“Mark.” He turned on his heels and ran inside.
Vera lifted worried eyes from the book she was reading and held up an envelope. She didn’t have to say a word. In an instant, he read her expression and knew she wanted to reach out and hug him, but he needed to be left alone to deal with whatever was going on with him and Jessica. Vera had the same look in her eyes she’d had his senior year of high school, when the girl he’d been dating had called the night before the senior prom and left a message telling him that she was going to the dance with someone else.
“Thanks.” He tore it open and walked to the back of the small cottage while he read the handwritten note.
Jamie,
Thank you for showing me what it was like to live and to love. Being with you was the best feeling I’ve ever experienced. Not just when we were intimate, but walking through the flea market, lying on the beach, just being near you. Vera’s a lovely woman, and she’s raised a wonderful man. I’ll miss you both so much that it hurts. I never knew I was capable of being so happy, but then again, I never had the chance to know you. I’ll cherish the memories of our time together forever, and I’ll never love another man as I love you. Yes, I fell in love with you, Jamie, and I’m not sorry for that. I do wish I could have told you to your face, but this is probably best. It’s amazing to me that two people can feel so close so fast, but I’ve lived a sheltered life, so maybe you’ve experienced this type of connection many times before and I’m alone in my wonder. In any case, I understand how much of a distraction I was, and I hope I didn’t cause you too much trouble. Please don’t be too angry with Mark. He obviously cares very deeply for you. Take care of Vera. She’s everything I always wished I had with my own mother, and more. Warmest wishes for your success and happiness.
—Jess
He sank to one of the chairs on the deck. His throat swelled with emotion as he reread the note in fits and spurts a few more times. I fell in love with you, Jamie… Don’t be too angry with Mark…Take care of Vera. He breathed deeply. Warmest wishes…She’d climbed back into the prim and proper cocoon she was so afraid of, and it broke his heart.
Don’t be too angry with Mark. That was so Jessica, always thinking of others before herself. He was angry with Mark, and he was angry with himself, and now with Jessica for leaving a shitty-ass note to say goodbye.
He turned the paper over in his hands and read it again, his heart aching with every word. It wasn’t a shitty-ass note. It was a very thoughtful, precisely written goodbye.
He jumped to his feet and flew past Vera.
“Where are you going?” Vera grabbed the arm of the couch and leaned forward.
Jamie heard hope in her voice. “Errand. I’ll be back.”
He sped down Route 6. Jessica couldn’t have gotten far. He called her cell as he drove—the call went to voicemail, and he contemplated leaving a message. Call me. Let’s talk. But he ended the call without leaving anything more than a few seconds of dead air.
“Let’s talk? What the fuck am I going to say?” He shook his head. “Hey, I didn’t see your name in the Boston Symphony Orchestra listing of musicians? There’s no record of Jessica Ayers at Juilliard? What am I doing? I’m talking to my fucking self in my goddamn car.”
He pulled into the next parking lot, knowing he’d never say any of those things to her, because he felt guilty as hell even thinking them. And if he saw her in person, he’d want to kiss her, to hold her, to hear her tell him she loved him and look at him like he was all she ever wanted or needed again. He wouldn’t have the heart to say a damn thing other than how much he loved her. If he did that, if he allowed himself to soak her goodness up, even for only a few minutes, and he found out it was all a lie, a game, a play for a successful boyfriend, he’d never recover.
Ever.
Chapter Nineteen
“JAMIE, ARE YOU sure this is what you want to do?” Vera stood in the doorway of his bedroom in the cottage as he packed his things the next morning. “You can’t just bury your feelings in work, no matter how easy that is.”
He met her worried gaze, then zipped his suitcase closed. “I’m not burying my feelings. I’m going back to work to handle the issue that Mark uncovered. I should have been there days ago.”
“Sounds to me like Mark came here to uncover issues.”
His muscles constricted. He gritted his teeth while he tried to calm the anger that had been gnawing at his gut ever since yesterday, when he’d found out Jessica had left. He’d held out hope that maybe his doubts were wrong until he’d broken down and called her—only to be met with her voicemail. Fifteen hours later she still hadn’t returned his call. His feelings were so tangled that he didn’t know if he was coming or going. Was she avoiding his calls because she knew he’d discovered she’d lied to him, or was it something else altogether? Had he hurt her too badly by not being there for her and leaving her in limbo while he tried to drown his doubts in ocean views, pretending he could cast them away with each rolling wave?
He picked up his suitcase and set it on the floor beside Vera. “I don’t know, Gram. I can’t figure out if his coming here was a blessing or a terrible mistake. I usually know what’s right and wrong, and this time…” He twisted the ring Jessica had given him, unable to convince himself to take it off.
Vera took his hand in hers. “That’s because this time it isn’t about right and wrong. This time it’s not about code or computers or puzzle pieces that fit into nice little niches and make sense. This time, Jamie, it’s about your heart. You’re not supposed to understand it, but it’s a good thing you’re feeling something. You’ve got a big heart. God knows you do. You take care of me so well, Jamie. Now take care of you.”
He nodded, not sure he knew what taking care of himself even meant anymore.
“I’ll come back next weekend. I just need to get this work thing under control.” And hopefully get in control of myself again.
“I’ll be fine, sweetheart. If I need anything, Bella, Kurt, and the others will take care of me.” She hugged him and stroked his back, as she’d done when he was a little boy.
He kissed her cheek. “Okay. I love you.”
“I know you do. I love you, too, dear.”
Jamie reached for the door.
“Jamie.”
He turned around. “What is it, Gram?”
She shook her head, and her thin lips curved into a semi smile. “I just wanted to say that there are some things in life that are meant to be. Sometimes they’re good, and sometimes they’re the most hurtful, treacherous things you can imagine. Those things can’t be stopped. They can’t be thwarted by fighting or changing your course, because they’re like air. Shapeless and fluid. Odorless and silent. They move through hearts and closed doors, and travel the globe until they find their prey.”
Her tone sent a shiver down his spine. These were the words she’d used the day she told him that his parents had died. The very same words, being delivered in the very same fashion. A flash of memory he’d buried so deep he thought he’d never be able to revisit it burst forth in his tortured mind. Just before those words left her lips all those years ago, she’d stumbled at the kitchen counter where she’d been making his grilled cheese sandwich. He’d jumped from his chair—Gram! He was a little thing at six years old. He could still feel the cold linoleum on his bare feet as he ran toward her. He could still feel the weight of her, as if it were yesterday, as he’d put one lithe arm around her waist and guided her to the kitchen table. His hand was barely big enough to wrap around the wooden spindles of the chair as he tugged it from the table and guided her into it. What he didn’t remember, had never been able to recall, was a phone call telling her of their demise. No matter how many nights he’d stayed up replaying the moment in his mind, he never could recall the shrill ring of the phone.
Now she patted his hand and nodded. “Go. You’ll know what’s right.”
“I…”
“Jamie, just as you knew then, you’ll know. We couldn’t stop them. I warned them, begged them to stay, but your mother insisted, and your father, he’d have followed her into a volcano without a thought.”
“You…You believed me.”
“I believed you. You told me then that they weren’t coming home. As a boy, you were very in tune to your parents, but after…Jamie, I prayed you’d lose that connection over time, and you did. You got busy filling your mind with everything and anything you could. It was as if you never wanted to feel that connection again. Not that I blamed you. No. I knew you were right. You dove into puzzle after puzzle. Oh, the hours you spent doing every puzzle imaginable. Figures, crosswords, math calculations, and any other puzzle you could get your sad and angry little hands on. You put enough chaos in your head to fill those lonely spaces your parents left behind.”
“Gram.” He laughed at the notion. “Are you saying that it wasn’t just a feeling, but that I had a premonition about Mom and Dad dying?”