Forever After (39 page)

He stumbled and went to his knees beside her, telling himself no one could possibly look that beautiful in death. But it was so cold. And how long had she been out here exposed to the elements. How on earth had she gotten up here?

He reached a hand to touch her cheek. She had to be alive. She
had
to.

Please, God.

Sparky nosed her shoulder with a whimper that gave him chills.

“Sparky—?” Her voice was barely a whisper, but Lucas had never heard a more beautiful sound.

“Jenna? Wake up!” He patted her face gently, and when he got no response, he slapped her cheek.

“Ow!” She came up fighting, groping at thin air. Her eyelids fluttered open and she sank back to the ground. Her gaze flitted, then seemed to focus on his face. She put a hand up, as if it were an ordinary day and she was giving a friendly wave.

“Are you okay? Jenna? Talk to me?” He shrugged out of his coat and draped it over her, tucking it around her shoulders.

She gave him the slightest of smiles, then wriggled a hand out of the shroud of his coat and reached out, grasping for him. She caught hold of his sleeve.

“Where does it hurt, Jenna?”

She looked up at him, rubbing her eyes with her freed hand, as if she might be seeing things. “Lucas? Is that you?”

Her tongue seemed thick and he could barely make out her words.

“I’m here,” he assured her. “Everything’s okay. You’re going to be fine.”

She grabbed onto his arm and tried to sit up, wincing. “My leg. But … it’s okay. I can walk. I’m okay. It … it just hurts.”

“No. You stay where you are. We need to check you out before we move you.” He looked back down the ravine to where he could just see the trunk of her car breaching the snow. “How did you get up here?”

He dialed 911 on his cell phone and told the dispatcher how to find them.

Before he could stop her, Jenna struggled to a sitting position. “I thought … I don’t know what I thought. Oh, Luc …” She began to weep. “I don’t know if I can ever give you babies. What if I can’t? You should have babies—you should be a father.”

Was she delirious? He didn’t know what to make of her rambling. “Shhh … It’s okay, Jen. Don’t cry. We … we’ll worry about babies later. For now everything’s okay. You’re safe. I’m right here.” He reached for her hands and examined her fingers, checked the tip of her nose. Amazingly, she didn’t seem to be suffering from frostbite. Maybe she hadn’t been out in the elements as long as he feared.

He went around behind her and wrapped his arms around her, trying to warm her, encouraged by the fact that she was at least conscious—even if she was delirious.

“I couldn’t get out. Of the car.” She began to shiver, her teeth chattering. “My legs were stuck.”

“Then … how did you get up here? And
why
did you get out of the car? Why didn’t you stay where it was warm?”

She ducked her head and gave an awkward laugh. “I … had to pee.”

“But why did you come all the way up here?”

“I thought … if I got closer to the road somebody would see me.”

“The road’s the other way.”

“I just … followed the lights.” She pointed to the north.

He followed her gaze. A cell tower blinked on the horizon.

“Why didn’t you call for help?”

“I don’t know where my phone is. I … I was talking to you when—” She gave a little gasp and a look of horror drained her face of color. “I think I might have hit something.
Someone
?”

She told him about seeing the shadow in the road, swerving to miss it.

“The highway patrol said they haven’t had any fatalities.” He breathed a prayer of thanks that this woman hadn’t changed that statistic.

“Oh …” Jenna rubbed her forehead. “I remember—I think it was … a moose.”

“A moose? In Missouri?” She was definitely delirious.

“No. Not a moose.” Her words slurred slightly and she gave a lazy smile. “I meant a deer. A big one. With antlers.”

“Shhh. You just rest.” He tucked his coat tighter around her, worried that she seemed a little out of it. Except for her knee, there were no signs of trauma, but maybe she’d hit her head when the car crashed.

Sparky barked and raced to the ledge overlooking the Interstate.

Lucas heard voices near the highway and relief turned his bones to jelly. “Somebody’s here to help you now.”

“Sparky?” She leaned forward, looking to where the dog was standing at attention.

“He’s right here. What’s wrong?”

She looked up at him, and a slow smile started at one corner of her mouth and turned into a full-fledged grin. “I never … I never in my life thought I’d be so glad to see a big dog.”

Laughing, Luc gathered her into his arms and covered her face with kisses.

It amazed her all over again how different this place appeared to her eyes now …

47

Thursday, May 7

J
enna filled the teakettle with fresh water and put it on the burner. She looked across the counter at the cozy living room in the trailer house,
her
house. It amazed her all over again how different this place appeared to her eyes now from the way it had that first day Luc had brought her out here.

With fresh paint on the walls and some of the curtains and furniture from the Brookside house, the place actually looked quite charming. Outside the wide living room windows, the forest wore a hundred shades of green, and pink and white dogwood petals fluttered in the breeze like tiny garments on a twig clothesline. She couldn’t deny that she was very happy here.

Of course Lucas Vermontez had far more to do with that than any house. She smiled at the thought of him and knew he would give her fits if he thought she’d given him credit for the new joy that welled up in her when she least expected it.

“I’m a great guy and all that,” he’d say with that crooked smile she loved so much. “But you give credit where credit’s due.”

He was right, of course. Her newfound faith never ceased to delight her. She touched the necklace at her throat. She’d always liked that the goldfish represented prosperity and wealth. But now she decided it meant something far more precious to her. The symbol of her new life. An
ichthys,
Lucas had called it. He’d redeemed the jewelry’s meaning for her.

Redeemed.
When she thought about all the years she’d ignored God—and all she’d missed out on because of it—she wanted to cry. But she’d been going to church with Luc the past few weeks, and only last Sunday the pastor had talked about regrets, and how they served no purpose unless they helped you move ahead to do the thing God had created you to do.

She wasn’t exactly sure yet what that thing was for Jenna Morgan, but Lucas reminded her that figuring out God’s plan wouldn’t be an overnight discovery.

One thing she was sure of: she hoped Lucas Vermontez was part of that plan.

They’d grown closer than ever over the last few months. And as they shared their stories with each other, she had finally gotten up the nerve one night to confess her deepest secrets to him—about the babies she’d lost, about not loving Zachary the way she should have.

It was one of the first warm days of spring, and they’d sat out on her front stoop late into the evening, listening to the crickets chirp and the birds sing in the green canopy over their heads. She sat on the step below Luc, and he put his arms around her, resting his chin on the top of her head. She told him how she’d learned to love her little place in the country. And then something clicked and she knew the time was right to tell him.

He’d listened in silence, his expression revealing his shock. When she finished, he pulled away from her and struggled to his feet. He went to
sit on the opposite edge of the porch and stayed there, with his head down, for a long time.

She wanted desperately to reach out for him, to take his hand and feel his pulse against her fingers. But she let him be.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” he said finally, not looking up.

“I’m sorry, Luc.” Trembling, she whispered, “I should have.”

“I wish you would’ve. I don’t like secrets.”

“I know. I’m so sorry.”

He stared off to the west, where the sun was dropping off the edge of the horizon.

She swallowed hard and tried to imagine what her life would be like if she lost him. A sick feeling overwhelmed her. “I know you’ve always wanted a house full of kids.”

“I’ve always wanted a wife who truly loved me, too.”

“Oh, Luc … I would. I
do
. I love you.” It wasn’t how she’d wanted to tell him for the first time. But there it was. Another secret revealed.

He studied her as if trying to decide if he could believe anything she said.

“With Zach—oh, Luc, I didn’t know
how
to love anybody then. Not even myself. I’m different now.”

“I know you are,” he finally said. “I know.” But she didn’t hear the conviction she longed to hear in his voice.

He’d gone home not long after, and she spent an agonizing night begging God not to take him away from her.

But when she got off work the next evening, he was sitting on her stoop again, waiting for her. He held out his arms and she fell into them.

“Thank you for trusting me with your secrets, Jen. I know that wasn’t easy.”

Again, they’d talked late into the night. He’d struggled with the things she’d confessed. He wanted to know she would never keep secrets from him again. “And I won’t lie to you, Jenna. I want babies. And lots
of them. But there are other ways to get babies. And I’m willing to trust God on that one.”

Her heart had soared. He was talking about a future with her. And he’d forgiven her. She never should have doubted.

The doorbell pulled her from her reverie. Luke was here. She ran to let him in, her heart hitching the way it always did at the sight of him.

He stood on the rickety porch wearing a grin as wide as the Missouri sky. It took her a minute to register that something was squirming beneath the Daylight Donuts bag in his hand.

She took the bag from him, and a brown puppy with floppy ears wriggled to get free.

“What in the world …?”

Still grinning, Lucas slipped inside and set the pup on the tiled entryway, closing the door behind him. He pushed the dog’s hindquarters to the floor. “Sit, boy. Be nice now. Jen’s not a fan of your kind.”

She tried to look stern but couldn’t pull it off. “What is he?”

“He’s yours,” Luc said, mischief in his eyes.

“Very funny.”

He turned serious. “He’s a chocolate Lab. I bought him from a guy up in Fenton. Just picked him up this morning. He’s my next training project.”

“What’s his name?”

“Smoke.” Lucas looked like a proud papa.

The puppy looked up at her with droopy eyes. “He looks more like a Mud.”

“Hey! Be nice.”

She knelt and gingerly touched the pup’s head.

“He won’t bite,” Lucas said.

For Luc’s sake—and only for his sake—she made a show of stroking the soft mink-colored fur. The little guy
was
pretty cute—for a dog.

Since his graduation from the program in Tulsa, Luc had been talking
with Andrea Morley about putting Sparky to work with her fire investigation agency. He’d also gotten Sparky a gig next week at the school where Garrett Edmonds taught. Luc would be demonstrating Sparky’s accelerant detection skills for the fifth grade class.

The kettle whistled and she jumped up to get it. “You want tea?”

“Sure.” He picked up the pup. “Let me go get his carrier.”

He came back a minute later with the pup in the crate and a rolled up newspaper in hand.

“What’s that? Puppy toilet paper?”

Luc shook his head, but she didn’t get the smile she expected. Instead, he shook out the paper and spread the front page open on the kitchen table.

Jenna brought steaming mugs and set them on the table, curious about the news.

Woman Confesses to Setting Arson Fires,
the headline in the
Courier
read.

“She gave a full confession.”

Her eyes widened. “The woman you found outside the shelter?” That morning seemed like a lifetime ago now.

“I stopped by the station and they said it was in the Springfield papers this morning, too.”

“Did she say why? Was it just to protest the shelter?”

“I suppose you could say that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember the guy who assaulted that sixteen-year-old girl—back at the old shelter?”

“James Friar, right? He was still in jail for that, last I heard.”

He nodded. “This woman is Friar’s mother.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I can’t be sure, but I think I saw her hanging around outside the shelter that night they had to evacuate. They say arsonists like to stick around the scene of the fire to see the chaos they’ve created.”

She shook her head. “But why the fires? What did she hope to accomplish by that?”

“According to the news stories, she has a history of mental illness, so who knows? But apparently she blamed the shelter for her son being arrested. Maybe this was her way of getting revenge.”

Jenna read the story, and her heart went out to the woman. And strangely, to the son, too. A tiny shiver went up her back.
There, but for the grace of God …

They shared the newspaper over tea and donuts, listening to the birds chatter in the trees outside the kitchen window. The pup barked sharply from his carrier by the door, and Luc hushed him.

A depressing thought struck her. “Does this dog—does Smoke mean another six weeks away in Oklahoma for you?”

“If he’s worth his salt, it does.” He reached across the table and ruffled her hair as if she were a puppy. “That won’t be for a while. You don’t need to start worrying for a few months yet.”

She rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh. It appeared that, if Lucas was going to be a part of her life, so were dogs. May as well get used to it.

“Besides,” he said. “I have a proposition to make about that. …”

She shot him a wary glance. “What’s that?”