Page 45 of The Spirit of Love

Chapter Twenty-Six

An hour later, Jude and I stand at the edge of a trail, staring down a hundred feet into a ravine where the upside-down letters are still visible in the brush:

JEEP

The Midlife Crisis brought us as far as the cove at Parson’s Landing.

Then we borrowed a Jet Ski from the yacht and I drove us to shore.

We parked under the serpent head–shaped rock on the beach as gray clouds combed the sky.

After that, for reasons Jude has yet to explain but that are making my chest feel like a breeding ground for butterflies, he led me up the path and stopped here.

The wind feels cold and strange, the sky overcast and close. The clouds have turned the sea from turquoise into a treacherous steely blue. It feels like anything might happen, and I need to be prepared.

Jude seems frozen by the side of the ravine. He steps close to the edge and puts out a hand, as if he’s touching something unseen.

“Jude?”

He hasn’t spoken in a long time. Not since we started up the trail together. But I can tell from the manic motion of his eyes, from the tension in his neck, that there’s a lot going on in his head.

“What I’m about to tell you is going to sound…” He shakes his head, closes his eyes. “Completely crazy.”

Well, he’s taken the words right out of my mouth. But at least he’s going to go first.

“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” I say.

“I don’t want to,” he admits. “This is so difficult for me. But I keep thinking, maybe the fact that you showed up—here, now—is a sign.”

“What kind of sign?”

“That I can tell you my story. That maybe you’ll still be here when I finish.”

I turn to face him, trying to read the apprehension in his dark eyes. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Thank you.” Jude exhales. “So far so good.”

“It’s raining,” I say, turning up my palms to feel the first drops. “It wasn’t supposed to rain.”

“Or maybe it was.” Jude shivers. We’re both just wearing T-shirts. It was hot, the sky bright blue, ten minutes ago on the yacht. Now thunder rumbles in the distance.

I look around, wondering if we’ll need to duck somewhere for shelter, and as I do, my eyes fall on the embers of a recent fire, which the light rain is causing to smoke.

“Is that…” I start to say, spotting the container of honey and the bottle of wine I’d seen in Jude’s hands at the market.

“Yes,” he says. “Tania and I came here earlier.”

“Oh?”

“Right after we ran into you. We built that fire.”

I swallow, gathering the courage to be an adult about this. “You and Tania are…”

Jude must see the unspoken end of my question in my eyes, because he starts laughing heartily. He shakes his head. “No. No! There’s nothing going on romantically between Tania and me. I hired her for this weekend. And this is where it’s going to start to sound strange.”

“That’s okay!” I’m so relieved that he’s not here with Tania, that the wine and honey aren’t remnants of some al fresco fun-bag fiesta. Jude can tell me anything right now and I’ll go with it.

“I met Tania at this workshop led by Captain Dan,” he says. “Not exactly my kind of thing generally, but Jake invited me after I was on his show, and I can’t help liking that guy.”

“He has that effect on the planet.”

“Anyway, I met Tania while I was there. She was about to get her certification in something called—”

“Soul integration midwifery?” I say. “Olivia’s mom mentioned it.”

Jude laughs. “Yeah, I didn’t foresee myself being in this demographic, but here we are.”

He looks at the sky, at the soft but steady rain.

“Okay,” he says. “Here goes. Do you remember what I told you about my accident?”

“Twenty-eight fractured bones, six weeks in the ICU? That’s not the kind of thing I’m going to forget. Did your doctors consider writing in to Guinness World Records ? It’s probably you and Evel Knievel.”

I’m joking because what else am I supposed to be doing? Staring down at those four letters in the ravine? Listening to Jude, who looks like Sam, tell me this? Knowing in the pit of my stomach that everything that’s been making absolutely no sense for weeks might be suddenly converging?

“It happened here,” Jude says and nods toward the ravine.

“Here?” I say, like I don’t already know.

Jude puts out his hand again, and this time I understand. He’s feeling the past. He’s feeling the trauma his conscious mind can’t remember. The rain pricks my skin, which feels hot enough to sizzle.

“When?” I ask, just to be sure.

“Ten years ago,” he says, and looks at me. “When I was working here as a Search and Rescue specialist for the Island Conservatory.”

I nod, not because I understand how or why any of this is possible, but because I knew. Even though it doesn’t make sense.

“Do you remember in the cactus garden at the Huntington,” I say, “when I made that joke about wanting to be a Search and Rescue specialist on Catalina?”

“I was so confused by that,” he says. “You were mocking me, but I didn’t know how you knew—”

“I didn’t know. Not really. Not then. But at that point, the truth was harder for me to admit.”

“What was the truth?”

“That a month ago, I met a man who was training to become a Search and Rescue specialist for the Island Conservatory!”

He flinches. “Really?”

“ He was my long-distance fling. He’s the man you advised me to figure things out with after we kissed. He’s the reason you left my house that night.”

“Part of the reason,” Jude says. “So that’s why you’re here, on the island? To see him?”

I nod, looking down at my feet. “And it’s over, in case you were wondering.”

“I’m sorry.”

I laugh. Now I’m the one finding the hard stuff funny.

“Yeah. I think he and I are…just on different planes. Right place, wrong time, or whatever. But that’s not why we’re here. You were telling me about some ceremony you and Tania performed.”

“It didn’t work,” Jude admits. “She was trying to help me make peace with the trauma. To ‘bring it in so I could let it out.’?” He sounds defeated as he raises and then drops his beautiful shoulders.

“I couldn’t do it. We stood here, pouring out honey and wine to ‘bless this site,’ to ‘thank it for catching me.’ I wrote down what I felt.

Then I shouted out into the abyss.” He looks at me and winces again.

“What did you shout?”

Jude cups his hands over his mouth. “I’m stuck!” he bellows into the ravine. “Let me move on!”

His voice echoes back to us so clearly, I can hear it a full second time.

“Did you hear that?” I ask, looking across the ravine.

“There’s still something missing,” Jude says, distracted. “I know it.”

I know it, too. What’s missing.

“Jude—” I turn to him.

He’s already facing me. He takes my hands in his. “When I failed earlier, with Tania, she told me I needed to ‘find a light.’ The first thing I thought of was you.”

“Me?”

“Here’s the truth, Fenny. I’m doing this because of you. The things you said about me when we first met—about how I believe in my nightmares—”

“I was angry—”

“It was true. But it didn’t use to be. I wasn’t always like this.

” He gestures at himself. “When I lived here, I was so connected to the island. To the world. I was young and dumb, but I was also free. And happy. I think I used to feel like I had a purpose. Nothing dignified—I lived to enjoy the day, and to help others enjoy their days, too.”

“That sounds very dignified.”

“Yeah. You would have liked the old me more.”

I smile at him sadly. “Yes and no.”

He inhales, turning to look at the wreckage of the Jeep below.

“I was responding to a flare sent up that night. Some campers needing rescue from a storm. After that…I don’t know.

I don’t remember.” He swallows. “When they used the jaws of life to pull me out, I’d been dead for three and a half minutes.

I was in a coma for a month. I did brutal physical therapy every day for two years after that.

And I thought I got better. I thought I was healed.

But recently, I’ve been wondering…if a part of me didn’t die that day. A part of me I’ll never recover.”

“It’s okay,” I tell him, near tears.

“No, it isn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not whole like this, Fenny. And you deserve a whole man.”

“What do I have to do with it?”

“You’re going to make me say it? That I’m falling in love with you?”

My breath hitches, and I can barely speak. Hearing those words feels better than just about anything ever has. Except maybe for Jude’s kiss.

“Is it true?” I whisper.

He reaches out and touches my cheek. “I’m falling in love with you, okay? And love has side effects. One of them is that I want to be better—I want to be whole—for you.” He closes his eyes. “But it feels out of reach. I’m sorry.”

“Jude,” I whisper, shivering in the rain. What I want to say feels crazy, but then again, so is what he just told me. Sometimes love can feel so close to crazy that their shadows are the same.

“Fenny.”

“Maybe that missing piece of you isn’t an abstract idea. Maybe that piece—physically—is here.”

“What do you mean?”

I tip my head toward Sam’s cabin. “Follow me.”