stairs, and it was a minute or so later that she walked through Jenna’s bedroom door.
Lilly met her eyes and must have registered Jenna’s frustration because her anger at her brother immediately evaporated.
“Oh, dear.” Coming forward, Lilly suddenly stopped and her face darkened as she said into the phone, “Well if you were here where you’re supposed to be, Jack Duncan, you’d know the answer to that yourself.
” There was a pause as Lilly listened and then she rolled her eyes.
“Give me a minute to get her situated and then she’ll call you back. ”
Jenna could still hear the gravel of Jack’s voice speaking as Lilly hung up the phone. Approaching the bed, Lilly put her hands on her hips. “Really? Of all the men on the planet, you had to choose him?”
Jenna’s lips twitched. “What other men on the planet?”
“I see you’re feeling better towards him.”
It was a fine line, but ever since Pastor Melrose had had her scream and yell at God, Jenna had been feeling more centered.
She was not okay. She was an emotional wreck and her body was in turmoil, but there was something different.
Though it was finite, its very presence gave her the possibility of hope for a future.
It might not be a future like what she’d had or even one with much light in it, but its existence had seemed impossible only a week ago.
Jack’s phone call two days ago had cemented the fact that, good or bad, light or dark, that future would still have him in it.
She was no longer thinking of him in a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde mentality.
There was no Steel versus Jack, the soldier versus the husband.
Because regardless of his crimes, his darkness, or his mentality, he was hers.
Always had been, always would be.
This was the hardest moment in their life that they had to get through, but they would get through it. While Jenna didn’t see the path yet, she knew that God would present it to her when she was ready.
“Do you want to hold up the phone or should I go borrow Ollie’s headphones?” Lilly asked, picking Jenna’s phone up off the charger.
Jenna tipped her chin to the wall across from the bed. “Melanie’s should be in the top box.” She could see the label of Electronics from where she lay on the mattress.
The club had gone up to Melanie’s dorm room and cleaned her things out a couple of days after the funeral.
Most of her things were still in the boxes, with a few exceptions.
The baby blanket Jenna had knitted for her was now on Jenna and Jack’s bed; picture frames of family vacations and holidays were on Jack’s nightstand facing Jenna’s side of the bed; and Melanie’s favorite sandalwood lotion pump bottle was now in easy reach of Jenna.
Using Melanie’s things wasn’t Jenna’s way of recycling or trying to reclaim them. They brought her mild comfort in her grief, both in memory and in prayer. She needed Melanie’s things so she wouldn’t forget.
After Lilly retrieved the headphones, she brought them over to the bed. “Do you need anything else before you call him back?”
Jenna knew what she was asking. She both hated and appreciated the question, because no one enjoyed having to be changed like a newborn by their sister-in-law.
At least there had been something sensual and intimate when Jack had had to take care of her in that way.
With Lilly, it was just downright embarrassing.
But it was what needed to be done, so they both endured and did what they had to do.
“Just some water,” Jenna answered. If Jack were here, he could just carry her to the bathroom as needed.
Neither Lilly nor Tessa had the strength to do that, and Jenna valued the lives of the club members too much to ask any of them for assistance.
Carter or Jordan would have been able to, but neither one was around anymore.
Jordan was in Annecy, France, and Carter was back home taking care of a two year old and his pregnant wife.
Lilly picked up the cup that was on the nightstand and helped Jenna hold it as she sipped from the straw. Once done, Lilly connected the headphones, placed them over Jenna’s head, and then dialed Jack from Jenna’s phone. She left the door cracked open on her way out.
“Jenna! What the fuck is going on?”
There was something comforting about Jack’s worried anger, always had been.
There was nothing like the knowledge that her man would tear the world apart for her.
Jack was a protector, which was one of the reasons Jenna was working on forgiving him for his absence.
He needed to right a wrong, and frankly, Jenna had no desire to live in a world where her daughter’s killer also breathed.
They needed closure, even if that closure wasn’t within the limits of the law.
“I’m f—”
“So help me God, Jen, if you say, ‘I am fine,’ I will lose the very tentative hold I have left on my sanity.”
Jenna clamped her mouth closed. He had a point there.
Instead, she told him the truth, revealing the challenges she’d been facing recently with mobility.
A common misconception of MS relapses were that they were short episodes, lasting minutes to a few hours.
In reality, though, they lasted for days, even weeks, at a time.
Certain symptoms, once they appeared, never went away.
Jenna’s active relapse in the hospital when Jack had told her about Melanie’s murder had not been a pseudo-exacerbation. It had been the threshold, the point of no return that they’d been avoiding since receiving her diagnosis. Her symptoms were better, but she had her good days and her bad.
Today was just a bad one.
“Fuck, baby…” She could hear the anguish in Jack’s voice. She didn’t know where he was, but she imagined him leaning up against a door frame with his head resting on his arm.
There wasn’t anything Jenna or Jack could say to change her condition, so Jenna asked, “Where are you? Did you figure out what Shaw meant?”
Jenna knew that she would never learn what happened to Shaw, and she was okay with that.
She didn’t need or want to know. All that mattered was that bastard wasn’t alive to terrorize her family anymore.
But the idea that Melanie’s killer was still out there?
That bothered her. Because it opened up a new wound of an entirely new mystery of who else wanted Melanie dead.
Jack was quiet for a heartbeat before he answered, “Shaw wasn’t in the state when Melanie died, Jen. It wasn’t him.”
Gutted at the news, Jenna had to remind herself to breathe. “You’re sure?”
She wasn’t even sure why she asked. Of course Jack was sure. He wouldn’t have told her otherwise.
“He was over seven hours away, with a woman, the night Melanie was murdered. I spoke with her. It wasn’t him.”
Jenna breathed in deeply through her nose and let it out slowly through her mouth. She didn’t know what she felt about the knowledge that Shaw had been with a woman—she assumed in a romantic sense—and giving him a perfect alibi. Disappointed made her cringe, but it was the best description she had.