Finding Jessie: A Mystery Romance (24 page)

“You know most of it now.” She paused. “You don’t want to know all of it, what I had to do to stay alive.”

He swallowed hard.

In a hoarse voice, she said, “Take the worst-case scenario in your head and multiply it by more than a decade.”

“Unimaginable.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Want to come upstairs? I’ll hold you, Jessie. Just hold you. I know how that brings you comfort and makes you feel loved and secure.”

“It does, but unfortunately, it doesn’t give me answers to life’s hard questions.”

“I’ll do anything I can to bring you happiness. Even if you don’t know answers to questions that you need to know, we can create a life together, Jessie. A real life, not thousands of lies piled up to cover the trauma. Every day, I will make sure that you are loved.”

“You already do that, Sam.”

“I try. Just please promise you won’t say it’s not enough,” Sam said. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“Sam! Don’t make me promise things right now!”

His eyes shimmered with unshed tears. “I can’t lose you, Jessie.”

“I can’t lose you, either. I need a little space, though.”

“How much space?” he asked, afraid.

“You upstairs.” She said, “I’m going to stay downstairs and read some kids’ books with happy endings. Book therapy, you know?”

He nodded, relieved. “Do you read children’s books because you were robbed of your childhood and now you pretend that the books were your real childhood?”

“You’re pretty smart, Sam. Even I didn’t recognize that was what I was doing until you just now said it.”

“Maybe I should be your therapist after all.”

“I’d rather have you for my lover. My best friend.”

He kissed her forehead. “Once in a while, you should read some age-appropriate books and just enjoy them as entertainment, not world building.”

After a few moments, she said, “I can’t decide whether you’re passive-aggressive or just doling out tough love.”

“I have to do more for you than say, ‘Oh, poor Jessie.’ Because that only goes so far. You have to change the way you handle your past or you’ll just keep using that same revolving door of all the familiar coping mechanisms that turn out to be mistakes for surviving the present.”

“Like when I leave people and places after I confess my terrible secrets?”

“Yeah, you gotta stop leaving when people love you, even when they know the truth. Do you think you don’t deserve to be loved?”

She raised her eyebrows. “It’s hard when you have been conditioned to believe that you are less than nothing during your formative years. That you are just a…hole.”

“God help me, I want to find those people and put them in prison. You deserve to be loved. Let yourself believe that. And live it.”

“You’re an amazing man, Sam Gold.”

“Oh, I’m quite imperfect. I’m more logical than emotional.” He twisted a bit toward her more and winced.

She dried her tears. “I can tell your back’s hurting. Why don’t you go lie down upstairs and I’ll come up in a while? I want to stay down here and read an age-appropriate book.”

He smiled. “I’m so proud of you, Jessie. You’re very tough.”

“I have to be or I’ll spend the rest of my life in a straitjacket.”

“I would never let that happen to you.”

“Thank you. What should I read?”

He opened a cabinet and took out a cardboard box. “You can read whatever you want, but if you are interested, there are copies in here of my first novel, a gothic romance with a happy ending. I wrote it years ago under a woman’s pen name, but it got good reviews.”

“Please,” she said. “I’d love to read it.”

He handed her a copy of
Heiress of the Moors
.

“Thank you.”

He kissed her on the forehead and went upstairs.

That evening, Jessie moved off the couch and went upstairs, too.

He was still awake, lying across her side of the bed. “I warmed up your side,” he said, moving over.

“I loved your book, especially the end. All the terrible stuff the heroine went through—it ended just how it should have. Happily, and with the bad guys reaping the justice they deserved.”

He smiled as she climbed in bed with him and snuggled up. “Glad you liked it.”

“I’d like to read all of your books.”

“Great. I can make that happen.” He cleared his throat. “I can’t sleep because I have to ask you something important,” he said.

“In the middle of the night?”

“Afraid so. First of all, I know that when you’re cornered, you tell a lie.”

She frowned. “I won’t lie to you anymore, now that you know the big lie that started it all: that I don’t even know who I am. What do you want to know?”

“I know you said that the first time you saw me was at the flea market in New Hampshire but we didn’t meet then. When we met at the estate sale and tussled over that book, was that meeting, in
any
way, contrived by you?”

“What?”

“Did you take one of my business cards off my sales table in New Hampshire and then you looked at my web site contact information? It shows my location as a post office box in Port Sapphire, Massachusetts. So you knew the city where I lived.”

She was silent.

Sam, stop!
said the angel on his shoulder.

But he plowed on. “And then, did you show up where you knew I would be in my hometown at the biggest vintage book sale of the year?”

She sighed.

“And then, did you fabricate that ridiculous drama over the book as some sort of a ruse to get to know me?”

She slid out of his arms. “You’re such a jerk. I can’t even believe you asked me all that…not
tonight
.”

“I’m sorry. I was just wondering how it came to be that you ran into me that
second
time at the estate sale, when I had never noticed you before.”

“Sam, you approached
me
at that estate sale. I didn’t approach
you
.”

“Oh, that’s right. What am I saying? I’m so sorry, Jessie.”

“You should be.”

“Would you please forgive me?”

“Always.” She reclined on the pillows, staring at the ceiling. “I want to tell you now, Sam, about that phrase that upset me.”

“That phrase that you didn’t ‘choose’ that life?”

“That’s the one. When I was a prisoner, they used to try to make me ‘choose’ what they would do to me that night. If I didn’t answer, then they chose for me. It was a complete psychological mind game of my pleading and negotiation versus their levels of brutality. I will spare you the details because you would not survive knowing them. You’d have a heart attack if you realized what I’ve been through.”

“Oh my God, Jessie.” He thought of the web of scars on her back. “I’m so sorry. What can I do or say at this point?”

“Don’t stop caring about the truth. Don’t stop caring about me. And please, don’t let me lash out at you and hurt you because I’m hurting. Above all, don’t stop holding me accountable for what I say and do.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Although I hate talking about this stuff, clearing the air is the right thing to do. You should know what you are dealing with in our relationship. Our real one. Not the made-up fairy tale romance.”

“You got it, Jessie. I’ll do it. All of that. Anything for you.”

They didn’t make love, but he held her hand almost all night. She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t cry either. It was as if she was numb. And
thinking.

He couldn’t figure out how to fix this. Despite her reassurances, he had this sick feeling that he had betrayed
her
by making her deal with the past, head-on. He was no therapist. He just loved her. And he was a big fan of the truth.

In the morning, when he woke up, he reached for Jessie.

But she was
gone…

Chapter Seventeen

There was a handwritten letter on the kitchen counter under his coffee cup. The first two sentences on it were:

Dear Sam,

Yes, I totally stalked you.

He groaned out loud.

I’m such an idiot,
he thought.
Why did I even bring it up last night?!

Underneath that confession, she had written:

Your soft brown eyes were so kind. I loved the way they crinkled at the corners when you smiled. I liked the selection of literature on your sales tables and how you talked about the books with your customers. Rich or poor, educated or not, you treated people like they were special and not just because they were potential customers. I was impressed with your positive interaction with people. Even if they didn’t buy anything, you made them feel good.

On the virtue of those things, but mostly your kindness, I fell in love with you that day in New Hampshire, long before we ever spoke a word.

Since the first time I saw you, I looked for you in every used book sales venue in New England. It was just dumb luck that you approached me first at that estate sale. I knew you were there, but when I saw you, I was too scared to approach you. I ran away to the children’s book aisle and then
you
came up to
me
. The rest is history. I don’t even know how to ask you to forgive me this.

Always, Jessie

p.s. I also lied about having my tubes tied. After I escaped my captors, I was diagnosed with a long-untreated pelvic infection that caused me to need a hysterectomy when I was in temporary foster care. I don’t have any diseases. I get tested every year at free clinics.

p.p.s. You should know how much I enjoy our love life. It’s my beautiful redemption. You are.

Sam immediately phoned Linda and told her that Jessie had run away and had left him a letter.

“Damn it! She was fine when I left. What did you
say
to her last night?” Linda demanded.

“I asked her if she had stalked me.”

“Are you really that egotistical?”

“Hey! She
did
stalk me.”

“What? I don’t believe it. Read me that letter right now.”

He did.