“I think I’d like your father,” I said.
“You’d like who he was, that’s for sure. Everything I am is because of him.”
“Well, I like you, too.”
Tom turned and focused his brown eyes on me. The fire made his face shine. Or maybe he was blushing. “Listen to me going on about myself. I’m sorry. I’m just the unwanted visitor here. Tell me about you.”
“There’s not much to tell.”
“I doubt that. Everybody has a story.” He nodded at my left hand. “I see a ring. So you’re married?”
“Not for much longer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I finally realized he’s not a good person.”
“Well, there are men like that. You deserve someone better.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“You shouldn’t talk like that. I just met you, but I can already tell that you have a good heart. It shows in your eyes. Not to mention the fact that you’re very pretty.”
This time I was the one blushing. “You’re sweet.”
“Well, how could I not be to the woman who rescued me?”
“I wasn’t even supposed to be in that campground tonight,” I admitted. “I was running away.”
“From what?”
I hesitated, but Tom made me feel safe, so I told him what was going on. About Will, about Jay, about the body on the ice, about being unable to stay there. He was a sheriff in charge of deputies like me, and I thought I’d see judgment in his face. If one of his men did what I’d done, he’d fire him. But Tom let me off the hook.
“Sometimes it’s hard to see the higher purpose from where we are,” he said. “If you’d stayed and done your duty, you might feel better about yourself, but I’d still be in my truck freezing to death. Remember that.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“I can call your boss and explain if you want. If you’re worried about your job.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“We all make mistakes, Rebecca, but like I said, life has a way of taking us where we’re supposed to be. I’m glad you ran away. You saved me.”
“Actually, you’re the one who saved me,” I said, blurting out the truth.
“How did I do that?”
“You stopped me.”
“From doing what?”
I shrugged, as if it were nothing. As if it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of the universe. “Shooting myself.”
He reacted by grabbing my face with his strong hands, cupping my cheeks gently as if holding on to something precious. “Rebecca. Is that really true?”
“I don’t know. That’s what was in my head. Maybe I would have chickened out.”
“Why would you even consider something like that?”
I felt my lower lip quivering. Any moment, I would lose it entirely. I was so full of self-pity, weighed down with self-hatred, that I could hardly breathe.
“I don’t know what I’m doing in this world,” I told him. “I’m all alone. If I disappeared, no one would notice. No one would care. Some days I just want to walk out into the forest and never be seen again.”
I assumed I’d get the usual speech that people give when you talk like that. When they know you’ve been contemplating suicide. The pat on the head. The platitudes. You’re young. You have your whole life ahead of you. But that’s the last thing I wanted to hear. Having my whole life ahead of me was the problem. That was why I’d considered ending it. I couldn’t bear to think about living the rest of my life feeling the way I did.
But Tom said nothing like that to me. His entire demeanor changed. He captured me with those dark eyes and held me fixed with his aura of goodness and concern. It was as if hearing my story had given him a mission, and he was bound to see it through. I didn’t think I’d ever met someone who had such a fierce, reflexive loyalty. He was like a younger version of Darrell, and yet he had something that Darrell didn’t. I sensed no black-and-white morality from him. He’d seen strong people crumble. He was a strong person himself, and he knew someday he’d crumble, too.
I didn’t know this man at all. He was a stranger to me. We’d just met. And yet I already knew — I knew — that if I were in trouble, I could go to him, and he would suspend everything else in his life to be there for me. There was literally no one else I could say that about.
That’s the man Tom Ginn was, sweetheart.
But of course, you know that.
“What can I do?” he asked. “How can I help you?”
“I have no idea. I really don’t.”
“Talk to me.”
“I don’t know where to begin.”
“Well, I’m not leaving until you tell me everything about yourself.”
“Why would you want that?”
He was honest with me. “There’s something about you, Rebecca, and I can’t even explain what it is. But I want to know the real you.”
“I don’t show that to anyone.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m scared of her,” I said.
“You won’t scare me.”
I really thought that was true. I thought I’d finally met a man who would believe me and understand me, a man I could share my deepest secrets with. Honestly, that was the one and only moment in my life when I was tempted to tell another soul about the Ursulina.
But no.
I didn’t talk. I was done talking. There was time for that later. In that moment, that was not what I wanted from Tom Ginn. That was not how I planned to spend our night together. I wanted something else from him.
Chapter Twenty
At four in the morning, I got a call from a county road crew to let me know that the campground had been plowed. Tom could go home. I drove him out there in the darkness, and we said little along the way. I suppose he expected me to talk about when we would see each other again, but I didn’t do that. I knew he had other responsibilities in life and no room for me. He’d given me one night as a woman in the arms of a good man, which was the only thing I’d asked of him. I’d never experienced a pleasure or closeness like that before.
I never would again.
We parted without saying much to each other, but not awkwardly. The situation between us was simply understood. He kissed me, he held me, he got in his pickup truck, and he was gone. I stood there in the empty parking lot for a long time, savoring what I felt inside myself, feeling warm and happy on a cold, black night. The storm had cleared, leaving behind stars. The wind had settled into a perfect stillness. I hummed, I sang. I blew a kiss to the owl, wherever he was.
Then it was time to go home.
I had to rejoin the world, after a night that felt like an intermission from it. I didn’t know if Ben Malloy had taken it upon himself to send the sheriff’s department out to the lake to find Jay’s body, but either way, I needed to change back into my uniform and do everything that I’d failed to do hours earlier. I was ready to take charge of my life and become a deputy again.
It took me an hour to get back to my house. The roads were slippery, but I admit, I was distracted by my thoughts of Tom. I could still smell his presence in the car and taste him on my lips. We’d held hands as I drove. I knew the time we’d spent together would be a jewel I’d remove from a velvet case in my memory for years to come and polish up until it was sparkling and new again.