Page 60 of Secrets Beneath the Waves (Beach Read Thrillers #2)

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

Well. Dante had definitely not planned to share all that with Jules. When she’d asked, though, it had struck him how much he wanted to tell her about Carina and the journey of grief and sorrow he had been on since that terrible day. Jules’ empathy and compassion had helped, and he didn’t regret it.

They’d laughed their way through How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days , and it did feel as though something had eased between them. Still, Jules had a pretty good guard up. Would he ever be able to break through it?

Today had been mostly relaxing. It had rained all morning and most of the afternoon, so they had raided his mother’s stash of novels on the shelves next to the fireplace and read for a few hours, even played a lengthy game of Scrabble.

Now the rain had tapered off to a damp mist drifting slowly along the surface of the lake and hiding the mountains behind a gauzy gray veil.

Dante was back at the barbeque, diligently grilling their steaks to perfection while keeping an eye on the potatoes baking on the upper rack.

The evening was warmer than the one before, and once everything was ready, they took their places at the table on the patio again, a lantern glowing on the table to drive back the gloominess.

After a few minutes of light conversation, Dante reached for the bottle of steak sauce.

As much as he hated to probe still-raw wounds, if there was any chance it could help Jules, he would.

“Do you want to tell me what happened between you and our suspect in that burning house?”

Her face blanched slightly as she set down the bite of steak she’d been about to pop into her mouth.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you’re not ready.”

She sighed. “No, it’s okay. Maybe something I tell you could help us identify him.”

“Maybe.” Dante set the sauce on the table without pouring any, giving her his full attention.

“First of all, he’s aware I have aphantasia.”

“How do you know?”

She took a sip of water before wrapping her fingers around the glass. “When I went into the master bedroom ensuite, it was really hazy, but I could see that someone had written across the smoke stains on the wall.”

Dante frowned. “Written what?”

She did that thing that fascinated him so much—wrinkled her forehead as she appeared to flip through the notes in her mind like cards on a Rolodex, searching for the right one. “You can’t picture my face. But I know yours.”

Chills rippled across his flesh like the waves out on the lake. “Wow. That guy has some serious mental issues.”

Jules let out a short laugh that held very little humor. “No kidding.”

“What happened after that?”

“He came into the room behind me and snapped a cuff around my wrist and then around the towel bar before I knew what was happening. When I turned around, I could see his eyes in the mask, but I wanted to see more, so I tried to yank off the respirator. He grabbed my wrist and shoved it against the wall and then stepped close enough to pin me, the way he had in the alley with that other poor woman.”

Dante clenched his teeth hard enough they ached. “That had to be terrifying.”

“It was, for a few seconds. The worst part was feeling, in the midst of intense heat, an otherworldly cold in the air, and the whole room being filled with this…”

Dante leaned forward. “What?”

“Evil, I guess. I felt it in the alley that night, too, as though this guy, whoever he is, has some invisible cape swishing around him that was manufactured in the pit of hell.”

“I felt that too.”

Her blue-green eyes widened. “You did? When? I didn’t know you’d seen him.”

“I didn’t. But when I returned to the alley the day after the murder to try and find your phone, I felt it, especially at this one spot near a wall.”

“Where he killed her.” The fingers Jules ran over the bright, cheerful daisies sprinkled across the plastic tablecloth—a stark contrast to what they were talking about—were trembling slightly.

“That’s what I figured. This dark force circled my neck until I could hardly draw in a breath.”

Jules bit her lower lip. “What did you do?”

“The only thing I could think to do—say the name of Jesus over and over.”

“And?”

“The darkness lifted, and I could breathe. I’d already found your phone, so I got out of there as quickly as I could.”

“I don’t blame you.” Jules used her own napkin to swipe at a splotch of steak sauce on the tablecloth. “Unfortunately for me, it was a bit trickier, since I was handcuffed to a towel rack.”

Despite the trembling fingers, her tone was light. Dante had noticed that about her, that she made a joke whenever they approached a topic of conversation she clearly wasn’t comfortable with. Did she have any kind of faith?

She surprised him then, by drawing in a shuddering breath and saying, “I prayed too, when he had me pinned to the wall.” So much for that theory.

He’d been prepared to allow for a subject change, but she had dragged them right back to the one he thought she’d been attempting to steer them away from.

“You did?”

“Yes.” Jules dropped her napkin on her plate before continuing to trace the white and yellow daisies with the tip of one finger, not looking at him.

“I prayed that God would help me, that he wouldn’t allow us both to die that way, for my mother’s sake.

” She looked up, a stricken expression on her face, as though she’d said something she hadn’t meant to.

Even so, Dante pressed her on it. “Both of you?”

Her finger stilled on a daisy as her gaze swung to the lake. When the only sound to break the silence between them was the haunting call of a loon, he said, gently, “You didn’t become a firefighter because of Backdraft , did you?”

Jules swallowed, still looking out over the water.

“As much as that movie did impact me, no, it wasn’t the primary reason I chose my career.

” She tapped her finger on the daisy as though considering, like he had last night, whether she should—or could—share her story.

When she drew in a slightly shuddering breath, he knew she had decided.

“After I was born, my parents wanted other children, but my mother wasn’t able to get pregnant again until I was nine years old.

Then Louisa was born.” Her eyes softened.

“From the moment they brought her home from the hospital, she was mine. I held her, rocked her, crept out of bed to sleep on the floor next to her crib so often my parents finally moved my bed into her room. When she took her first steps, she was walking to me. Her first word was Jules . As soon as I got home from school, I would take her out to the backyard where we’d chase butterflies and make necklaces and crowns out of daisies. ”

Jules pulled her feet up onto the chair and pulled her bent knees to her chest. “When Lou was three, my dad went away on a business trip. That night, I woke up to the smoke detector going off and my mother standing in our room screaming, ‘Where is Louisa?’

“I glanced over, and my sister’s bed was empty.

My mother and I ran through the house, frantically searching everywhere, refusing to leave without her until the firefighters literally dragged us out.

They had to hold us back to keep us from going in again as the house went up in flames and the roof finally collapsed. ”

Dante’s chest ached as badly as Jules’ must have after she’d escaped the burning house. Back then and a few days ago. “Jules. I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how horrific that was.”

She shook her head slightly. “No, it is unimaginable. Like all my memories are to me. Which, in this case, is a blessing.” She rested her cheek on her knees, looking over at him, finally.

“They figured out later that Lou had snuck into bed with my mother at some point. When my mom heard the alarm go off, she flung back the blankets, covering Lou, and jumped out of bed. Lou must have been missing my dad because she never went to Mom’s room.

My mother blamed herself, of course, but it wasn’t her fault.

It hadn’t occurred to either of us to check her bed. ”

Jules let out a shaky laugh before lowering her feet to the patio stones. “Anyway, that was a whole lot more than you were expecting, I’m sure. Did I see you unpack ice cream?”

“I did, and I’ll get it in a minute.” Dante stood and lifted his chair to carry it over and set it in front of her. When he sat on it, his knees were an inch from hers. “That wasn’t more than I was looking for, though. I want you to open up to me, Jules.”

She had rested one arm on the table, and he touched her hand lightly before pulling away. “Is that why your mom is in the hospital?”

Jules rubbed the tips of her fingers hard over the tablecloth, as though the cool plastic grounded her.

“A few months after the fire, my dad suffered a massive heart attack and died. I’m pretty sure it was more heartbreak than heart attack, though.

He never got over Lou dying while he was away.

Like my mom, he blamed himself. He felt he should have been there to protect her, to protect all of us.

Shortly after his funeral, my mom had a complete mental breakdown and has been in and out of institutions ever since. ”

“You lost your whole family.” His voice had thickened, and he cleared his throat.

“Pretty much, yeah. I have friends, especially Brie and Kelli, who have been such close friends since kindergarten that they’re like family.

Otherwise, besides going to the cemetery every week to visit my dad’s grave and set a fresh bouquet of daisies against Lou’s headstone and visiting my mom as often as I can, I’m basically alone in the world.

I think that’s why I’ve always resisted the idea of getting seriously involved with anyone.

As much as I might want a family of my own, what if I lose them too? ”

“I understand that fear. Believe me. But all those memories you have of your mom and dad, of Louisa—and I know how deeply you feel them even if you can’t visualize them—would you give those up?

As heartrending as they might be, would you exchange that pain in order to feel nothing? To remember nothing?”

Jules ran the tip of her finger over a daisy again and again, as though she didn’t realize she was doing it.

“I can’t answer that. What I can tell you is that, when you said you lost your faith that God was good and only wanted the best for us, I truly did get it.

I grew up going to church and I thought I loved Jesus with all my heart.

After everything that happened, I realized I didn’t even know who that Jesus was. ”

“Huh.” Dante leaned back in his chair, struck by the sudden revelation her words had sparked.

“That’s something I haven’t really considered.

Maybe the Jesus I’ve been so angry with isn’t the real Jesus at all, just the version of him I made up in my head.

A Jesus who cares more about my happiness than allowing me to go through trials that make me more like him, that draw me closer to him.

A Santa Claus God who exists solely to give me everything I ask for, even though, given his infinite perspective and wisdom, he knows it isn’t what is best for me.

I’ve believed for so long that God abandoned me when I needed him the most. Now I wonder if that absence I’ve felt since Carina died isn’t the absence of the true God but the complete disintegration of the one I created myself. ”

Jules’ shimmering eyes locked on his as she touched her fingers to her chest. “I feel the truth of that here, so I think you could be right.”

“Then, Jules.” Dante reached for her hands and held them in his.

“Maybe it’s time for both of us to let go of that fake God and all our anger toward him and turn to the real one.

The one who does want what’s best for us, even when it means that we have to stumble blindly through a deep, dark valley of heartbreak and grief.

The one who never has left but has always been there, walking alongside us. ”

A tear slid down her cheek. “Maybe it is.”

Dante squeezed her fingers. “I’ll pray that you are able to.”

She managed a tremulous smile. “I’ll pray that for you as well.”

He held her fingers a few seconds longer before letting go and gently wiping away the tear with his thumb. “So. Ice cream?”