HF02 - Forever After

by Deborah Raney

  In the cab beside him Sparky pressed his nose to the window, watching the woman, his ears pricking. Lucas watched until it became obvious the woman was drunk. He didn’t have time to get involved, but he’d call the Hanover Falls police and have them come and pick her up. He slipped his cell phone out and pulled away from the curb. He looked back just in time to see the woman stumble and fall into the snow. She lay there, stone still.

  He hit the brakes. He grabbed his cane and jumped from the truck, crossing the uneven lawn as fast as his leg would allow. Sparky beat him to the still form and dropped at her side with his nose on the ground, as if he was working. Odd. He’d been trained to alert on fifteen different substances, but vodka wasn’t one of them.

  Lucas punched 911 into his phone as he hurried to the woman’s side. He was relieved to hear her moaning. At least she wasn’t dead. The stench of vomit and liquor hit him before he dropped to one knee beside her. But there was something else. Something even stronger.

  Acrid vapors stung his nostrils and he turned away, covering his nose.

  Gasoline.

  His phone came to life. “911. State your emergency, please.”

  “Send paramedics to the homeless shelter on Grove Street,” he said. “And you’d better send the fire chief, too.”

  A gray Volvo wasn’t going to be easy to spot in this monochromatic landscape.

  45

  The rearview mirror reflected a rim of light on the eastern horizon that illumined a cloud-free, lavender sky. Lucas was still shaken after the odd encounter with the woman at the homeless shelter earlier this morning. He’d left as they were loading her into an ambulance, still barely conscious. Chief Brennan had arrived on the scene and Andrea Morley was on her way when Lucas excused himself, far more concerned about Jenna than the fact that they’d likely caught their arsonist.

  Lucas felt his hopes rise with the sun as he headed west on I-44 past Springfield. At least he could see more than three feet around him now. He drove slowly, keeping his eyes peeled.

  His only hope was that as the sun came up they’d be able to spot Jenna’s car. Two of the vehicles they’d towed last night had slid thirty and forty feet beyond the shoulder into dense woods. If the drivers hadn’t called for help, they’d never have seen them in the dark—certainly not while it was still snowing. But even in broad daylight, a gray Volvo wasn’t going to be easy to spot in this monochromatic landscape.

  His cell phone rang and he jumped. He slid it open. His mom.

  “Any word yet?”

  “Not yet, Ma. I’ll let you know.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Probably half an hour west of you. But I’m about ready to turn around and head back to the Falls again. She’s got to be somewhere between here and there.”

  “This is making me crazy,” she said.

  “Yeah … me too. So help me if she just forgot to charge her phone—and if they find her alive—I’m going to kill her.” He chuckled, imagining the relief of being able to spring that line on Jenna.

  It would make her laugh.

  His mother, on the other hand, did not think it was even a little bit funny. “Lucas! What is wrong with you?”

  “Don’t worry, Ma. We’ll find her.” His words rang false in his own ears. He was past worried. …

  He hung up and swung around in the median and headed back east toward Springfield and the Falls. Judging by the time he’d last talked to Jenna, along with the weather reports, she had to have made it at least this far east. He would concentrate his search between this exit and the Hanover Falls interchange.

  The sun was climbing quickly and he slipped his sunglasses on, training his eyes on the right side of the roadway, where her car should be if she’d slid off the road. The radio said the temperature was headed for the upper forties today, and thankfully, the snow was already beginning to melt wherever patches of sunlight landed.

  His gaze darted from the shoulder of the road—keeping a lookout for errant tracks in the remaining snow—then back to the woods in the distance where the snow was still deeply drifted.

  He drove east for three or four miles before he noticed tracks in the median that looked like something more than the usual pattern he’d seen from emergency vehicles and cars that’d decided to turn around and drive out of the storm last night.

  Something made him pull off onto the median, and that’s when he saw it—the gray top of a car blanketed in snow one hundred feet off the opposite side of the Interstate. How in the world had she gotten clear over there?

  He drove his truck as far into the ditch as he could without getting stuck, then flung open his door. “Come on, Sparky. Let’s go, boy.”

  They slogged through snow that had drifted to ten or twelve inches in last night’s winds. A trickle of water ran through a ravine at the bottom of the ditch. Sparky leapt over it gracefully, but Lucas picked his way over a natural bridge of stepping stones, praying he didn’t slip and fall into the icy water.

  His left leg ached like an abscessed tooth and his right one wasn’t much better. But he kept going, pushing his way through the woods to where the car rested.

  It seemed as if they’d been trudging for hours without getting any closer to the car, but finally they got near enough that Lucas could have seen through the windshield if it hadn’t been covered with snow.

  Sparky must have recognized Jenna’s car because he started barking and raced ahead.

  Lucas finally caught up to him and moved through snow that felt like concrete. He shuddered when he pushed away enough snow to see that the front of the car had been crushed like a soda can.

  He fell against the driver’s side fender, knocking on the door even as he brushed more snow away with the broad sleeve of his jacket.

  “Jenna? Open up! It’s me!” He tried the car door. Locked.

  “Jenna!”

  Nothing. He held his breath. “Jenna?” He banged on the windows now, not caring if he broke the glass.

  The windows were frosted over and he scraped beneath the remaining snow, clearing a patch big enough to look in and see if she was okay, terrified of what that porthole in the snow might reveal.

  He bent and peered inside. She wasn’t in the driver’s seat, but it was so dark inside the car—the other windows and windshields obscured by snow—that he couldn’t tell where she was. She must have climbed into the back, trying to keep warm. He shouted her name again, pounding on the car as he made his way through the snow around to the other side of the car.

  He cleared the snow off of there, too and peered into the windows. The interior was well lit now, with light coming through the other side. The airbag had deployed and lay in a heap across the front seat.

  But the car was empty.

  There didn’t seem to be a trail leading from her car …

  46

  Sparky barked at the trees limbs swaying overhead, and Lucas turned 360 degrees, scouring the woods, trying to figure out where Jenna could have gone. There didn’t seem to be a trail leading from her car, but then, the snow had probably obscured it.

  She couldn’t have been thrown from the car. The windows and windshields were intact. Had she somehow walked out of there?

  Or had someone seen her go off the road last night? Had she been rescued hours ago? He pictured her warming her hands by a fire in some hotel along the road to Tulsa and prayed it was prophetic.

  He imagined himself giving the missing person’s report and wracked his brain to remember what Jenna had been wearing when she’d left the Cheesecake Factory.

  Something purple, he thought. She would have called it plum or magenta or some fancy-sounding name. Her coat was black leather, he remembered that. He couldn’t have named one other item she was wearing—except for her goldfish necklace, which she was never without.

  A woodpecker drilled in a tree high overhead, and a mockingbird gave his lonesome call from somewhere across the wood. Sparky was having a heyday, barking at the birds and chasing imagi
nary squirrels. He took off up the other side of the ravine. Lucas called him back, using his sharp I-mean-business voice.

  Sparky stopped and turned at the sound of his voice but turned again and kept running until he’d disappeared over the ledge behind a copse of trees.

  “Sparky! Get back here!”

  In reply a sharp bark echoed back at him.

  “Sparky! Come!” Fine time for the dog to abandon all his training.

  He waited a moment, thinking surely Sparky would get tired of chasing whatever he was barking at and obey his command.

  Instead he barked again. His dark head appeared at the top of the rise, and he looked down and gave Luc a good chewing out, then disappeared again.

  Grumbling, Lucas started the steep climb up the side of the ravine. Using trees for leverage, he prayed he didn’t twist an ankle. As the sun rose higher in a blue morning sky, the thaw turned the leaves into slippery mush underfoot.

  Sparky must have heard him coming because he chose that moment to charge down the slope. But when Lucas reached for his collar, the dog pranced out of reach and headed back up the ravine.

  No amount of yelling could get him to obey a simple command. When Lucas finally pulled himself over the ledge to the top, he understood why.

  Jenna lay on her back, her coat unbuttoned and spread beneath her. Her face was ghostly pale. He couldn’t see any blood, but her left leg was bent at an odd angle. Sparky stood over her, alternately nudging her and barking his heart out.

  Lucas caught his breath and took off running—as fast as his legs would let him. His mind seemed to work at high speed and in slow motion all at the same time.

  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

  Jenna 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.