Chapter 7
Luke pulled into an empty space in front of Hollow House and paused.
Jenna sat on the front steps waiting for him.
At the sight of her, his hand froze on the gearshift, the truck still in Drive.
He didn’t want that reaction.
Anger surged through him—anger at himself for feeling anything.
Yet his mind tumbled back in time. He remembered the first time he’d ever seen her.
He’d been at a fundraiser in Charlottesville when he noticed a woman laughing at something across the room. Her whole face had lit up, unguarded and completely unself-conscious.
He’d never in his life seen anyone look so alive. He knew before he crossed the room that he had to talk to her.
At first, she’d been standoffish. Politely and pleasantly standoffish, which was somehow worse than if she’d been rude. When he’d offered his number, she hadn’t taken it.
He’d thought about her for two weeks afterward. Then, as if fate had intervened, he’d walked into a restaurant to pick up some dinner and found her sitting alone.
He’d taken that as a sign.
She’d been standoffish that time too. But after some banter, she’d finally loosened up. By the end of the evening, she gave him her number.
But even with that, it had taken three months of texts and phone calls before she’d agreed to a date.
Luke told Caleb at the time that she was the definition of hard to get. Caleb had told him to move on.
Luke hadn’t been able to.
He’d known Jenna would be worth the wait.
He looked at Jenna again—at this woman he’d married, this stranger she’d become.
Then he braced himself for their coming conversation.
Jenna was on her feet before Luke’s truck fully stopped.
She forced herself to sit back down. Don’t look desperate or like you’ve been counting down the minutes.
However, she had been counting the minutes. She’d been counting every one of them since she’d come outside.
Even the dark sedan across the street hadn’t distracted her . . . well, maybe a little. Then she’d reminded herself that she was being paranoid, and she’d tried to let it go.
As Jenna watched Luke in his truck, she remained where she was.
She’d rehearsed this a hundred times. In the shower, getting dressed, sitting on these steps for the past fifteen minutes while the town woke up around her. She’d tried out words, discarded them, and then she’d tried others.
Nothing sounded right.
She knew what she needed to tell him—not everything, not yet, but enough. Enough to make him understand that she hadn’t left because she wanted to. Enough to make him believe that walking away from him and their children had been the hardest thing she’d ever done.
She just didn’t know if he’d believe her.
If their positions were reversed, she wasn’t sure she’d believe him either.
She looked up at the sky, at the pale blue above the rooftops. Then she did the only thing she knew to do when she’d exhausted everything else. She prayed.
Lord, I don’t know how this is going to go. I don’t know if Luke will ever forgive me or if I deserve for him to even give me that chance. But I need You in this conversation. I can’t do this alone. Please watch over us and give me the right words . . .
She whispered “amen” then exhaled slowly.
Her faith had been Luke’s gift to her . . . in a roundabout way, at least. It was only once they’d begun dating that she’d started attending church. She’d done so more to understand Luke at first than anything else.
Somewhere along the way, going to church and reading her Bible had stopped being about understanding Luke and started being about something much larger than either of them. Her relationship with God had become the glue that held her together.
Throughout everything that had happened, she hadn’t lost her faith. If anything, leaving had driven her deeper into it. There had been nights when God was the only hope she had left to hold onto.
The same thing could be said for her right now.
Finally, Luke climbed from his truck.
She watched him cross toward her—that steady, unhurried walk she’d spent so many years memorizing.
Her heart twisted.
He looked tired, like he hadn’t slept. She wondered if he’d lain awake the same way she had, going over and over the same ground until exhaustion finally won.
She came down the steps to meet him.
They stopped in front of each other on the sidewalk near the truck, two feet apart yet close enough that she could see the slight wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
Neither of them spoke. Jenna thought she had a hundred words ready, yet now she couldn’t locate a single one.
From the look on Luke’s face, he was having the same problem.
For a moment they both just stood there in the cool morning air with everything unspoken between them like a third person taking up space on the sidewalk.
She opened her mouth.
Before she could speak, a gunshot cracked through the stillness of the morning.