The Ridge(52)

“Well, I hit the dead end, and I stopped. It was sunset. Not quite dark yet. A very beautiful sunset, in fact. The eastern face of the rocks was all lit up red, and the water had this beautiful shimmer. I could see the lighthouse up there, and it was so surreal. Beautiful but misplaced, you know? I got out of the car to look at it. I was all alone, and the sun was going down, and the insects were coming to life. Cicadas humming all around. There’s a bridge out there, an old railroad bridge?”

“The trestle. Yes.”

“I could see it through the trees. And I decided to walk out on it. There’s a fence that is supposed to guard it, I guess, but that was pretty well torn down. You can slip through it easily enough. I could, at least.”

His mouth was very dry, and he wanted to touch her. Wanted to take her hand, pat her arm, something. Instead he folded his own hands together, squeezed them tight.

“I walked out onto the bridge as the sun dipped down and everything gave over to night. It was one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen. The lighthouse was there against the trees and the rocks, but then it got dark, and I couldn’t see it anymore. Then it was just me on the bridge.”

She lifted one finger and slowly, carefully, wiped a tear away from her left eye. She didn’t comment on it, and neither did he.

“It had been a very bad night,” she said, and her voice was softer, huskier. “I sat out there and thought about what I had to go home to, and what could ever be done about it, and… and I just wanted to sit there and hold on to the night a little longer. That was all I wanted. To keep that June night going for as long as I could.”

She stopped talking. No more tears came, but her breaths were shallow and unsteady. He didn’t speak, didn’t move. Just gave her time.

“I don’t know how long I was there,” she said. “The moon came up and I watched its reflection in the water for a long time. And then there was another light there. The moon on the water, it went to blue. The strangest blue light I’d ever seen. Then the blue was moving, up onto the rocks, this flame that had just crawled right out of the water. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. And I felt, I don’t know the word… beckoned by it. Called. I… I decided that I wanted to try it.”

She didn’t specify what the it was, and she didn’t need to. Now it was Kimble’s turn to close his eyes.

“It’s not as high as it looks,” she said. “I thought it would be high enough. It wasn’t. The fall was very fast, and I had imagined it would be peaceful, but it was too quick to be peaceful. I don’t remember fear. I just remember knowing that it was too fast, that I’d counted on more time and wasn’t going to get it.”

She took a long, deep breath, chest filling, her breasts swelling against the faded prison uniform, and said, “There are rocks under the water in that spot. Not too far below. I hit one of them.”

Kimble looked away. He couldn’t help it. He couldn’t stand to think of her like that, falling from that bridge into the dark and the rocks.

“It was Wyatt who found me,” she said. “Late in the night.”

“You didn’t go to the hospital,” Kimble said. “Or at least he didn’t call the police for you.”

If he had, there should have been a record. There was no record.

“No,” she said. “We didn’t call the police, and I didn’t go to the hospital. He brought me up, and I got into my car and drove home. He tried to stop me from that, but I didn’t listen. That was the last time I saw him until his visit five weeks ago.”

Kimble said, “Wait a second. You said you landed on a rock.”

“Yes.”

“How did you just drive home, then? Weren’t you hurt?”

She looked away from him. “I guess I was lucky.”

“Lucky?”

“Doesn’t feel like it now.” She waved her hand around the room. “Not after years in here. But I guess I was lucky.”

There was something in her eyes that he wasn’t familiar with, couldn’t read, and he waited for more, but no words came. She just watched him with a detachment he’d never seen from her before.

“Jacqueline? Is that all there is to the story?”

She held her silence for a long beat, then nodded. “Yes.”

He matched her nod, but it was difficult. Just as they’d discussed when he sat down, there had always been a relationship of trust, no matter how bizarre that seemed. In all these years, all these visits, in every encounter they’d ever had, even from before the trial, even when she was refusing to tell him a damn thing about her husband’s violence, she’d never lied to him. Until now. How could you feel so betrayed knowing that a woman who’d once shot you in the back had now lied to you? The logic didn’t track, but emotions often didn’t choose to follow logic. This lesson Jacqueline Mathis had ingrained deeply in Kimble.