Stillwater Rising Page 22

  Julia’s eyes widened at Jenn’s sharp intake of breath, and then she cast her gaze downward.

  Robert stood there, looking slightly awkward and holding the bright-orange gerbera daisy in his hands.

  No one said anything. No one really needed to. What was there to say? Was she expected to stand there and create some inane conversation to make the woman feel welcomed? Was she supposed to pretend there was nothing between them?

  And yet . . . this was the first time she’d seen Julia since that dreadful day. The first time she’d taken the time to look at her, really look at her.

  Julia looked . . . beaten. Her shoulder bones protruded from the back of her shirt, and there were large dark circles beneath her eyes. With her hair pulled back into a ponytail, she looked gaunt. If Jenn didn’t know better, she would think Julia was sick, but then she realized Julia was. Sick with grief.

  Jenn took a step forward, closer to Julia, and she could feel the panic of everyone around her. They were all unsure of what she was going to do, and she knew instantly they were all there to protect Julia. Against her. Her. That hurt. She swallowed the betrayal from her husband and friends but still didn’t say anything. Instead, she waited. Waited to see if Julia would raise her gaze from the pavement and look her in the eye.

  Jenn had no idea what she was doing or even what she would say. But she knew she was living in a moment that would change the rest of her life.

  Isn’t that what moments were all about? Small opportunities to direct the path chosen? To influence decisions and outcomes? To make a stand in how to move forward?

  Each moment required a decision. A decision to live or die. She could choose in this moment to start healing or to remain lost in her grief. That’s all she’d done up until now—remained fixated on anger and grief. Angry that all the moments she could have spent with her son, watching him grow, had been stolen from her.

  Her hand itched to make contact with Julia’s face, to slap her and leave a red imprint there, a testimony of her anger. But, she couldn’t. She stood there, knowing that it wasn’t in her to add any more grief to this woman who’d been destroyed by it.

  Maybe it was the way Julia stood there, her shoulders curled forward, her hands clasped too tight in front, expecting to be vilified and doing nothing to stop the barrage of filth Jenn wished to say.

  Or maybe it was the sheen of tears in Julia’s eyes as she finally looked up, the emptiness in her gaze, or the way she looked through Jenn as if she wasn’t worthy of being there.

  Or maybe it was the shared grieving of two mothers, that faint glimmer of pain and guilt in Julia’s eyes that touched Jenn’s heart in a way she hadn’t expected.

  In that second, Jenn saw Julia not as the monster she’d wished her to be, not the woman who’d given birth to the demon child who murdered her own son, but as a mother who’d lost her own child, a mother who knew there were no second chances and no opportunities to make things right.

  She saw the sorrow and anguish in Julia’s gaze along with the knowledge that her own child had destroyed the lives of so many. And that look, their shared moment, melted Jenn’s cold heart toward the mother in front of her.

  Instead of slapping her, she hugged her.

  Julia’s body was stiff in her embrace, so Jenn tightened her hold. She could feel the sharp points of her spine jutting out from her back, and she knew that unless something changed, Julia wouldn’t be with them for much longer. Grief was eating away at her, leaving her as a shell, and Jenn understood why Charlotte had decided to fight for this woman.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Jenn whispered into Julia’s ear. She said it softly, so that no one else would hear. Her words were meant from one woman to another. One mother to another. That was all. She wasn’t sorry Gabriel Berry was dead. She wasn’t sorry he’d taken his own life after he took so many others. But she was sorry that Julia had to experience the grief of losing a child.

  That was something no mother was ever prepared to live with.

  She pulled back and blinked away the tears in her eyes as she saw the look of amazement and hope in Julia’s. She knew Julia was about to say something, and so she stopped her.

  “I’m not sure I can ever forgive your son for what he did, but I do know that I have to stop blaming you,” Jenn said.

  Robert moved to stand beside her, finally, and Charity stood on the other side of her, linking their arms together as a family.

  “I will never forgive myself,” Julia said. “I certainly don’t expect others to.”

  “You’re still loved, Julia.” Camille wrapped her arm around Julia’s shoulders and held tight. She mouthed thank you to Jenn as they stood there.

  “I wanted her to see that her store was open and full,” Camille said, as if in answer to the question that hung between everyone. “It’s time for her to stop hiding.”

  “Isn’t it great,” Charity piped up. “And it’s full of stuff. So much stuff. But the way people are buying, you’re going to have to restock soon.” Her teenage daughter burst with overt enthusiasm, as if trying to alleviate the tension between all of them.

  “I never expected . . .” Julia choked up as she stared through the open doorway. “I didn’t know.”

  “Of course not, it was supposed to be a surprise.” Charity smiled.

  “You still have friends in this town, Julia. You’re not alone.” Camille said the words softly.

  Camille led Julia to the door of her store, and Robert led Jenn away from the area, continuing their way down the street.

  “I think it’s time for ice cream, isn’t it? Amanda? Will you join us?” Jenn said. She knew Charity and Robert must both be a tad anxious, unsure of how she would react. But she felt okay. Not fine. Not happy. Just okay. Life continued on, the way it should, by moving forward. One moment of understanding didn’t exonerate all the other moments of anger, grief, and sadness. But it did help her to see there was hope ahead.

  Jenn kept quiet. She enjoyed the way they walked together, as a family unit. She’d missed this. It had been a long time since they’d been together like this, in public, without the shadow of their loss overhead.

  Yes, the memory of Bobby would always be there. But that memory didn’t always have to be tinged with sadness, right?

  As they walked down the street together, Jenn knew as long as they remained a family, they could get through anything.

  And it was that thought that placed a small smile on her face.

  STILLWATER DEEP

  A STILLWATER BAY NOVEL

  CHARLOTTE

  Her hands pummeled the punching bag with a steady rhythm. She pushed everything else out of her mind and concentrated only on her timing. Sweat dropped from her forehead, her chest hurt from the workout, and her knuckles cramped up from the constant impact, but she wasn’t ready to give up, to give in.

  “Will you talk to me, please?”

  Jordan appeared in front of her, his hands on both sides of the bag, forcing her to stop. She bent down, her hands gripping her knees, and gulped in air.

  “Go. Away,” she managed to get out.

  “No.” His arms dropped from the bag, and he handed her a towel and her bottle of water. “I’m done with you avoiding me.”

  “Excuse me?” He did not just say that. He had no right. As far as she was concerned, she could and would avoid him as long as she needed to.

  Two days ago he’d destroyed her world by sharing a secret she should have known from the beginning.

  “We need to talk about this.”

  She wiped her face and took a long drink of her water before she rolled her shoulders to work out the stiffness. She ignored him, like she’d done for the past two days, and walked past him and up the stairs.

  She refilled her water bottle, cut a few slices of cheese, and went up the stairs to their bedroom where she got ready for a cold show
er. She knew Jordan had followed her. Knew he wanted to speak to her, needed her to say something to him. But she refused to.

  Maybe he’d go away and leave her in peace.

  “I’m not going away, Charlotte.” Jordan sat down in the armchair in the corner of the room and crossed his legs.

  “What do you expect me to say, Jordan? That I forgive you? That I understand why you did what you did? That I find it perfectly okay that you would . . .” She couldn’t say it. She just couldn’t.

  Everything made perfect sense now. Or not. God, no, nothing made sense anymore.

  Two days ago when she’d found Jordan in Julia’s backyard, both of them crying, she knew something was off. Why would her husband, the man who wanted nothing to do with Julia Berry, be in that woman’s backyard, crying with her?

  Crying with her. She had seen those tears.

  “No. What I did wasn’t okay, and I don’t want your forgiveness. I don’t deserve it.”

  “Then what is it you need?” Her body shook from unspent emotion.

  Back in her office, when Jordan broke down after the ceremony, she’d told him that they’d deal with whatever had happened, together. But she hadn’t expected this.

  This, she didn’t know how to fix.

  “I don’t know.” His voice was full of remorse and rejection. She knew he expected her to do something, to say something that would fix everything, but this . . . was unfixable.

  She turned her back on him and walked into their bathroom, locking the door behind her.

  She leaned against the wall and stared at herself in the mirror. She’d aged dramatically in the past two days. More wrinkles showed around her eyes and forehead, and the gray hairs had more than doubled.

  Yesterday she’d locked herself in her office, and the only thing she’d done was look through old photos of her and Jordan, starting from when they first met. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to find in the images, a clue maybe to the double life her husband led.

  When he confessed his duplicity to her, the fact that he’d actually hid in a closet on the day Gabriel Berry came into the Stillwater Public School, she’d thought she could handle it. Okay, so her husband was a coward and not the hero everyone made him out to be. She could handle that. She’d help him keep his secret. Right now, the town didn’t need to know he’d placed his own life ahead of his students. That he’d hid at the first sound of gunshots.

  She tried very hard not to judge him for that.

  But it was afterward. When they were at home, when he’d confessed his deep, dark secret, that her world, the one she’d known, had been destroyed.

  How did she fix this?

  How could she face Julia again? Look her in the eye and pretend everything was normal between them, that she didn’t know of the secret between her and Jordan?

  When Charlotte emerged from the shower, Jordan was still there, in the chair, waiting for her.

  “All right, Jordan. You want to talk. You want me to open up and tell you how I’m feeling, is that right?” With her back turned toward him, she donned a sundress, pulled her hair back in a ponytail, and took in a deep breath.

  “Yes, that’s what I want. That’s what I need.”

  “Need?” She shook her head. “Right now, your needs are the last thing on my mind.”

  She knew, from this moment on, things would never be the same between them again. Ever. She couldn’t leave him. Not now. Not when her town was so fragile and needed her support and strength. She didn’t have any extra energy to put toward rebuilding her sham of a marriage, and to be honest, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  “Here’s what I need. I need you to move out of our bedroom. Sleep in the guest bedroom downstairs or the one up here, I don’t care. But you’re not welcome here, in my room, in my bed. Not now. I’m not sure if you ever will be again.”

  Jordan cast his gaze downward but nodded.

  “I also want you to start looking for a new position. Somewhere else. I don’t care where. It can be in Seattle, Portland, or all the way across the country. I. Don’t. Care.” She steeled her voice as he lifted his gaze and looked at her with shock. “You won’t do it until after the start of the school year, though. This town needs to begin the new school year in September with some normalcy, and you’ll continue to play the role of a hero. Do you understand?”

  God help him if he didn’t.

  “Would you give up being mayor?”

  She shook her head. She wasn’t going to give up anything. Not for him.

  “I can’t do that, Charlotte. I can’t.” Jordan wiped at the tears that gathered in his eyes, as the understanding of what she meant hit him and she hardened her heart against him even more.

  “You can and you will.”

  Two days ago, Jordan had destroyed her world by not only admitting to his cowardice but also to a lie he’d lived for years.

  His disdain for Julia had been real, but not for the reasons Charlotte had imagined.

  He’d known Julia for years. He’d even known Gabriel. Or known of him, before Julia moved to Stillwater Bay.

  Jordan was Gabe’s absentee father, and the reason Gabe had gone into Stillwater Public with a gun was not because of some psychotic breakdown, but because he’d just found out who his father was.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © Vanessa Pressacco Studios

  With a passion for storytelling, Steena took her dream of being a full-time writer and made it a reality, writing her first novel while working as a receptionist. She won the National Indie Excellence Book Award in 2012 for her bestselling novel, Finding Emma. Steena currently lives in Calgary, Alberta, with her husband, three daughters, and two dogs. She likes to celebrate completing each new novel with chocolate.